ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 examines how symbolic violence occurs through state-sponsored campaigns to advance notions of categorical supremacy and inferiority. These are notions of a pure race, exceptional nation, chosen people, intelligent gender or highly cultured ethnic group. A riveting case of such a campaign is that of Sudan’s central government to advance parochial notions of national purity. The pure Sudanese is presumably an Arab living according to Sharia and who was, and should be, responsible for ruling over the so-called “primitive” Africans. President Omar al-Bashir launched this campaign in 1990, early in his presidency, to impose an Arab-African rank-ordering nationwide in every village, school and clinic according to Arab-Islamic practices. This vision of purity comes with a subconscious association to Africans as descendants of slaves, reinforcing pernicious stereotypes about their behavior, character traits and capacities or incapacities.
