Out of the West: An Essay on Racism in Contemporary Africa

Cultural racism – the racialisation of groups with culturalist arguments – is a somewhat universal phenomenon that exists in virtually all multi-cultural societies in the world. However, the concept has been predominantly defined as the racialisation of hitherto racialised non-whites by whites in Western societies. It is typically argued that cultural racism has supplanted biological racism as appeals are now made not so much to real or imputed biological characteristics but to insurmountable cultural differences. In this research article, I contend that the theorisation of cultural racism as the racialisation of non-white ethnic minorities by white racists is Eurocentric, focuses on Euro-American histories, and cannot capture lived experiences of the phenomenon in many multi-cultural African societies where Euro-American racial dynamics are less salient. With the case of the racialisation of ethnicity in Nigeria – the most populous state in contemporary Africa – I show how cultural racism manifests in ethnic conflicts in ways not captured by extant understanding. I contribute to the broader literature in ethnic studies by uncovering the logics, mentalities, and rationalities of cultural racism in a manner that transcends the black–white racialisation imaginary dominant in Eurocentric theoretical explanations of the phenomenon. I also make a case for rethinking racism in the postcolony beyond the prisms of xenophobia, autochthony, genocide, and tribalism that characterise scholarship on ethnic discrimination in the continent.