scientific tribalism

I met smeone today; a young enterprising lady. As we were talking she wanted to make a luo stereotype joke then she realised she doesn’t know what community am from. She couldn’t believe my answer when she asked and here’s the killah, she asked for my hand.. Naturally I was curious to see what magic she wanted to do to confirm am a luo. She just took my hand, placed it on her palm, with mine facing upwards and gently, with her thumb and ring fingers, measured the circ of my wrist.. She then kinda pressed gently as if to feel the structure of my wrist bones.. Or so I thot.. After this little exercise, she concluded: “you can’t be luo, you are definately kyuk..”

Convinced of the accuracy of her conclusion, she went ahead and made the stereotype joke, followed by how annoying she felt luos were when they “brag” about stuff that no one needs to know. I wasn’t even mad, just amused. I left the place as I was otherwise engaged..

All this reminded me of the nazi ways of distinguishing between jews and whites by measuring the width of the nose, skull circumference etc.. It was quite the trend in post victorian era science, and was later discredited even by physical anthropologists since it promoted racism.

I have another meeting with her and I can’t wait to see how she deals with it.. I have a feeling a part two of this is in the works..

Berrypost.