Racism and abuse in Morocco
I couldn’t post this while I was still living in the country. Now that I have moved elsewhere, I can finally say something about a problem that bothered me immensely in Morocco, a nation of 33 million wonderful people, and a few thousand evil overlords operating in the police forces and elsewhere.
Racism. It’s a dirty word and an even dirtier practice. I have no patience for people who judge others solely on the basis of something as trivial as skin color. In Morocco, I witnessed it first hand many times. One of my final and most enduring images of this country was during my last week there.
I went in to the local immigration office, the department within the police which oversees resident foreigners, to get a paper I needed to export my personal belongings as I was exiting the country. I arrived at the office and noticed a long line of people waiting, so I took my place in the queue. One of the bureaucrats in charge of the office met me in the hallway and asked me why I was waiting out there with all “these” people (who all had dark skin, in contrast to my light skin), and took me in the office. I told him what I needed, he joked with me and said it would just take a moment, and he got to work, inviting me to sit in the best seat in the office.
After a few minutes, he needed to leave the office to get a signature upstairs. He left me with his assistant. It was then that I looked around the office. The assistant made a joke with me about my previous book and we both laughed. For the first time, I realized that there was still another person in the room, a young man in his early 20s sitting on the floor behind a desk. He had a gentle smile and was chuckling softly at the joke. He also had dark skin. The assistant rose from his seat and screamed at the young man, telling him to shut up and threatening to beat him senseless with a very large stick, which the assistant was now wielding and using to poke the young man in the face.
The seated youth fell silent. The bureaucrat returned with my paper. I left with a sense of powerlessness as I realized that there was little to nothing I could do to help the young man other than make his case public after leaving the country. So that is what I am doing today.
The office was in the Wilaya of Fes, in the department des etrangers. The habit of preferring white foreigners over darker skinned foreigners is endemic and can be confirmed by talking to any foreigner resident in the city. The abusive behavior I witnessed was obviously habitual and the person (the grumpy guy who sits in the far corner from the door) thought and acted as if it was totally appropriate, natural, and normal. He moved from joking with me, to abusing the young man angrily, and back to a new joke seamlessly.
I am embarrassed by my reaction. I froze into silence, intimidated by the circumstances and a fear of not being able to leave the country or being persecuted alongside others. Instead of letting that be the end, I’ve decided to do something, even if it is small, by bringing the story to light today.
Hello:
Don’t feel bad. I am originally from Syria but have been living in Canada for the past 20+ years.
Racism is nothing new to the Middle East and N.Africa. People do tolerate it a lot there because of the sense of hopelessness. The same feeling you felt when you where their watching what the government worker did to the your dark-skinned man. Many Arabs suffer at their own government’s hands and after a little while, they don’t care. They want to get on with their lives and they accept the abuse as part of life.
Don’t get me wrong, not all government employees are that nasty. I’ve seen disrespect from some of them but not as vicious as the one you witnessed. Don’t forget their point of view. Most government employees in the Arab speaking world make very little money so they are under constant stress to provide. All that stress will have to be offloaded onto somebody. The weak gets it all the time unfortunately.
I wish I can tell you how you can fix it. Personally I think through proper education, people will be empowered giving them the sense of worth and prosperity they need to demand fairness from their governments. Until that happens, I doubt anything will change.
I mentioned sense of worth because people in the Arab world have an inferiority complex. They think westerners are smarter than them and that they will never amount of anything. That is why they treat westerners with golden gloves. It makes them feel better inside.
Thanks for sharing this experience with the world.
anmar: what a great comment! Thank you. That was encouraging and enlightening at the same time. I appreciate it greatly.
I have witnessed dozens of the good civil servants, such as you mention, so I can confirm their existence, as I can also confirm that there are others in the society who also display racist attitudes without being a part of the government.
Thanks again!!
Thank you matthew for coming forward with this.
I can’t believe that some of people complaining about racism(towards moroccans) in europe end up doing the same thing.
I’m from Rabat and I believe that it has more to do with the nationality of immigrants(sub-saharan africans vs western) than skin colour.
As you said most moroccans are kind people but you know every family has a retard cousin(I know it’s a very nasty thing to say :)).
Good luck to you where ever you are now.
Matthew, you have wrote and interesting account of what you experienced, which is to be applauded.
However, i am surprised that you chose to not even attempt to either find out why the young man was being placed in a situation like that or, even, in your priviliged position as a white foreigner to try to assist him in any way. The first thing that you could have done, as soon as you realised that you had the privilige of “Queue jumping” was to have asked or even just stated “Oh, i hope that i am not pushing in ahead of this young gentleman?”
Sometimes, showing respect to a person when others around are clearly not doing so can diffuse a situation for that person.
I believe that you were in a priviliged position, yet you chose to take the course of and appreciate the “white man comes first” attitude of the official.
There are several reasons why i say this:
1. To not take any course of action only compounds the officials actions as being correct and encourages it in the future.
