Why white people do not deserve your special treatment

By Thomas Courtright

A few months ago, I arranged to meet up with a friend of mine - a Ugandan woman at one of the Westerner-frequented backpackers in Kamwokya. I got there first, barely pausing to greet the receptionist, before heading up to the rooftop for the view, all without buying anything. I went back down when my friend said she was on her way, and was in the room adjacent to the reception when she arrived. 

When she passed by the front desk alone, the receptionist stopped her and asked her where she was going. She asked why it mattered, and he said that non-guests were not allowed in. I came in right then, and she asked the receptionist why I was allowed in, and he replied: "Black people are not allowed." What he was also saying was "white people are allowed to walk around at will." This receptionist was Ugandan. 

Less blatant, but just as serious versions of this kind of treatment occur daily here. At restaurants, bazungu are often prioritised over Ugandans in getting service. We've all heard the stories of black people waiting for service - and if you haven't, you either live in the village or need more black friends. People are also very quick to call me "sir," even though I'm a 26-year-old with the facial hair and fashion sense of a 16-year-old. 

Of course, not everything about being white in Kampala is rosy - bodaboda drivers try to charge me more, especially when I only speak with them in American English. How many times I hear others tell my boda drivers to charge me mutwalo I lost count of long ago. But if I am with a Ugandan woman and I don't greet the driver in Luganda, they often try to charge her up to twice as much, believing I am the money behind the purse, and usually telling her explicitly so. 

It gets even worse for Ugandan women hanging out with white men. They are subject to abuse by men, who often tell them nasty things, believing they are only with the muzungu man for the money. My friend and I are always assumed to be a couple, and people assume either her life is not together as she is getting with a broke white man who splits bills, or she gets more respect as a proxy of my white privilege. People also tell her that she isn't getting good sex from me, which is a little insulting, but mostly amusing. 

Unfortunately, many white people and Westerners here are blind to these privileges because they remain in social bubbles of only Westerners, an exasperating and all-too-common phenomenon for relatively wealthy people who have come all the way across the world to live here. 

People should be angry about this. Westerners and white people should be angry about this. So many of them are proponents of liberal or leftist politics in their own countries, and yet once they have arrived in Uganda, determined to "do good" they think they have accomplished their goals and begin to treat wait staff and ordinary Ugandans poorly. They take out frustrations they may have being cultural outsiders on Ugandans, and treat the different work culture as evidence that Ugandans are "lazy" or "not intelligent." 

It gets worse, of course. One doesn't even need to look to colonialism to see the way many white people treat Ugandans today. The Guardian recently reported on the Global Health Ministry, fronted by an American pastor and a British quack, who ran a network of over a thousand priests in Uganda who administered bleach-based solutions as a cure for HIV, diabetes and more. Treating black bodies as some kind of free-for-all testing ground. 

For bazungu who are outraged by this kind of treatment and this system of white supremacy, consider the following. First, listen to your Ugandan friends when they tell you about it. Then, if they approve, you should call it out. You can also talk to other white people about it and encourage them to do the same. You should also push back when people (bazungu or Ugandan) tell you that white people are nicer or, that white people are smarter. This is not true, and no one should be believing that in this day and age. 

Of course, also do remain sensitive to people's educational backgrounds, and don't start by yelling at anyone, especially Ugandans. Most people in Uganda have not had the chance to travel widely, meet people from different backgrounds, or receive an education that challenged them on the injustices that fall along racial and gender lines. Otherwise, please, stand up against the harm your privileges are inflicting, and take a moment to reflect on how better you can engage as a guest, a friend or even a family member of Ugandans. 

The writer is an American who grew up in Tanzania and now lives in Kampala