Why are White People Expats when the Rest of Us are Immigrants?

Expats or immigrants? Photograph: Matt Brandon

I just found this interesting article on a topic that is rarely discussed, on GuardianUK. It’s a MUST READ to the end, guys. Why are white people expats when the rest of us are immigrants? Who has an answer, please?

Surely any person going to work outside their country is an expatriate? But no, the word exclusively applies to white people. 

In the lexicon of human migration there
are still hierarchical words, created with the purpose of putting white
people above everyone else. One of those remnants is the word “expat”.

What is an expat? And who is an expat? According to Wikipedia, “an
expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person temporarily or
permanently residing in a country other than that of the person’s
upbringing. The word comes from the Latin terms ex (‘out of’) and patria
(‘country, fatherland’)”.

Defined that way, you should expect that any person going to work outside of his or her
country
for a period of time would be an expat, regardless of his skin colour
or country. But that is not the case in reality; expat is a term
reserved exclusively for western white people going to work abroad. 

Africans are immigrants. Arabs are
immigrants. Asians are immigrants. However, Europeans are expats because
they can’t be at the same level as other ethnicities. They are
superior. Immigrants is a term set aside for ‘inferior races’. 

Don’t take my word for it. The Wall Street
Journal, the leading financial information magazine in the world, has a
blog dedicated to the life of expats and recently they featured a story
‘Who is an expat, anyway?’. Here are the main conclusions: 

“Some arrivals are described as expats;
others as immigrants; and some simply as migrants. It depends on social
class, country of origin and economic status. It’s strange to hear some
people in Hong Kong described as expats, but not others. Anyone with
roots in a western country is considered an expat … Filipino domestic
helpers are just guests, even if they’ve been here for decades.
Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese are rarely regarded as expats … It’s a
double standard woven into official policy.”

The reality is the same in Africa and Europe. Top African
professionals going to work in Europe are not considered expats. They
are immigrants. Period. 

“I work for multinational organisations
both in the private and public sectors. And being black or coloured
doesn’t gain me the term “expat”. I’m a highly qualified immigrant, as
they call me, to be politically correct,” says an African migrant
worker. 

Most white people deny that they enjoy the
privileges of a racist system. And why not? But our responsibility is
to point out and to deny them these privileges, directly related to an
outdated supremacist ideology. 

If you see those “expats” in Africa, call
them immigrants like everyone else. If that hurts their white
superiority, they can jump in the air and stay there. The political
deconstruction of this outdated worldview must continue. 

Article was written by Mawuna Remarque Koutonin, the editor of SiliconAfrica.com.

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