Somali Bantu in Northview Heights: Social Isolation, Race

Somali Bantu in Northview Heights: social isolation, race,

and social capital

Graduate class: Race and the City/Sociology 2313

Spring 2012

Ervin Dyer

Sociology department/Phd candidate

518 E. North Ave

Pgh, Pa 15212

412-624-4796

Faculty sponsor: Dr. Waverly Duck, professor of sociology

Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology

(412) 648-7566

Somali Bantu in Northview Heights: social isolation, race and social capital

By Ervin Dyer

Introduction

In 1991, civil war struck the northeastern African nation of Somalia. In the nation’s collapse, tens of thousands of Somali Bantu were displaced from their homes in the southern part of Somalia. They became refugees,and an estimated 14,000 were eventually relocated to the UnitedStates, making them the largest refugee group ever resettled in this country. When they arrived in the United States, the Somali Bantu, one of the most marginalized and persecuted groups in Somalia, became a rural peoplethrust into a post-industrial technological world. They are one of the most culturally dissimilar groups to come to the United States: they are mostly illiterate; Muslims in a predominantly Christian land; and agrarians placed amid a metropolitan social mosaic.In Pittsburgh, socioeconomic factors have pushed a small community of Somali Bantu into an isolated, impoverished and nearly all-Black housing project. My research questions: What are the resources and strategies the Somali Bantu use to “make it” in such a “Black” space of concentrated poverty? How do they find better schools, navigate the labor force, find social interaction and create chances for social mobility?

My work isqualitative and draws from ethnographic and other related research that discusses assimilation of immigrant communities, particularly first-generation immigrants; community studies that examine race and immigration, particularly Black/African American interactions with immigrant communities; and inclusion of studies that use “capital” as a theoretical perspective. This paper represents my first steps toward examining the Somali Bantu in this isolated community and it includes: (1) the history of the Somali Bantu, exploring their movement from Tanzania to Somalia, which includes information related to the war conflict that relocated the study population to Pittsburgh; (2) the history and the social policies that shaped the North Side neighborhood where the small community of Somali Bantu currently reside.

Who are the Somali Bantu, what is their history?

The Somali Bantu are people with roots in Somalia’sJubba Valley, a fertile, productive region that sits between the Shabelle and Jubba rivers. They call themselves Mushunguli– a reference to their cultural and linguistic connections to ancestors in Tanzania and Mozambique in southeast Africa. This is a background that ties them to the vast Bantu ethnic group, a peoplewho were taken by slave traders from southern Africa to Somalia some 300 years ago. Other Bantu groups assimilated into the dominant Somali culture. But the Mushunguli maintained their southeast African cultures and in this northeastern African nation, their Negroid features --the texture of their hair, the shape of their noses-- cast them as racial minorities and they were considered the people of the “hard hair,” a group separate, marginalized, and distinct from the ruling, dominant Somali coastalpeople who were linked to Arab ancestry. They were also called by the derogatory terms of adoonor habash, which translated as slave(Lehman and Eno 2003; Besteman1999).

In Somalia, Bantu people are about one-tenth of the 9.5 million people who live in the diverse, multiethnic country and their marginalization engulfed every dimension of their lives. They were excluded from opportunities in politics, access to government services, access to private jobs, and education. In Somalia, they were considered the lowest of the low. They could not intermarry with other clans (which could aid the assimilation process) and the discrimination was so severe that they were shut out from economic and development opportunities.

Walled off from the mainstream, the Somali Bantu relied upon their ancestral traditions from East Africa such as matrilineal kinship and ceremonial dance. In their rural homes, the Somali Bantu typically had no running water or electricity. They were farmers who had few material possessions and tilled plots of land no bigger than 10 acres, on which they grew maize, beans, cotton, rice, fruits and other crops (Lehman and Eno).

The Somali Bantu history in Somalia includes a past as enslaved people and as forced laborers. Overtime, they were pushed into sort of an underclass, isolated unto themselves and barred from school and good jobs. In the region of Somalia where they lived, they were further stigmatized and marginalized for their life as agriculturalists, and for their cultural practices (such as their traditional, ceremonial dances, which had their credibility as Islamic people questioned). They were also racialized by their distinct physical or Negroid features. A convergence of state domination by policies, actions, and descriptions constructed them as racialized people in a racialized space. They lived on society’s bottom rung (Besteman 1999; Lord 2005).

