When a short video recently surfaced online showing a group of young boys stepping on the Kenyan flag, the internet exploded in fury. Condemnations poured in, hashtags trended, and the boys—believed to be of Somali descent—were vilified in every corner of Kenyan social media.
To many, this was an unforgivable act of disrespect, a desecration of national pride. But this moral outrage was selective—and deeply revealing.
Just months earlier, another clip had gone viral, this time of a woman, visibly intoxicated, stomping on the Kenyan flag in a bizarre protest. There was little outrage. No hashtags. No national debates. No threats. And certainly, no one calling for her arrest. The contrast is glaring, and it begs the question: was this ever really about the flag?
The uncomfortable truth is this: the outrage wasn’t patriotic. It was xenophobic.
The difference in reactions exposes a festering double standard, where ethnic and regional identity determines how one is judged in the court of public opinion.
In the case of the young boys, the fury wasn’t just about what they did—it was about who they were. For many Kenyans online, it tapped into long-held stereotypes about the Somali-Kenyan community: suspicions of disloyalty, whispers of “foreignness,” and assumptions of being outsiders, even after generations of citizenship.
This is not new. The Somali community in Kenya has long faced marginalization—economic, political, and social. But in the age of social media, such prejudice is more visible, more venomous, and more dangerous.
What happened online this week was not a defense of the flag. It was a collective unleashing of resentment dressed up as patriotism.
We must confront this for what it is: rising xenophobia. Left unchecked, this kind of tribal-nationalist hysteria becomes a threat to cohesion and stability. It sows division, radicalizes identity, and erodes the fragile trust between communities.
Kenya is a diverse nation, and that diversity is its strength—not a threat. We cannot allow selective outrage to become the weapon that tears the country apart.
We must ask ourselves: do we love the flag, or do we only use it as a shield for our prejudices?
The Slanted Coverage In The Media
By centering the story around punishment, media narratives contributed to a climate of scapegoating. Calls for the teens’ arrest, school expulsion, and public shaming were repeated uncritically in many reports. There was little exploration of whether this was a misguided act of ignorance or symbolic protest, nor any engagement with broader questions of civic education.
The Kenyan media, in this case, magnified outrage without balance, relying on emotional framing and social media sentiment over verified, contextual reporting. The portrayal of the teens fed into regional and ethnic tensions, reinforcing a narrative that frames certain communities as “less Kenyan.”
This incident underscores the need for media self-reflection: to report responsibly, avoid sensationalism, and recognize how framing choices can inflame prejudice under the guise of patriotism.
