QUESTION = What caused racial division and discrimination between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda?

GENERATION = As others have said, it's mostly due to the Tutsis having a higher standard of living than the Hutus. This is why the Hutus were able to amass large amounts of wealth and establish strong governments after the fall of the Soviet Union. Also, the Tutsis have a much lower standard of living than the Hutus. The Tutsis also have a different cultural background than the Hutus. The differences between the two groups are also huge. There are many examples of this in history, for example the Irish have been split into three groups for a long time, the Scots have been split into three groups for a long time, the English have been split into two groups for a long time, and so on. All of these groups have different cultures, languages, and histories. This has lead to a lot of conflict between the groups. It should also be noted that it's not necessarily that the Hutus were better off than the Tutsis. The Tutsis were just better off than the Hutus. In fact, the Hutus were actually better off than the Tutsis. In fact, there were even some Tutsi Tutsi countries that were closer to the Hutus than the Tutsi. 

RETRIEVAL #0 = Ethnic groups in Rwanda---at the disproportional representation of Tutsi in the quota system meant that friction between the groups never truly dissipated. Some political scientists credit these failures as a few of the reasons why Rwanda so quickly slipped back into political turmoil along ethnic lines in the years immediately preceding the 1993 genocide. Section::::Ethnic identity cards in contemporary Rwanda. In 1933 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. These instruments of documentation would be key in fomenting Rwanda’s devastating genocide in 1994. During the early 1990s the Hutus—who comprised a significant majority of the Rwandan population—were being manipulated as political tools by President Juvénal Habyarimana’s regime. 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. Thus, this political climate ensured that national identity would be defined singularly across ethnic lines—a dangerous prelude to the ensuing genocide. The tense situation became inflamed with Habyarimana’s mysterious death in 1994 

RETRIEVAL #1 = Banyamulenge---"indigenous" in comparison to the Tutsis, who were increasingly seen as owing their allegiance to the foreign groups. Section::::Conflict (1993–1998). In 1993, the issue of land and indigenous claims in the Kivus erupted into bloody conflict. Hutu, and some Tutsi, landlords began buying the lands of poor Hutu and Bahunde of the Wanyanga chiefdom in Masisi, North Kivu. After being displaced, one thousand people went to Walikale, demanding the right to elect their own ethnic leaders. The Banyanga, insisting that only "indigenous people" could claim this customary right, began fighting with the Hutu. The one thousand returned to Masisi, where the Hutu landlords, and Banyarwanda in general, supported the claim of Banyarwanda to "indigenous" rights. The government sent in the Division Spéciale Présidentielle (DSP) and Guard Civile to restore order. Ill-supplied, the security forces were forced to live off the local population: the DSP off the rich Hutu and the Guard Civile off the Bahunde and ordinary Hutu. The DSP appeared to be protecting the rights of the "non-indigenous" (primarily Hutu) against the "indigenous" (primarily Bahunde), sparking outrage and increasing the scope of the conflict. One 

RETRIEVAL #2 = Great Lakes refugee crisis---between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi "ethnic" groups. While there has been much scholarship about the emergence of these separate ethnic identities, particularly through the colonial governance structures, before and after independence in 1961, people within Rwanda acted within the parameters of the Tutsi-Hutu division. Regardless of the historical validity of the division, Rwandans in the late 20th century acted as if they were real. Belgium began to withdraw from Rwanda in 1959, and in 1961 a Hutu-dominated government was established. This replaced the colonial government of Belgium, which had ruled through a favored Tutsi royal family. One of the consequences of the Hutu victory was sporadic attacks against Tutsis that led to over 300,000 Tutsis fleeing the country over the next several years. Anti-Hutu attacks in neighboring Burundi by the Tutsi-led government there led a renewal in attacks against Tutsis in Rwanda in 1973, resulting in even more refugees, many seeking asylum in Uganda. The land formerly owned by these thousands of refugees was subsequently claimed by others, creating another politically charged situation. By the 1980s, the Rwandan government of Juvénal Habyarimana claimed that the country could not accommodate the return of all refugees without the help of international community because Rwanda was said to be among 

