-
Rwanda today is a nation fiercely grappling with its own identity. The official narrative, championed by the government, is one of unity: Rwandanness over ethnicity. The words “Hutu” and “Tutsi” are absent from identity cards, their public discussion often discouraged in an effort to forge a single, cohesive national community out of the ashes of the 1994 genocide. This project of national reconciliation is a direct and understandable response to an atrocity that was justified through a rigid, Manichean ethnic ideology. Yet, to understand the genocide, one must first understand the deep, poisonous roots of that ideology. And those roots…