Labels for ethnicity

Erin Jessee’s description of how to conduct research in Rwanda amazed me with how much bureaucratic mess one has to go through in order to conduct a study. It was particularly interesting to me that she notes that researchers should not use the terms Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa when talking to Rwandans because this will remind citizens of the genocide. Jessee notes that researchers are told to call all citizens Rwandans, because they are one people. I find it fascinating then, that ethnic terms are no longer legal to use but that Hutu government officials are still being fired from office or disappeared or made to leave the country. Looking back on the movie that we watched in class on Thursday, I remember one man saying that he did not want to tell the interviewer if he was Hutu or Tutsi and that he was simply Rwandan. It’s puzzling because ordinary Rwandans seem to be accepting the rule to no longer use ethnic terms to describe people, however today the whole hierarchy of power is separated by ethnicity.