New Social Identities
However, in identifying victims and survivors, some Rwandans are left to be identified as perpetrators. This becomes increasingly problematic as all Hutus are deemed perpetrators—where their survival of the genocide seems to imply some form of complicity with the former government. Thus, in this process of rebuilding and bringing guilty parties to justice, the current government is providing dangling linkages back to the very ethnicities they wish to abolish and is risking further entrenching supposed “past” ethnic divisions.
Furthermore, government policy to reduce identity to “just a Rwandan one” has only “been successful in the public sphere of government rhetoric and bureaucracy.” In fact, ethnicity still remains socially relevant. Its salience however has been transferred into the private sphere—a space that may make the divisions even more destructive. Thus, the concept of “eliminating” ethnicity is problematic in both concept and reality—as it is unreasonable to expect such a drastic change in the Rwandan perception.
Read more about this topic: Ethnic Groups In Rwanda
Famous quotes containing the word social:
“If twins are believed to be less intelligent as a class than single-born children, it is not surprising that many times they are also seen as ripe for social and academic problems in school. No one knows the extent to which these kind of attitudes affect the behavior of multiples in school, and virtually nothing is known from a research point of view about social behavior of twins over the age of six or seven, because this hasn’t been studied either.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)