The Concierge Persona in the Discourse of Ethiopia
Ethiopia’s current situation witnessed the stern voices of an impudent character I call the “concierge persona.” Many dictionaries define the concierge as a person or staff who has charge of a building’s entrance and is often the owner’s representative or doorkeeper. This persona is a close cousin to what Mary Louise Pratt identified as the “seeing man.” According to Pratt, the seeing man is “admittedly unfriendly label for the white male subject of European landscape discourse — he whose imperial eyes passively look out and possess.”[1]
In this context, the concierge persona is exclusively a Western Caucasian male intellectual, reporter, field-expert, anthropologist, ex-diplomat, ex-military consultant, ex-statesman, etc. Above all, he calls himself an expert on Ethiopia. He might have traveled to the country quite a few times and assumed intellectual entitlement to speak about one hundred million people’s fate and destiny. After all, it’s about sub-Saharan black Africa. The concierge might have initially established a genuine relationship with some local institutions or influential individuals. Gradually embossed into his client’s boots, he voluntarily swaps his critical thinking and freedom of expression with servility and lies through times. In other words, he becomes a propagandist or a doorkeeper of the client through thick and thin.
The concierge persona doesn’t want to see a united Ethiopia but rather an Ethiopia on the verge of collapse. His fetish words are dismemberment, genocide, human rights, failed state, etc. He knows clearly that his position has endowed him the privilege to frame or re-frame any narratives at will. He calls himself a public intellectual of peace and stability but showed his utter disregard for Ethiopia by conspiring openly with its historical enemies. Although he understands that some, if not many, might have been offended by what he said or wrote, he does not see the need to apologize. Why should he? For that matter, Western discourse’s patronizing bents of Africa’s image follow a long history of European colonialism intrusively controlling political aspirations and striving to stifle struggles for freedom. Besides, the distorted portrayal of Africans in European writings stems from colonial knowledge production.
Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia know that those established concierge personas are not inclined to project a stable and united Ethiopia that involves historical capitals, natural resources, demographic assets, and promising economic dynamics. How would biased and untrue assertions of a few Western individuals become the definitive marker for understanding Ethiopia’s current situations?
We must not forget that the framing and re-framing of narrative have historical precedent. In the 1940s, Fascist propagators attempted to normalize the racist belief about the genetic inferiority of non-Caucasian races. They created false and divisive discourses to silence and degrade Ethiopians and detach Ethiopia from black people’s widespread support. First, they intentionally exploited anti-Ethiopian sentiments to justify their racist agenda on Ethiopia. Second, they attempted to blemish Ethiopia’s image from the black world by framing Ethiopia as a black oppressor. Alongside this unfounded accusation lurked another significant racialized deviousness that highlighted Ethiopians’ alleged denial of black identity.[2]
It is always unfair to criticize the past through the biased lens of the present. Portraying the Ethiopians as dangerous was not a new phenomenon. We observe the pro-fascist apparatus in full swing to frame Ethiopia as a black oppressor of black people. Ethiopia became an unpleasant example for European colonialism in Africa. “The opponents of imperialism,” the Austrian Nazi Baron Roman Prochàzka wrote, “should bear in mind that the numerous non-Amharic native tribes in Ethiopia and these constitute by far the greater part of the total population of the empire, are themselves the victims of Abyssinian imperialism.”[3]
We must ask why Ethiopia was portrayed as “dangerous” by some Western agents? What provoked Prochàzka’s contempt for and misconception of Ethiopia? By exploiting any opportunities to justify colonial aggression on Ethiopia, Prochàzka portrayed Ethiopia as a centralized political power that oppressed the outlying multi-ethnic groups. The idea that Ethiopia, as an independent African country, constitutes an oddity and a dangerous precedent has not been a fringe view for decades. Instead, it has been an essential component of the European racial attitude in the nineteenth century.
For Prochàzka, the “domination of white races” constitutes the indispensable channel for maintaining order and security in Africa and implementing growth and advancement in the local communities.[4] The biased observer seemed to value the Ethiopians or any black people only when they were subservient.