Their link to slavery began more than 1,000 years ago, when Persian and Arab traders made contact with East Africa. Many of the Arab traders settled there and established friendly relationships with the various clans, even with the people who became known as Somali Bantu. In the 15th century, Portuguese established colonial rule in Tanzania, Mozambique and other portions of East Africa, disrupting the cultural, social and economic intimacies of the region. Two centuries later, forces loyal to an Arab Sultanate ousted the Portuguese but expanded the enslavementof people of Kenya and Tanzania. The people in Tanzania (many of the resettled Somali Bantu living in the U.S. trace their ancestral roots to Tanzania) were “terrorized” by the slave trade. They were often captured and marched 400 miles from the interior to the Tanzania coast of the Indian Ocean and, from there, shipped to the port city of Bagamoyo in southern Somalia. Many were sold to European buyers, but some were sold to African buyers and toiled on the plantations in Somalia’s Shabelle River valley. From 1800 to 1890, between 25,000 and 50,000 enslaved people, including the enslaved and displaced Bantu groups,carved out a life for themselves inthis fertile agricultural land. (By the 1840s, though, fugitive slaves, hoping to return to Tanzania, ran south. They settled in the forested Jubba River valley, and by 1900 an estimated 35,000 former slaves were living here. Liberation leaders continued to guide the Bantu out of slavery, but unable to cross Kenya because of a hostile landscape and Kenyan tribes, the Bantu peoples reshaped their life and made their home in the Jubba River region(Lehman and Eno).

Still, the encounter with the West continued to marginalize the Somali Bantu people. Though the Italians, who had colonized the Jubba Valley region of Somalia, had abolished slavery in the early 20th century, from 1935-1940 they confiscated the Bantu farms and introduced harsh labor laws that forcibly conscripted the freed slaves to be laborers for the Italian colonial plantationsthat were set amid this fertile land. As a result, with the help of non-Bantu groups, the Bantu people were forced to abandon their own farms and were exploited as laborers, under conditions that were so severe and harsh they were “indistinguishable from slavery” (Lehman and Eno). The British Army took control of Somalia from the Italians in 1941 and shut down this practice until 1960, when Somalia gained its independence.

For two decades, Somalia endured an uneasy peace. But by the 1980s, the ruling Somali government adopted polices that further walled in and impoverished the people with the hard hair. In 1972, the government declared that the language AfMaxaa would be the official written language. This decision further isolated the Somali Bantu, who spoke mostly MaayMaay. The rule meant they were blocked from mainstream politics, government services and education. Moreover, a series of unjust law registrations stripped most of them from being landowners. In the displacement, some Bantu people migrated to the urban areas, where they gained a foothold in society as low-level workers in the building trades, car repair and other forms of manual and semi-skilled labor.

By the early 1990s, political unrest caused more destabilization of Somalia, and the consequences for the Somali Bantu were disastrous. Civil war came in 1991, and the fight for power between clans took its toll on the Bantu population, who were the “backbone” of agricultural production in the south and had stockpiles of food on their farms. Eventually, the war devastated market networks, and as food supply was interrupted, Somalia began to hunger. As marginalized people, the Somali Bantu were outside the traditional networks of protection. As a result, roving bandits and militias attacked themwithout fear of state reprisal. Their food was stolen and Bantu farmers were raped, robbed and murdered. Very rapidly, the Somali Bantu world, which was centered on family life, sustainable farming and “beauty and joy” in strong aesthetic traditions, began to crumble (Besteman 1999, Anthropology News 2009; Lehman and Eno 2003).

As war continued to tear the embattled nation, warlords continued to ravage the Bantu. By 1992, they began to flee, leaving en masse for refuge in camps about 40 miles north in Kenya. By January 1994, an estimated 10,000 had left their homes and were living in camps; 75 percent expressed a desire to resettle in Tanzania, their ancestral home.

Refugee camps

If they made it to the Kenyan refugee camps, they were survivors, but it was still a difficult life. Decimated by war, Somali Bantu survivors tried to rebuild their lives in the crowded, isolated refugee camps. A persecuted minority in Somalia, on some levels, the Bantus,who were barred from school and so are largely illiterate, were given a second chance in the camps, where they had the opportunity to attend school, and learn to read and write basic Swahili or English.

The camps are administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR,and two refugee camps actually exist. There is Dadaab, in northeastern Kenya, which is estimated to hold 160,000 Somali refugees. In northwestern Kenya, near Sudan, is the Kakuma camp, which is where most refugees are moved in preparation for resettlement. Both camps are located in the semi-arid Kenya outback, and the camps are basic: sporadic water and electric service; rationed food supplies; and tents for homes. In the camps, especially in Dadaab, the Somali Bantu, through discrimination, were oppressed and targeted by other Somali clans. They had been pushed to the periphery of the camp, where they are most vulnerable to bandit attack. To strike back, they have fortified their spaces with walls and armed security. It is even more dangerous to leave the camp for firewood. Many Somali Bantu women, because of theirNegroid traits, were easy targets and have been raped while outside the camp.