2. To not visibly show concern for this young man leads to a harbouring of hatred towards “tourists who come along and are treated better because they have more money”.
Regardless of this young mans nationality or skin colour, i agree that he should be treated the same as anyone else, if not better, because he is perhaps a minority.
On another point there may have been a perfectly acceptable cause behind the officials behaviour….perhaps the young man had been rude and very disrespectful….perhaps he himself had played the race card?
However, i will say that, as a british person myself, Racism from the locals towards Western tourists does also exist….indeed i have experienced it first hand, many times, and many times, indeed, it is because the tourist is a non Muslim, a non believer, an infidel.
Thanks for sharing the experience with us, that is most valuable.
Hey Paul,
I can answer some of your comments. First, I didn’t try to help the young man because I knew that any aid I attempted to give him at that moment would only serve to his detriment as soon as I was gone, and my leaving was imminent. There is an aspect of honest fear of/for my own situation as well. My family had already left the country. I had no one to help me if I had been forced to join him, and I already know what my government would have done on my behalf if I had interfered in the internal workings of my host government (nothing).
As to the queue jumping, this was not the first time it had happened (to me). I knew what was going on. The first time, I did speak up, and my situation was made significantly worse for a very long time–think years, not hours. I had to get a document from that office that day in order to leave the country. Self-serving? Ashamedly, yes.
I doubt the young man played a “race card.” He spoke good dialectal Arabic, but not like a native, so he wasn’t Moroccan. I should know, as this is the language that all of my interaction with this office has been in. There is no “race card” to play in this country. The idea of racism doesn’t raise an emotional response on anyone’s behalf and being a minority is never something that the society considers worthy of respect, protection or special treatment. In fact, being part of anything but the majority group in a given situation can, but does not have to, lead to repression.
My guess is that he was a sub-Saharan African come to Morocco to study who had possibly overstayed his visa or failed out of school. I am not doubting that he had a reason to be in the office and in a bit of trouble, just his treatment.
Whether he was rude or disrespectful prior to my arrival in the office, I can’t say. While I was there, he was submissive, soft spoken, and looked utterly humiliated.
I think you ought to add that being anything but a majority-race MALE is unfavorable. I was treated like crap for two years by local police while my foreign male counterparts received preferential treatment. But still the Sub-Saharans received worse.
Matthew,
…………….
I had a long comment but I decided not to hit the button.
Anyway, I’m here just to congratulate you on getting your freedom to post whatever you want.
Mabrookulations
Should have kept it to yourself.
Your as big a racist as those you seek to placate. Queue jumping for self serving reason is the very basis of racism - the belief that you are better (by even participating in the racism) and/or cannot help those with such a small display of correctness (refusing to accept and participate in the racism).
Writing words in a blog, hoping that someone else will either have the courage to do what you couldn’t, or even better - does not and should not absolve your active participation in the very racism you claim to dislike.
J: I’m sure you are right. Females have it a lot tougher.
Jad: thanks for the comment
Jason: ouch!
@Jason: ‘Queue jumping for self serving reason is the very basis of racism”
Oh, right, so it was queue jumping that started all that slavery and stuff. Good to know.
Don’t overreact. The worst accusation you could make is that he helped sustain racism.
@Matthew: Kudos for sharing this. Interfering might have worsened your situation, the other persons situation and the people in the office probably wouldn’t have learned. That said, it might have helped to just let him know that you see no reason to treat others that way, but it’s easy to say that from behind a desk at home in a safe country :). I probably would have done the same.
What an incredible story. I can honestly say that I would have done the exact same thing. Even if I would have chosen to do something else, your intents were pure. You didn’t want to see any harm done to anyone. I applaud the fact that you’re doing something (even though you think it’s small) because it makes an impact on everyone who reads it. Thank you.
Hi Matthew,
Having lived in this Country for quite a while, I would agree with Nabil that the point is not so much the color of the skin but the fact of not being a Moroccan, of „not being like us, not being part of the crowd” (the pressure to be or at least to behave like a member of the herd is enormous: now in Ramadan people who do not fast on the clear advice of their doctor would not say so, even to their friends).
As you know, there are Moroccans that are really black. I never heard any remark neither in the professional nor in the private life when such a person got a promotion or married a white (Moroccan) girl. But I did hear our little niece, 5, making racist jokes about people from Senegal – we had to remind her seriously that her own (Moroccan) father is totally black! Truth, as you know, comes out of children’s mouths.
I believe queue jumping and other privileges are the rule rather than the exception. As a European woman of a certain age I know what you are talking about. When I witness this form of discrimination I try to show my solidarity with the normal or underprivileged people around me by gestures. I also speak up knowing that I do not risk much. It does not change things, I just try to apply Kant’s categorical imperative and I think it makes the victims of discrimination feel better. What you need in order to live in the country is a genuine humility- what a pity that you left!
Heidemarie