Historicizing Race, Ethnicity, and the Crisis of Citizenship in Sudan and South Sudan

Abstract

This article critically outlines the discursive construction of racial and ethnic identities in Sudan and South Sudan, arguing its legacy is essential to understand the entanglement of state-formation, nationalism, citizenship, and political violence in both countries. Race and ethnicity were central to the colonial, nationalist, and postcolonial projects of inventing the "North" and the "South" as self-contained entities, and the politicization of race and ethnicity after independence is largely a product of "Orientalizing" cultural differences through colonial administrative rules and postcolonial policies.