Placing Ethiopia’s image in the proper colonial context, the countless instances of the inherently challenging Western dispositions of fervent anti-African independence only showed that Ethiopia had personified fear of a self-assured sovereign black nation. The main item on the list contained Ethiopia, which does not imply a subjugation narrative but rather a story of empowerment. This position would challenge the Western conjecture that the Western colonial system is a prerequisite for a country’s civilization. Thus, Prochàzka’s perception offered no grounds for optimism. He was well aware that Ethiopia was unlike many African nations that European colonial ambitions have constructed. He proposed to divide Ethiopia along ethnic and religious lines to weaken the influence of the centralized state and stifle the rise of an independent African nation that might set up a “dangerous” precedent of self-determination to the oppressed peoples of the world. Prochàzka’s representation of Ethiopia as a free and hyperactive Ethiopia with a dangerous contagion contradicts Edward Gibbons’ characterization of comatose and lethargic Ethiopia.[5] The devious strategy to weaken Ethiopia by slicing it into many mini entities resulted from Western colonial powers’ divide and rule policy. It is discomforting to witness when the proponents of colonial oppression masqueraded as the champion for the oppressed black people.
Controlling the production of the narratives means controlling the meaning of the images and the discourse’s direction. A continuing outcome of colonial legacy transpires in the form of Western domination still looms large in the consciousness of the developing world, defining the more significant element of its self-image. For many people in this context, how Western narratives represent them weighs more than how they identify themselves. Compounded external discourses have a significant grip on the direction of domestic conversations. The present day’s concierge personas have recognized this reality, and they are acting upon it diligently.
Prochàzka was so arrogant to assume such much moral authority in looking down on Ethiopians or black people. His disdain towards Ethiopia sticks in the national psyche. Such statements did not put him at odds with the accepted racial view of the time. His biased opinions indicate that he remained wedded to the entrenched white superiority mindset of colonialist Europe. Although his racial rhetoric fomented polarizing ethnocentrism, it failed to provoke the collective outrage the agitators anticipated. Instead, it galvanized Ethiopia’s unchallenged status in the global imagination and could not reduce Ethiopia to Italy’s colony. However, the racial muck must have stained every other interaction and provided a fertile ground for the terrible segment of Ethiopian history and the innumerable mayhems experienced by the “dangerous” Ethiopians who became the unfortunate victims of advanced air assaults in 1936. The many tragedies and upheavals that Ethiopia had endured during the Italian invasion were among the consequences of fascist representation as dangerous. Still, it would be insincere to see the other side when the past lingers to cast its shadow in the present.
Independent black Ethiopia, which fascist propagandists label as a dangerous entity, infringes benchmarks of established western racial hierarchy — defrocking it sends a stern message to other black nations not to trail in a rogue and humiliated nation’s paths.
Like many then and even presently, Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) favored nothing but the Eurocentric concept of dominance. He was in sync with the wicked paternalistic underpinning that credited the Western system as the only scale for grading others’ modernity or progress. With this background in mind, we must understand Waugh in the 1930s, when he mused on Ethiopia’s natural resource. He wrote,
[Ethiopia] could not claim recognition on equal terms by the civilized nations and at the same time maintain her barbarous isolation; she must put her natural resources at the disposal of the world; since she was obviously unable to develop them herself, it must be done for her, to their mutual benefit, by a more advanced Power.[6]
With an air of colonial patronage or just Western arrogance, Waugh expressed what David Spurr calls “the rhetoric of appropriation.”[7] For Waugh, “making its resources available to the world” was not a choice for Ethiopia because of “its backwardness and inability to help herself.” The feat of development must be done for Ethiopia’s sake by a more civilized nation. However, history tells us how far colonial undertakings performed under the pretext of development benefited the particular local people. Those words reflect a blunt colonialist mentality that values the dividends of colonial plunder. Waugh’s description of “the world” must have meant the Western world. As Spurr noted, “the doctrine of the colonizer’s natural inheritance often determines the very manner of perceiving a landscape.”[8]
Waugh never hid his sympathy for Italian fascism in the context of impending war. In his travel narrative of Ethiopia, he arrogantly weaved into the ethnocentric account of White supremacy. He gives a biased political prescription for Ethiopia’s future. “A few sharp encounters with modern methods of war,” he wrote, “would bring the Abyssinians to realize their necessarily inferior and dependent station.”[9] On the one hand, Waugh thought this would confine the Ethiopians into a far less restricted sovereign state.
