For instance with the ongoing primaries in the united states, the issue of whites, black and Latino votes is a factor that any serious contender for the white house can not ignore.

And that brings me to Kenya tribal factor. I think we all must accept the fact that tribe is a big factor that defines and will continue to influence kenya as a society in virtually all aspects of life.

Now the big question of course is how do Kenyans nurture and tame this tribal aspect so that it contributes positively to it’s society rather than negatively?

http://kwani.org/blog/

Western observers do think of things happening in Israel and the middle east as being about “religion”, which then gets debunked by people who notice how it’s *not* actually about religion, but those point-counterpoint debates and essays often proceed with all sides missing the point: religion over there is a marker of tribe, and the issues are not religious but tribal. Similar things happen about ethnicity, which is related to tribe but isn’t exactly the same thing. Religious labels are not about religion, they’re about tribal identity, and similarly, ethnic groups there aren’t about actual ethnicity, they’re about tribal identity.

There’s a very large percentage of “Israeli Jews” who are ethnically Arab, many of whom either grew up in Arab countries calling themselves “Arab” and speaking Arabic, or whose parents did. But in Israel, they’re not Arabs, they’re “Israeli Jews”, subtribe “Mizrachi”.

All this did not change on it’s own, but rather an economic crisis, lust for power and politics of division combined to revive dormant or (mostly) dead feelings. As in Kenya, it wasn’t just a matter of time — unless you consider despicable politics a foregone conclusion.

The inevitability and thus, our inability to intervene effectively, was precisely the conclusion that many reached (including those in the US government). True, reconciliation is hard, which is what makes it so important to restrain ourselves (whether politician or citizen) in the first place, and for friends (including governments and international organizations) to protect again the rise of that violence and division before it becomes too hard to step back.

Here’s to cooler heads in Kenya and around the world, let them prevail.

As for “ancient” tribal tensions, I think too often we, esp mass media, tend to overlook the role that colonial regimes played in creating, playing up, and dividing people among “tribes.” To project these tensions as somehow autochthonous is to miss a lot of historical perspective.