However, it is unclear whether this similarity is primarily due to extensive genetic exchanges between these communities through intermarriage or whether it ultimately stems from common origins: [...]generations of gene flow obliterated whatever clear-cut physical distinctions may have once existed between these two Bantu peoples – renowned to be height, body build, and facial features.
To some extent, the permeability of these categories in the intervening decades helped to reify the biological distinctions, generating a taller elite and a shorter underclass, but with little relation to the gene pools that had existed a few centuries ago.
A contrasting picture of human cultural diversity was recorded in the early Rwandan oral histories, ritual texts, and biographies, in which the terms Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa were quite rarely used and had meanings different from those conceived by the Europeans.
[10][11][12] In those, the term Tutsi was equivalent to the phrase "wealthy noble"; Hutu meant "farmer"; and Twa was used to refer to people skilled in hunting, use of fire, pottery-making, guarding, etc.
Kings sometimes looked down on them but still formed marriage bonds with them and are frequently described as conferring titles, land, herds, armies, servitors, and ritual functions on them.
Elites in pre-colonial Rwanda propagated an origin myth of the three groups to justify the hierarchical relationship of sociopolitical inequality between them in sacred, religious terms.
This social system was based on five fundamental assumptions, as reinforced through group interactions and influenced by cultural myths: Despite the stratification promulgated by these ideas, Rwanda was still very much a unified society.
Notwithstanding association with different groups in the sociopolitical hierarchy, the inhabitants all considered themselves part of the same nation, the Banyarwanda, which means "people of Rwanda."
The Germans were not interested in disrupting social affairs – their sole concern was the efficient extraction of natural resources and trade of profitable cash crops.
Colonial bureaucrats relied heavily on native Tutsi chiefs to maintain order over the Hutu lower classes and collect taxes.
[15] Thus, the German affirmation of the stratified social structure was utilized by the Tutsi aristocracy as justification for minority rule over the lower-class Hutu masses.
In an era of Social Darwinism, European anthropologists claimed to identify a distinct "Hamitic race" that was superior to native "Negroid" populations.
[16] Influenced by racialized attitudes, Belgian social scientists declared that the Tutsis, who wielded political control in Rwanda, must be descendants of the Hamites, who shared a purported closer blood line to Europeans.
The Belgians established a comprehensive race theory that was to dictate Rwandan society until independence: Tutsi racial superiority and Hutu oppression.
Relentless Belgian propaganda portrayed Tutsis as the more evolved "ethnic" group in appearance, intelligence, and height, while Hutus were branded as ignorant, backwards, and vile.
Tutsis naturally welcomed this ethnic schism because thinking in these racialized terms had tangible social benefits – it vindicated their minority domination over the majority Hutus.
[8] Colonial policies deepened the pre-existing class stratification: Tutsis were primarily upper-class wealthy landowners and merchants, while Hutus occupied lower-class occupations as poor farmers and laborers.
These deep class differences provided a framework for mapping ethnic identities on top of them: class-hatred was a prominent tool for fueling divergent ethno-nationalist ideologies.
The predominant American theory regarding this period is that as Belgium's era of colonial dominance over Rwanda drew to a close during the 1950s, the Hutu and Tutsi, as racial identities, had been firmly institutionalized.
[14] Manipulative racial engineering by the Belgians, and the despotic practices of the Tutsi chieftains they empowered, helped drive together the disparate Rwandan sub-classes under the "Hutu" moniker.
[13] This Hutu counter-elite exploded onto the political scene in the late 1950s as both Belgian colonial influence and their firm support of the Tutsi minority declined.
[14] The result was a "Hutu political consciousness" driven by populist and nationalistic forces, with the goal of dethroning the privileged Tutsi and driving a deeper wedge between their peoples.
The document in many ways established the future tone of the Hutu nationalist movement by identifying the "indigenous racial problem" of Rwanda as the social, political, and economic "monopoly which is held by one race, the Tutsi.
Not all parties championed segregation of the Hutu and Tutsi people, yet the divide ensured that the socio-political differentiation pioneered under colonialism would continue to flourish in independence.
In November and December 1963, a series of small cross border raids were carried out by expatriated Tutsi who had fled Rwanda between 1959 and 1963, during the tumultuous rise of Hutu nationalist politics.
Eventually, domestic violence and disruption became so severe that Major General Juvénal Habyarimana led the army in a coup, overthrowing the nationalistic PARMEHUTU regime and establishing the second republic.
[14] The second republic, a single-party military regime under Habyarimana, sought to roll back the racializing policies of his predecessor responsible for domestic discord.
[14] In 1933[22] Rwanda's Belgian administration issued identity cards—a policy that would remain for over a half-a-century and one that would not create ethnicity, but instead would ensure its proof and social salience.
Under an imposed order to democratize, Habyarimana rallied the majority Hutus against what he depicted as their racial enemy—the Tutsis—in a measure to prevent both regional and class division from becoming politically relevant issues.
In this post-genocide society, identity was supposedly re-conceptualized to divert the emphasis from ethnicity to a division of the population into categories of victim, victors, survivors, and perpetrators.