www.theroot.com/articles/world/2011/02/egypt_does_it_have_a_race_problem.html-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Egypt's Race Problem
For too many Egyptians, sub-Saharan Africa is a stereotypical exotic land
of thick jungles and masses of poor, starving and black-skinned savages.
By: Sunni M. Khalid
Posted: Feb. 3 2011 2:53 PM
Because of my looks, my religion and my name, I have frequently been
mistaken for Arab during my travels throughout the Middle East. It has
been a mentally liberating sensation -- to leave the racial politics of the
United States (in reality, this is simply the process of exchanging the
ethnic politics of one land for those of another) and not to be regarded as
simply a nondescript "black."
Over the years, I have, at various times, been mistaken for many different
nationalities. But when I am in the Middle East, strangers most often
mistake me for Egyptian. Of course, many African Americans look like
Egyptians, right across the color spectrum. I would often scan a crowded
street in Cairo and pick out the faces of Egyptians whose visages reminded
me of family or friends.
Almost every time I arrived at the Cairo airport, the immigration official
would examine my passport closely. Inevitably, the official would ask me
a series of questions.
"Is this your name, Sunni Khalid?"
"Yes."
"Are you Egyptian?"
"No."
"Is your father Egyptian?"
"No."
"Is your mother Egyptian?"
"No."
"Where were you born?"
"Detroit."
The official would immediately become suspicious. After all, to his eyes, I
looked like an ordinary Egyptian. Finally, another immigration official
would show up, repeating the same series of questions. I'd have to repeat
my answers a third or fourth time before still more disbelieving
immigration officials.
As a last resort, I'd often put my hands up in a boxer's stance and start
jumping around, throwing punches in the air. Then I'd turn to them and
say, "I'm like Muhammad Ali-Clay." That would always bring smiles.
"Oh, you're a boxer! Do you know Muhammad Ali-Clay?"
"No, I'm like Muhammad Ali-Clay," I would say. "I'm an
African-American Muslim."
Quickly, those quizzical looks would be replaced with smiles and
handshakes. As they stamped my passport, the officials would tell me,
"Welcome home."
But other blacks, whether American or not, have fared much worse than I
did; they are never mistaken for Arabs.
Slender, beautiful, blue-black-skinned Southern Sudanese women, who
walk around Cairo with their thick, kinky hair woven distinctively in
intricate braids, are routinely the targets of verbal public abuse. Carloads
of Arab men drive by, hanging out of windows, shouting catcalls, or
making loud demands for sexual favors.
Over the years, Egypt has had a particularly difficult time coming to grips
with its African identity. Many Egyptians do not consider themselves
Africans. Some take offense even to being identified with Africa at all.
When speaking to Egyptians who have traveled to countries below the
Sahara, nearly all of them speak of going to Africa, or going down to
Africa, as if Egypt were separate from the rest of the continent.
More than a few Egyptian women, for example, told me that they disliked
the dark-skinned former President Anwar Sadat, ridiculed for years as
"Nasser's black poodle." Sadat, whose mother was Sudanese, they insisted,
"did not look Egyptian enough."
For too many Egyptians, sub-Saharan Africa is a stereotypical exotic land
of thick jungles and masses of poor, starving and black-skinned savages.
Ironically, a little more than a generation ago, Cairo was the nerve center
for the continent's liberation movement. Today the state-controlled media
devote scant attention to the affairs of the continent below the Sahara.
Even the occasional visit by a head of state from sub-Saharan Africa is
greeted with smiles by snickering Egyptian government officials,
especially when African visitors choose to wear their national dress.
This was not always the case. In 1966, following the coup in Ghana,
Egypt's first president, Gamal Abdel-Nasser, sent for the Egyptian wife
and half-Egyptian children of Ghana's deposed leader, Kwame Nkrumah.
Nasser died suddenly in 1970, and much has changed since then.
Sub-Saharan Africans, who have fled as refugees to Egypt from Sudan,
Ethiopia and Eritrea, are routinely targeted for periodic security roundups
in Cairo. In December 2005, Egyptian riot police brutally attacked a camp
of Sudanese refugees in Cairo who were protesting their treatment. In front
of TV cameras, at least 28 and as many as 100 refugees were killed, and
hundreds of others were injured, arrested, imprisoned or deported. There
was little public protest.
