Good Mzungu? Whiteness and white supremacy in postcolonial Uganda

ABSTRACT

Scholars looking at whiteness through a postcolonial lens have notably explored the lingering and multi-faceted nature of whiteness in the wake of empire. We apply Shome’s argument that whiteness is rendered visible through how it is ‘disembodied’ to explore how whiteness is signified and interpreted in a postcolonial Ugandan context and with the term Mzungu. Disembodied whiteness centres the discursive and material forms of whiteness. Interview and focus group data from domestic workers who work for foreigners in Uganda are analysed. We argue in Uganda whiteness is structurally present in the growth of the development aid state and discursively understood in contrast and relation to Africanness and Blackness. Whiteness, Mzungu, African, Black represents multiple understandings and a duality for the Ugandan domestic workers who work in the foreign households of the aid state. Ultimately, postcolonial whiteness in Uganda sustains white supremacy, but fissures, contestation, and disruption also follow its production.

KEYWORDS:

• Postcolonial whiteness
• white supremacy
• Uganda
• domestic workers
• Mzungu
• Africa

Acknowledgments

We appreciate the helpful feedback from the anonymous reviewers at Identities. We are especially indebted to the domestic workers in Uganda who participated in this study and are organising for better working conditions and livelihood for themselves and their families.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Mamdani (2004) addresses the importance of distinguishing between colonial constructions of ‘races’ versus ‘ethnicities’. The facilitation of African ethnic categories, however, was also a racial phenomenon. Colonial anthropologist, D.E. Goldthorpe, assisted the demarcation and boundaries of ethnic groups in East Africa that set the foundation of how postcolonial ethnic identities manoeuvred and made claims (see Sseremba 2020).

2. See Brownbridge (2010) for a breakdown of Uganda foreign aid and debt.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline (FAD) from the American Sociological Association.