U.S. Policy on Asylum

The door to allow Somali Bantu refugees to resettle in America was actually opened when Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980 and U.S. refugee resettlement policy shifted post-Cold War from being political and ideological – which allowed for refugees escaping Communist or Middle East nations -- to being a more humanitarian selection policy, one that wasn’t drive by foreign policy or refugees’ ability to assimilate. The change was brought in part to responses that U.S. resettlement was discriminatory. According to the UNHCR being resettled means the selection and transfer of refugees to a third state which agrees to admit them with permanent residence status and provide them with rights comparable to those enjoyed by the country’s own citizens, including the opportunity to become naturalized citizens (Boas 2007).

By 2005, a time when most Somali Bantu are arriving in the United States, the Immigration and Nationality Act, defines a refugee as an alien “displaced abroad who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality,membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” (U.S. Immigration Policy on Asylum Seekers, 2005).

But by the early 1990s, the U.S. government, with vocal advocacy from the Congressional Black Caucus,had considered the plight of the Somali Bantu and launched a massive resettlement effort to place more than 14,000 Somali Bantus in 52 American cities by March 1994. More than half the newcomers were expected to be children under 17 (Besteman 1999; Boas 2007). It was the largest resettlement program ever undertaken by the U.S. State Department. In 1999, nearly a decade after the beginning of the civil war in Somalia, the U.S. decided that Somali Bantu people were a persecuted group and eligible for resettlement to America The resettlement, however, was put on hold by the 9-11 terror attacks and fears that Somalia was harboring terrorists who may have slipped into the camps; but by 2003, the U.S. State Department said it would interview refugees to determine resettlement eligibility. To qualify, the Somali Bantu would undergo a security check, medical exams, literacy training and cultural orientation. These tasks mostly took place in the Kakuma refugee camp, near Sudan.There, the mostly illiterate peasant farmers learned basic English,how to flush a toilet, and receivedlessons about modern appliances such as a refrigerator and ice tray.

In coming to the U.S., the Somali Bantu would join a surging group of African political refugees heading to America. The numbers of Africans coming to the U.S. jumped from 3,318 in 1990 to roughly 20,000 a decade later. The growth, in part, was sparkedby the end of the Cold War, when refugees from the Soviet Union and Vietnam were in decline and Africans were on the rise. The U.S. had considered the resettlement of the Somali Bantu earlier, but the terror attacks of 9-11 in 2001 disrupted the process as security clearance was made more rigorous because of reports – and fears –that Somalia was a nation sheltering terrorists. With the resettlement slowed by such fears, the delay caused thousands of Somali Bantuto languish in the barren camps; while they waited, many children died of malnutrition(Washington Post 2003; Swarns 2003).

There has been criticism of the massive resettlement effort. One critique has suggested that the process is too influenced by a global human rights agenda, that there is too little exploration of repatriation within Africa, and that there is a negative perception that Somali Bantu are terrorists.A case is made that today’s refugee resettlement is not based on national security interests, but rather stems from advocacy by influential non-governmental organizations. This influence is claimed to be the force that drove the decision to have the Somali Bantu to be accepted as a persecuted “group” and not evaluated on refugee status on individual claims. The critique goes on to say that the lack of effort to resettle African refugees in Africa is based on the Western concept that “Africa is a basket case,” when clearly rural people, such as the Somali Bantu, could have been absorbed into stable African nations. Indeed, some of the Somali Bantu have successfully been re-integrated in their ancestral homeland, Tanzania.A final criticism found that any effort to re-integrate more Somali Bantu into African nations was met with skepticism fromUNHCR officials andfailed because Tanzania and Mozambique were never guaranteed development assistance, or logistical or political support.Moreover, in the process of determining who gets resettled, many of the refugee contractors do not speak any African languages and know little of the people or region where they worked, which makes it difficult to keep families together and avoid the fraud of other groups posing as Somali Bantu to get resettled in the United States (Barnett 2003).

According to a 2003 analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, more than $5 billion per year was spent on food stamps, Medicaid and other benefits for refugees in the States (Boas 2007). There are those who say the money would be better spent supporting intraregional resettlement in Africa, which would boost African nations’ economies.

By the 1990s, the United States, already under pressure to meet its committed quota of African refugees, was seemingly more and more likely to be the resettlement nation after efforts failed elsewhere. Without the possibility of resettlement in Tanzania or Mozambique, Somali Bantu scholars Lehman and Eno(2003) wondered if the group was ill-served by having them settled in a western land that almost certainly meant an impoverished life in government-subsidized Section 8 housing in American cities, or if it would have been better to have Somali Bantunestled in neighboring African nations that were religiously, linguistically, and ethnically familiar. There are also claims that an institutional bias by U.S. resettlement agencies pushed against intra-Africa resettlement, therefore funneling U.S. resettlement and development funding through their own agencies.