In “Ghosts of Rwanda,” the narrator brought up the issue of racial tension between the Hutus and Tutsis that drove the genocide. The narrator stated that Hutu propaganda called on the Hutu to destroy the people, the Tutsis, who had taken advantage of them for centuries. I believe the movie said that the Hutus and Tutsis lived as peaceful neighbors up until the arrival of European colonizers. Once the Belgian rulers arrived, the racial divide was solidified due to the colonialists’ prejudices and bigotry. So, how exactly did the Belgians differentiate between Hutus and Tutsis if they spoke the same language and followed the same traditions? Scientists measured skull size, which they believed correlated to brain size. Tutsi’s had larger skulls, were taller, and had lighter skin. Thus, the Belgians concluded that the Tutsis must have had some Caucasian ancestry, which made them superior to Hutus. In some cases, the Belgians used absurd methods to separate the two groups – cattle; if a person owned ten or more cattle, they were a Tutsi. Belgians issued a racial identification card to each Rwandan citizen, defining them as Hutu or Tutsi. Later on during the genocide, these identification cards were essentially death warrants for Tutsis stopped at local checkpoints.
Note: It is interesting how the Belgians used almost the exact same criteria to judge racial superiority that Hitler used later on during the Holocaust.
Sources: http://orvillejenkins.com/peoples/tutsiandhutu.html
19th century racial sciences, which seem backwards by todays standards, were actually widely accepted as truth back in the 1800's. There were five main racial groups: Caucasoid (Caucasian), Mongoloid (Asian), Australoid (Oceanic/Polynesian), Congoid (West African), and Capoid (East and South African). Hutus and Tutsis would be considered Capoids. A surprisingly large amount of effort and research was committed to these studies and the goal was largely to prove the superiority of Caucasians. Skull size at the time was equated to brain size and therefore intelligence level. These ideas have been discredited by modern science, yet clearly they scarred many colonial nations, causing rifts in populations based on ethnicity.
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