Somali bigotry has no place in modern Kenya

Mogadishu City Club fans were seen stepping on the Kenyan flag during their clash with Kenya Police FC at Nyayo National Stadium in Nairobi. [Jonah Onyango, Standard]

All Kenyans are citizens of the great Jamhuri as individuals and not corporate members of specific ethnic groups. At the same time, our Constitution and law view all of us as individuals.

Therefore, if one person breaks the law, they ought to face the legal system as individuals and not as members of specific communities. With that in mind, it is worth exploring sources of the crash tribalism visited to Kenyans who happen to be ethnically Somali over the last week.

Lots of people who should know better have outed themselves by exploiting an instance of youthful silliness to malign an entire community.

Here is the story. Youths who happen to be ethnically Somali were recorded trampling the Kenyan flag. Now, we can all agree that the flag, as a national symbol, deserves more respect than that. At the same time, we should not be the kind of country that considers trampling on the flag a criminal offence.

At a minimum, it betrays poor (youthful) judgment and should be met with social sanction. As a people, we should choose to express our patriotism by loving our neighbours, caring for the least fortunate, and collectively contributing to the material and social advancement of Project Kenya.

Interesting, it is some of the least patriotic Kenyans - judging by their behaviour on the public record - that have been most vocal in casting aspersions over the loyalty of an entire ethnic group (again, on the basis of one instance of misbehaving youth).

As I have argued here before, if we are to evaluate some form of patriotism Olympics, the results would show the most loyal Kenyans are those who have maintained their belief in Project Kenya despite repeated neglect by the state.

Most of those people reside in peripheries of Kenya, including in Northeastern region (which happens to be majority ethnically Somali).

Conversely, most of the elites who have pillaged the country for decades and ruined the futures of many young Kenyans come from regions along the line of rail from Mombasa to Malaba that have historically benefited the most from public goods and services.

To be blunt, Kenyan Somalis are as Kenyan as it gets. They have no apologies to make for that fact. And they need not be perfect to be Kenyan. They are Kenyan, period. The sooner everyone internalises this fact, the better for all of us as a country.

If individuals who happen to be Somali engage in silly acts like trampling the flag, they should be socially sanctioned as individuals.

There should be no room for bigoted individuals to cast aspersions on the loyalty of Somalis as an ethnic group to the Jamhuri. It is especially egregious when such displays of bigotry come from public officials supposed to model our experiment with cosmopolitan self-government.

All this to say that enough is enough on anti-Somali bigotry. Somalis are Kenyans, and here to stay. And those who have a problem with that should get over it.

-The writer is a professor at Georgetown University