"Asking whether or not the census should continue to count ethnic groups is one way into the difficult conversation about how to reckon with the legacies of colonial weaponisation of ethnicity."
theelephant.info/features/2021/…
theelephant.info/features/2021/…
"Even though every census after 1948 has changed the list, it always builds on that first list made by British administrators, some of whom had very little understanding of the communities they were counting and classifying."
"Terence Ranger, a keen scholar of Kenya but also a former colonial official, coined the term “invention of tradition” to explain how the British came, saw, and invented ethnicity or – more specifically – “tribe”."
"Seeing Africans as being defined first and foremost by tribe allowed the British to divide and rule, and to imagine they were not just extracting and exploiting, but also civilising.
The roots of ethnicity, in this sense, are problematic."
The roots of ethnicity, in this sense, are problematic."
"The concept itself & specific ethnic groups the British identified and made names for were fundamental tools of colonial control. Ethnicity kept Africans divided from each other and in an inferior place on the hierarchy of civilisation that justified British colonial authority."
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