On the other hand, Waugh saw the transference to the Italian protectorate as the only choice for the remaining Ethiopians whom he described as “the Abyssinian subject-races.” He twisted history to shame the victims (the Ethiopians) of backwardness and barbarism while embellishing Italy as the genuine conveyor of order and civilization to the African nation, generally advocating Italy’s entitlement to partake in the scramble of Africa. Interestingly, Waugh’s colonial worldview was more apparent when he said that “Adwa should remain in Italian hands as a monument that the defeat of 1896 had been avenged.”[10] What does this mean? At least Waugh must have realized the dangerous symbolical significance of Adwa. Like his contemporaries, he pushed forward that Adwa should not create a problematic political precedent to European colonial aspirations. Thus, Italy’s purging or occupation was imperative to the Italians and, more importantly, to the entire white race. The whole issue is an extolled white man’s burden to convey an imperial ambition almost certainly in fashion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Anyway, Waugh was not expected to fight for the fundamental human right of the ‘inferior race’ at the expense of the ‘superior race.’ The seasoned author and travel journalist could quickly play down the ills of colonialism in Africa.
Ethiopia’s fixed position had become a chosen topic for white racial commentaries to deflect attention from the activities of hostile Italian fascists who aimed at invading other peoples and territories and who championed openly white supremacy. It was also an irony of history that some Western commentators who propagated racial superiority also appeared to hold the clarion call for black oppression. Others have attempted to score political points off Ethiopians whenever political incidents that involved Ethiopia occurred. American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon (1904–1981) wrote that “it is obvious to the most casual observer that all or almost all Ethiopians are Negroid.” However, African American empathy “for the plight of Ethiopia” might have worried Coon when he asserted that the Ethiopians do not deserve black Americans’ sympathy because they do not see themselves as black.[11]
Why did Coon paint Ethiopia as racist towards other blacks? The action shows the racialists’ dire quest to reverse colonial subjugation and involves political motives. White supremacy has never been comfortable with strong black independent nations. Independent Ethiopia undermines the racist enterprise of black subservience through the prism of European colonialism. If Ethiopia could unshackle itself from external aggression, other African countries could follow in unshackling themselves from colonial intrusions. In those decades, Ethiopia became a fascinating subject for its extraordinary resistance to Western colonialism in Africa. Thus, Coon must have seen Ethiopia unworthy to receive sympathy from black Americans. He blamed Ethiopia for its denial of black identity, disdain for African Americans, and oppression of neighboring black people. In his racial quest, Coon propagated the blackness of Ethiopians. Paradoxically, in his political intention, he dissuaded African Americans from involvement in the cause of Ethiopians, whom he thought were not only genuinely black but also oppressive to other black people. The western press maligned Ethiopians who fought for freedom against an uncompromisingly aggressive external power.
Thus, what emerged from fascist propaganda was the image of an oppressive Ethiopia. The whole process involved the attempt to present the victim as the oppressor. The concierge personas on Ethiopia’s contemporary discourse followed the same paternalistic and anti-Ethiopian proponents as Coon, Prochàzka, and Waugh.
Notes
[1] Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007), 9.
[2] Alberto Sbacchi, Legacy of Bitterness: Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935–1941 (Lawrenceville, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1997), 22–23.
[3] Roman Procházka, Abyssinia: The Powder Barrel (London: British International News Agency, 1936), 2.
[4] Procházka, 87.
[5] Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 3 (New York, NY: Harper, 1841), 281.
[6] Evelyn Waugh, Waugh in Abyssinia (London, England: Longmans, Green, 1936), 40–41.
[7] David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 28f.
[8] Spurr, 4.
[9] Waugh, Waugh in Abyssinia, 45.
[10] Waugh, 45.
[11] Carleton S. Coon, Measuring Ethiopia and Flight into Arabia (Boston, MA: Little & Brown, 1935), 145.
