The Tutsi ethnic group
The Tutsi ethnic group was unjustly treated even though Europeans favored them because of their skin color.Discuss
Sample Solution
The Tutsi ethnic group
When Europeans first explored the region around the Great Lakes of Chad that has since become Rwanda, they described the people found in the region as descending from three racially distinct tribes and coexisting in a complex social order: the Tutsis, Hutus, and Twa. The Tutsi elite were defined by their exclusive ownership of land and cattle. Tutsi were generally presumed to be light-skinned and tall. The Tutsi ethnic group was unjustly treated even though Europeans favored them because of their skin color. Hutu who killed Tutsi did so for many reasons, but beneath the individual motivations lay a common fear rooted in firmly held but mistaken ideas of the Rwandan past. Organizers of the genocide, who had themselves grown up with these distortions of history, skillfully exploited misconceptions about who the Tutsi were, where they had come from, and what they had done in the past. From these elements, they fueled the fear and hatred that made genocide imaginable.
