At
a time when racial conflict and discrimination are on the rise around
the world, the Administration of the world’s first black U.S.
president will not be attending the world’s most important
conference on race and racism.
In
what may signal a dangerous new, “post-racial” approach
to global race relations, President Barack Obama’s Administration
announced that it will not attend the second
World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia
and Related Intolerance in Geneva next April. According to this
article in the New York Times, the Administration will boycott
the conference to protest what it deems the unfair equation of Zionism
with racism in the outcome documents of the first conference held
in Durban, South Africa, and now the second conference, also known
as “Durban II, as well .” Other concerns cited by Administration
officials, some of whom recently attended preparatory meetings in
Geneva,in their justification of the boycott include a proposal
to place restrictions on the defamation of religions and any language
calling for reparations for slavery. According to the Times article,
one of the primary reasons for the Obama Administration’s
decision was that “Israel and some American Jewish groups
urged a boycott of the April conference, and several close American
allies, including Canada.”
Praised
by groups
that lobbied against Durban II like the Anti-Defamation League
(ADL), whose leaders applauded the U.S. decision, “for refusing
to participate in a process that would in any way brand Israel as
a racist country,” the Obama Adminsitration’s boycott
comes at the worst possible time for
a planet facing rapidly increasing levels of recession-inspired
racism, xenophobia and hatred.
Increasing
numbers of experts report that most continents - Europe,
Africa,
Asia
- are seeing exponential growth in hate crimes, ethnic tensions
and other manifestations of the racism, xenophobia and other forms
of intolerance, the kind on intolerance that will be discussed at
the Durban II Conference. And in the Américas, the very palpable
rise in racial tensions, hate crimes and other discrimination are
well illustrated by events here in the “post-racial”
United States: the NY
Post Chimpanzee cartoon scandal, the
U.S. visit (including a film screening in Congress) by Euro-racist
Geert Wilders and the
massive protests against the racial profiling, humiliation and other
practices of Maricopa County Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, to name a few
taking place in the United States. And these were only the events
that the Obama Administration was silent about this past week.
The
Obama Administration’s silence on both these racial incidents
and on such fundamentally racial -and global-problems as the “drug
war”, criminal justice reform and immigrant detention contrasts
with the much-lauded statements on race by Attorney General Eric
Holder. In statements made to coincide with the start of Black History
Month, Holder called the U.S. “a nation of cowards”
when it comes to discussion of race .
Apparently,
as indictaed by Obama Administration’s boycott of the Durban
II conference, Mr. Holder’s statements are equally applicable
to the global discussion of race. Consider, for example, Mr.Holder-and
the Obama Administration’s- relative silence on reversing
the
abject failure and tragedy that is the global and domestic “war
on drugs” (he’s
actually in favor of pursuing it more intensely) and the unprecedented
levels of racialized imprisonment it entails. In the face of the
radicalization of racial hatred that is afoot throghout the world,
both the Durban response and Holder’s Black History Month
statements are beginning to sound like the oh so many hollow and
jaded “Si
Se Puede”’s and other ethnic, racial “History
Month”-like slogans designed to gain favor among former minorities,
all the while pursuing right-of-center criminal justice policies
that devastate these same communities.
And
with its very dangerous boycott of Durban II in response to pressure
from the very powerful Israel
Lobby, the Obama Admnistration may be giving the green light
to governments and other groups practicing their own brand of racial
discrimination, promoting hatred and other forms of discrimination.
While much of the media is discussing the U.S. boycott, most of
these reports neglect to the mention the near universal condemnation
of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians, which
United Nations General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto
likened
to apartheid last November:
“More
than twenty years ago we in the United Nations took the lead from
civil society when we agreed that sanctions were required to provide
a non-violent means of pressuring South Africa. Today, perhaps we
in the United Nations should consider following the lead of a new
generation of civil society, who are calling for a similar non-violent
campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel.”
Rather
than join the rest of the world in Durban and in condemning the
killing and discrimination on the part of the Israeli and other
governments-including our own-, Obama’s boycott reflects his
choice to pursue the more dangerous path to dealing with race, racism
and discrimination: symbolism at the expense of real changes to
very devastating policies. Such are the perils of our increasingly
post-racial presidency in a racially-troubled world.
Political
choices like the Durban decision or the blind eye turned to the
indiscriminate killing of and discrimination against Palestinian
civilians in the West Bank make one wonder if the Obama Administration
has also chosen to become the black face of empire.
This
commentary appeared originally in New America Media.
BlackCommentator.com
Guest Commentator, Roberto Lovato is a contributing
Associate Editor with New America Media. He is also a frequent contributor
to The Nation and his work has
appeared in the Los Angeles
Times, Salon, Der Spiegel, Utne Magazine, La Opinion, and other
national and international media outlets. Prior to becoming a writer,
Roberto was the Executive Director of the Central American Resource
Center (CARECEN), then the country’s
largest immigrant rights organization. Click
here to contact him or via his Of
América blog. |