Events

Rumors, Labor, and the Racialization of Yemen’s Sanitation Workers

October 19, 2026; 5:15 PM

FedEx Global Education Center, Room 4003

Dr. Gukha Amin, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, UNC-CH

This talk examines how race and racialization unfold in modern Yemen, focusing on the discrimination against the Black Muhamasheen. This community of Black Yemenis has lived in Southern Arabia since at least the sixth century, and many self-identify as Black Arab Yemenis. Others, however, continue to racialize them as unclean Black “servants” (“akhdam”). To unravel the racial legacies behind this discrimination, the talk turns to the history of sanitation labor in Southern Arabia. It traces how rumors, precolonial social hierarchies, and colonial labor regimes transformed this sector in the early twentieth century into a racialized workforce made up almost exclusively of subaltern East African and Black Muhamasheen laborers.