Unsettled: denial and belonging among white Kenyans by Janet McIntosh (review)

The death of Lord Delamere's scion, Tom Cholmondeley, in August 2016 at a Nairobi hospital elicited mixed reactions among most indigenous Kenyans and the media. While some condoled with the family, others reminded the public of his perceived misconduct and mourned his victims instead. Cholmondeley had fatally shot two Kenyans, according to him in defence of himself and his property, at the Soysambu ranch in Naivasha in 2005 and 2006. These acts, and Cholmondeley's controversial acquittal for the latter killing in 2009, confirmed public opinion that white Kenyans of settler descent had not yet shed their 'Happy Valley' attitudes. Janet McIntosh's Unsettled: denial and belonging among white Kenyans is a unique ethnographic account of the conflicted situation of contemporary white Kenyans in light of their contested claims to autochthony, their attendant claim to land, often perceived to fund lavish lifestyles in spite of local land grievances, and their double-edged relations with indigenous Africans amidst concerns over white privilege. Like other equally appreciated works in the same field, such as Nicholas Best's Happy Valley: the story of the English in Kenya (2013), Unsettled comes at a time when Kenya is grappling with the implementation of its new constitution, in which both the 'land question' and issues of national integration remain salient. The book's focus on the role of land in the context of difficult racial relations makes it a perfect case study that can augment comparative efforts, for example in Zimbabwe.

McIntosh posits that white Kenyans are unsettled over the 'trappings of white privilege' amidst the abject poverty of most ordinary Kenyans. As locals perceive whites as generally wealthy, Kenyans take increasing notice of racial inequalities. McIntosh further states that whites' double consciousness often means that they have 'two minds about their entitlement to belong' (p. 5), especially when confronted with the realities of colonial injustices that cloud the mythical narratives of humanistic 'civilizing missions'. Conscious of her positionality as a white American, McIntosh herself notes how she is equally disturbed but near helpless about the African-American plight. In order to survive psychologically, white Kenyans resort to attitudes of structural oblivion, which include blindness to their own privileged position and the relative disadvantage of non-white Kenyans.

However, the 'land question' remains an intractably sensitive issue that even several land commissions have failed to address. McIntosh highlights that many settlers appropriated communally owned lands on the pretext that these were 'empty' or 'virgin' lands that they needed to develop. What she fails to discuss is that land ownership in precolonial Kenya reflected communal relations that Hyden describes in terms of an 'economy of affection' rather than market model entitlement. She also explains that, at independence, some settlers preferred to stay in Kenya, claiming the 'emotional impossibility of leaving' (p. 3). But perhaps McIntosh should also have pointed out that some white settlers decided to stay chiefly to retain their land titles, which were assured by the Bill of Rights in Kenya's independence constitution. The book seems to gloss over local elites' complicity in the land question since independence, even when opportunities arose to address it. Since then, the unsettling concern for white Kenyans has been the fact that 'entitlement to belong and own land increasingly hinges on having deep ancestral roots in local soil' (p. 6).

Amidst all these tensions, McIntosh notes that white Kenyans attempt to cultivate a sense of security by deliberately blending into the native Kenyan cultures so as not to be seen as different in any way from others. Learning indigenous languages such as Gikuyu, but also Kenya's lingua franca Kiswahili, is a habit McIntosh describes as 'linguistic atonement'. A perfect example of the instrumentality of this is her reference to Cholmondeley telling inmates at Kamiti prison that he was learning Gikuyu, the language of one of his victims. But McIntosh should also note the necessity...