If It's African, It's TRIBAL by Mumia Abu-Jamal
With the ignition of post-election violence in Kenya, came the traditional themes from the Western press: tribal hatreds, ethnic enmity, and almost joyous reporting of the spasms of violence wracking the country.
Joyous, because such violence was useful in convincing Western readers, viewers and listeners of the inherent wildness of foreign lands, and by implication, the peaceful and civil nature of the West. Tribal has become a kind of journalistic shorthand for Black or brown people.
As usual, the real story is a bit more complex. And Americans don't really do complex very well.
The violence, while admittedly breathtaking, is (as most mass violence is), the result of political elites directing the poor and the young to stir the cauldron of conflict, for their political ends.
Kenya, like most post-colonial states, was saddled at the dawn of independence with pressures from colonial powers to keep economic systems essentially unchanged. Thus, many independence leaders became junior partners with international capital, and therefore became individually wealthy, while the poor and working classes of their countries became more ruthlessly exploited.
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