RETRIEVAL #3 = Ethnic groups in Rwanda---the myth of Tutsi foreignness was disseminated and propagated as a reaction to “unjust” Tutsi rule. Section::::Hutu race theory.:The ethnic security dilemma. Other theoretical frameworks can also explain the construction of ethnic divergence between Tutsis and Hutus. First, the creation of salient ethnic identities can be seen as a better mechanism of capturing class resentment on the part of Hutus; layering an ethnic dimension over class identities was a better strategy for mobilizing the masses and legitimizing resistance against upper-class, ethnically different Tutsis. Second, a reworking of Michael Mann’s security dilemma in the Rwandan case produces the “ethnic” security dilemma: Hutus perceived that the Tutsis were forming a distinct ethnic identity, pushed by the Belgians, to legitimize political control. Whether or not this perception was true, as Mann’s classic security dilemma maintains, Hutus responded to this supposed “ethnic attack” by forming their own ethnic identity. In reaction to being labeled the superior ethnic group by the Belgians and in the face of rising Hutu ethnicity, the Tutsis actually accepted and internalized this ethnic label, promoting Tutsi ethnic identity as a defense. This ethnic security dilemma model is a feasible theoretical explanation for the construction of divergent ethnic identities. 

RETRIEVAL #4 = Hutu Power---and contributed to tensions between groups. In reality, the Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa possessed little cultural or genetic distinction. Section::::History.:Shift in Belgian colonial rule. Toward the end of Belgian rule, the government began to favor the Hutu, who were organizing for more influence. More significantly, the Belgian administration feared the rise of Communism and a Pan-African socialist regime led by Congo-Léopoldville's Patrice Lumumba. Then-Belgian High Resident Guy Logiest set up the first democratic elections in Rwanda to avoid more radical politics. As the majority population, the Hutu elected their candidates to most positions in the new government. Section::::Formation of Hutu Power. The first elected president Grégoire Kayibanda, an ethnic Hutu, used ethnic tensions to preserve his own power. Hutu radicals, working with his group (and later against it), adopted the Hamitic hypothesis, portraying the Tutsi as outsiders, invaders, and oppressors of Rwanda. Some Hutu radicals called for the Tutsi to be "sent back to Abyssinia", a reference to their supposed homeland. This early concept of Hutu Power idealized a "pre-invasion" Rwanda: an ethnically pure territory dominated by the Hutu. Section::::Under Habyarimana. In 197 

RETRIEVAL #5 = Religion in Rwanda---Churches provided major support to the formation of the new human-rights groups that emerged in the early 1990s. When the genocide began in 1994, some clergy and other church leaders opposed the violence, even at the risk of their own lives. Some individual members of the religious community attempted to protect civilians, sometimes at great risk to themselves. For example, Mgr. of Cyangugu preached against the genocide from the pulpit and tried unsuccessfully to rescue three Tutsi religious brothers from an attack, while Sr. Felicitas Niyitegeka of the Auxiliaires de l’Apostolat in Gisenyi smuggled Tutsi across the border into Zaire before a militant militia executed her in retaliation. In her book "Left to Tell: Discovering God in the Rwandan Holocaust" (2006), Immaculée Ilibagiza, a Tutsi woman, describes hiding with seven other Tutsi women for 91 days in a bathroom in the house of Pastor Murinzi - for the majority of the genocide. At the St Paul Pastoral Centre in Kigali about 2,000 people found refuge and most of them survived, due to the efforts of Fr Célestin Hakizimana. This priest "intervened at every attempt by the militia to abduct or murder" the refugees in his centre. In the face of powerful opposition, he tried to hold off the kille 

RETRIEVAL #6 = Great Lakes refugee crisis---became the pretext for the start of the Rwandan Genocide, which resulted in the deaths of several hundred thousand people, mostly Tutsi, over the next three months. Most murders were carried out by, with the cooperation of, or in the absence of protest by Hutus who lived in the same communities as their victims. Section::::The RPF advance and Hutu exodus. At the beginning of the genocide in April 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front began an offensive from territory in northern Rwanda that it had captured in previous fighting and made rapid progress. Hutus fled the advancing RPF forces, with French historian Gérard Prunier asserting, "Most of the Hutu who had stayed in the country were there because they had not managed to run away in time." In the midst of the chaos of post-genocide Rwanda, over 700,000 Tutsi refugees, some of whom had been in Uganda since 1959, began their return. Contrary to refugee flows in other wars, the Rwandan exodus was not large numbers of individuals seeking safety, but a large-scale, centrally directed initiative. The refugees settled in massive camps almost directly on the Rwandan border, organized by their former leaders in Rwanda. Joël Boutroue, a senior UNHCR staff member in the refugee camps, wrote, "