SAN FRANCISCO - The New York Times, the most authoritative newspaper in the United States, ran a lead editorial on the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, taking place in Durban, South Africa, from August 28 to September 7. The headline immediately caught my eye: "A Mean-Spirited UN Conference".
The historic conference had received very little mention in the mainstream media (mainly in the black-oriented press) until this editorial. Why are the NYT editors so upset? The UN has no enforcement powers. The conference can only issue a final declaration that for most countries will simply gather dust.
"The United Nations World Conference Against Racism, which will take place later this month in South Africa", the August 17 editorial states, "is one of those meetings that make people wonder about the usefulness of the UN. Originally conceived as a forum to examine how to combat contemporary forms of racism, the meeting now threatens to dissolve into an unproductive debate about reparations payments for slavery, condemnation of Israel and such topics as whether the word 'Holocaust' should be capitalized."
Leaving aside the so-called debate about capitalising the word "Holocaust", there are two issues of immediate concern for Washington. First, the US rulers oppose a serious debate on the issue of responsibility. What governments, classes and elites are the main culprits for the slave trade? Should they pay reparations to the descendants of slaves in the United States in particular, and in other countries?
Second, and this is the most important issue dividing Washington and the conference organisers, is a discussion of Zionism. Is it a special type of racism? Or is it, as the Zionists claim, a political movement for Jewish "national" self-determination?
The NYT editors, reflecting the ruling class stand, are not urging the Bush administration to boycott the meeting. But they insist that the US delegation (excluding Secretary of State Colin Powell if an agreement isn't reached beforehand) go to the meeting to weaken the final declaration.
The issue of reparations is mainly an embarrassment for the US. Claiming to defend human rights and supporting demands for reparations for victims of German and Japanese crimes during World War II, Washington doesn't want to appear to the world as hypocritical by rejecting such a discussion. Yet it strongly opposes a debate that can expose that there are responsibilities and obligations when crimes against humanity are committed such as slavery.
The US government has never ever officially apologised for slavery. The descendants of slaves in the US have never received one penny of financial compensation, not even the famous "40 acres and a mule" promised to them briefly at the end of the 1860-65 civil war.
Moreover, there is a white backlash today against affirmative action and other programs aimed at institutional discrimination. A majority of white citizens in fact think enough has already been done for African Americans, falsely believing there is now equality of opportunity.
For African Americans, the issue of reparations is emotional and unsettled. Few believe that economic compensation from the government will ever occur. Yet most blacks would support an apology and a congressional decision to establish a National Museum for African Americans in the capitol.
The issue of Zionism as racism is one subject that could lead the US to boycott the Durban conference. The current policy of the Bush administration, a continuation of policies of pervious Democratic and Republican president, gives 100% support to the Israeli rulers and their policies of occupation and state terrorism/assassination of the Palestinian people. Bush refuses even to meet with the Palestine Authority leader Yasser Arafat.
A debate of Zionism as racism would clarify to the public why Jewish nationalism is not the same as Palestinian nationalism. Jewish nationalism (Zionism) in the context of Europe and countries that discriminated against Jews was one thing. But Zionism in the Middle East is another since it involves taking another people's land and killing its residents. It is the reality of Zionism in Israel (as justification for the oppression of Palestine, not its political/nationalist origins in Europe) that makes it a racist movement.
Israel, for sure, will not participate in such a debate in Durban. The US, if it does participate, will hold a minority point of view. The threat of boycott by the US, it hopes, will be enough to get the UN organisers to limit the discussion or take the issue of Zionism off the agenda.
In the July/August 2001 issue of Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Lynn Huntley, executive president of the Southern Education Foundation, urges African Americans to participate and stresses why: "Racism is a global phenomenon that needs a global response... African Americans live in the world's most powerful nation. What the United States does affects victims of discrimination around the world."
She points to the long tradition of African Americans seeking redress for racism in international forums. In 1947, she notes, "W.E.B. du Bois, then the NAACP's director of special research, along with his colleagues, submitted an 'Appeal to the Commission on Human Rights in the United Nations', urging it to press the US government to end segregation and other forms of discrimination."
African Americans will be in Durban as members of the NAACP, the oldest US civil rights group, and many other NGOs. The progress against racism requires an international effort.
BY MALIK MIAH