My wife, Zeinab, a Kenyan Somali, endured a series of racial indignities
during our time in Egypt. She would shop Road Nine, the trendy
commercial drag in Maadi that caters mostly to foreigners and wealthy
Egyptians. More than once, she would be standing in line at the checkout
counter, when an older, fair-skinned Egyptian woman would arrogantly
walk from the rear of the line and place her packages on the conveyor belt
in front of Zeinab, as if my wife didn't exist. Indignantly, Zeinab would
glare at the woman and dump her packages at the back of the line -- or
even go so far as to grab the woman by the collar to make her point.
Whenever my wife would come to the airport to pick me up, she'd often
have to fend off several Arab men, who assumed that, as a black woman,
she was somehow immediately "available" to their desires, whether she
was married or not.
One afternoon, as we ate lunch at our favorite restaurant in Cairo's
sprawling Khan el-Khalili market, we noticed two scowling Egyptian
women staring at us from across the room. I left Zeinab to go to the
restroom. As I returned to our table, one of the women who had been
glaring at us earlier, an older Egyptian woman, accosted me.
"Don't you know better?" she asked in Arabic. "How dare you bring a
woman like that into a place like this?"
As far as this woman was concerned, Zeinab, dressed casually in slacks,
her hair in braids, was obviously a "Sudanese prostitute," and I was taken
to be her Arab "john." Certainly, in her eyes, no respectable Egyptian man
would ever cavort publicly with a black woman.
"Excuse me, ma'am," I replied politely in Arabic, "you've made a mistake.
That woman is my wife."
My protests were futile. The woman kept tugging indelicately on my
sleeve, castigating me for my "scandalous" public behavior.
Before I left Cairo, I met a group of sub-Saharan African students enrolled
at the prestigious al-Azhar University. They told me about the racial
harassment they were subjected to on a daily basis on the streets of Cairo
by Egyptian Arabs.
"I learned something much different from what I believed," said Bala, a
native of northern Nigeria and a graduate student at the American
University in Cairo, who lived in Egypt for six years. "I thought [the
Arabs] were our brothers in Islam, but they don't bother about that when
you're black. ... They pretend that you are a brother in Islam, but this is
different from what they hold in their hearts and in their minds."
He told me that for many Muslims from sub-Saharan Africa, the spiritual
solidarity with Egyptian Muslims was misplaced. "I was coming out of
masjid [mosque] in a place called Dar-el-Malik," Bala said. "So we used to
say 'Salaam' to one another when we came out of salat [prayer]. There was
one child, called Mohamed, and we were used to shaking hands with him.
And one day, I came out to shake his hand and he refused. He told me his
father told him never to shake hands with a Sudani -- that is black. So he is
telling me his father told him he cannot say, 'Salaam,' to any [Africans]."
Through Bala, I met other African students, including some who were
studying at al-Azhar University, with the hope of returning to their native
lands as imams and religious scholars. Some of the students told me that
they experienced racism within al-Azhar to such an extent that they
eventually renounced their vows as Muslims.
Some Egyptians, they told me, called Africans hounga (a nonsense word)
or asked, "What time is it?" This was apparently done so that the
sub-Saharan Africans would look down and be reminded of their
dark-skinned wrists, where their watches might be. The jokesters would
immediately laugh, but the Africans wouldn't catch on to the joke until
much later.
"Egyptians ask you if you live in trees," Bala said. "Or, 'Why are you
black?' 'Is your country hot?' So, this is how we know that there is
something called racism here. We are Muslims, not because of the Arabs,
but Muslims despite what the Arabs have done to us. Even my worst
enemy, I would not ask him to come to Egypt for studies, let alone my
son."
As Egypt moves forward in a post-Mubarak era, it will have to look at
healing many of the wounds that have been opened and have festered over
the years. This includes mending ties among Egyptians across religious
lines, between the Muslim majority and the Coptic Christian minority, as
well as across racial fault lines, with more acceptance of the non-Arab
Nubian minority and the significant number of African refugees living and
working in Egypt. How these minorities are treated in the future may
speak volumes about how far Egyptians have come, or have to go, in
treating one another.
Sunni M. Khalid is the managing news editor at WYPR-FM and has
reported extensively throughout Africa and the Middle East. He reported
from Cairo for three years.
