Why is the U.S. boycotting the UN Racism Conference?


Christopher J. Metzler | Posted April 20, 2009 3:34 PM
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As President Obama shook hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, he was willing to take the political heat. He said that he was not concerned about the politics of the hand shake and more concerned about extending an open hand to nations hostile to the U.S. The open hand, it seems, is not so open after all. The President announced that, like the Bush Administration, the United States will boycott the world anti-racism conference (Durban II), which opens in Geneva today. According to the President, "I would love to be involved in a useful conference that addressed continuing issues of racism and discrimination around the globe. We expressed in the run-up to this conference our concerns that if you adopted all of the language from 2001, that's not something we can sign up for. "Hopefully some concrete steps come out of the conference that we can partner with other countries on to actually reduce discrimination around the globe, but this wasn't an opportunity to do it."




He is not willing to take the political heat in this case because there is language criticizing Israel and the West in the final document. As the world celebrates the election of the first Black President, the United States boycotts the world conference against racism. Symbolism, it seems has met political reality.

On this issue, it is difficult to reconcile the President's rhetoric with his actions. The President has repeatedly said that his policy is to talk with those with whom he disagrees. He is talking to Chavez, to Ahmadinejad, to Medvedev and Kim but cannot talk to human rights defenders about the best way to address the continuing significance of racism world wide? Surely the message cannot be that the United States does not believe that the right to be free from racism is not a basic human right.

Ostensibly, he refuses to talk because the draft document and the conference will be used as a platform to defame Israel. So, why didn't he walk out of the Summit of the Americas when Chavez presented him with the book, "The Open Veins of Latin America?"

Wasn't it this same President who on his recent trip to Europe decried American arrogance and was savaged for doing so on "foreign soil?" And gladly took the criticism.
Given this, one must ask why he is now unwilling to take the political heat by sending a delegation to the conference to counter the alleged "defamation" that will occur. The 2009 conference presents an opportunity for the United States, Israel and others to move beyond the vile and base debate about Israel and frame the debate in a manner which addresses the continuing scourge of racism worldwide. The reality is that this conference is not about Israel; it is about racism. By boycotting and encouraging other countries to do so, the United States is telling human rights defenders to defend human rights in a way that is clinical, antiseptic, and free of critiques of those you consider human rights violators. Of course, this is both an intellectual and practical oxymoron since equidistant to the defense of human rights; defenders must be free to render criticism without fear of requital. It is what defending human rights are about.

Despite representations to the contrary, the policy on multilateral engagement of the United States is now that despite the existence of a problem we will not seek solutions to human rights abuses where there will be those in attendance who will criticize Israel. If this is the case, then the President has undermined his own argument on American arrogance. No country is above reproach for the way it addresses racism including the United States, Israel, Italy, Germany, France, Canada, and others.

The President's argument is reminiscent of Eleanor Roosevelt's stratagem, when as Chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights; she strenuously objected to the United Nations hearing the NAACP's "An Appeal to the World," a document which detailed the scourge of racism in the United States. In fact, she threatened to resign from the NAACP's Board of Directors because she thought the petition would embarrass the United States on the world stage. The President simply cannot have it both ways; he cannot call for engaging the international community when it suits his interest and refuse to engage when it does not. It is he and his administration who have acutely criticized the most recent Bush administration's commitment to multilateral negotiations as being off target. He seeks a seat on the Human Rights Council but then chooses which human rights are worthy of U.S. attention?

"The sad truth is that countries professing to want to avoid a reprise of the contentious 2001 racism conference are now the ones triggering the collapse of a global consensus on the fight against racism," said Juliette de Rivero, Geneva advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "As these Western governments demanded, the negotiated text for the review conference upholds freedom of expression and avoids singling out Israel. But these governments couldn't take 'yes' for an answer and are boycotting the conference anyway."


Dr. Christopher J. Metzler is associate dean at Georgetown University and the author of The The Construction and Rearticulation of Race in a Post-Racial America.

Source: http://thedailyvoice.com/voice/2009/04/boycotting-the-un-racism-confe-001799.php



P.S. Yet, D.R. has to put up with the world, and the United States constant accusations of being a "racist" country? Is there a hypocrisy here, or what?

The hypocrisy wasn't lost to me either, Arsenio, but it seems that realpolitik nowadays consists in throwing stones to the little countries unable to defend themselves.

France criticizes USA for shunning U.N. racism talks
Tue Apr 21, 2009 11:25am BST



PARIS (Reuters) - France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner criticized the United States Tuesday for boycotting a United Nations conference where Iran's president launched a verbal attack on Israel.

France, which has strong diplomatic and business ties with the Middle East, had joined a walk-out of delegates in Geneva after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel cruel and racist in a speech Monday, but then returned to the meeting.

Kouchner said it was wrong of the United States to shun the conference after announcing it was open for negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.

"It's paradoxical -- they don't want to listen to Iran in Geneva but they are ready to talk to them," Kouchner told French radio Europe 1. "More than a paradox, that could really be a mistake."

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy has worked hard to mend ties with the United States after a rift over the war in Iraq, and was eager to show off his good relations with U.S. President Barack Obama at this month's NATO summit in Strasbourg.

But France has also been keen to maintain close relations with Arab governments, who have supported the conference.

Kouchner said France would continue to work on the draft text prepared for the Geneva meeting and expected a result later Tuesday, adding that the declaration would condemn anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.

"It will be a defeat for Ahmadinejad because there will be, I hope by tonight, this declaration. But the politics of the empty chair is easy. You leave and you shout at the others," Kouchner said.

The United States, Canada, Australia and a number of European governments stayed away from the conference on fears it would be hijacked by critics of Israel.

Ahmadinejad has in the past cast doubt on the Nazi Holocaust, and in his speech Monday accused Israel of establishing a "cruel and racist regime."

"Following World War Two they resorted to military aggressions to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering," Ahmadinejad told the conference, on the day that Jewish communities commemorate the Holocaust.

(Reporting by Laure Bretton and Sophie Hardach)


Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/usTopNews/idUKTRE53K1Q220090421?sp=true

Lautaro:

Now I realize that not all the participants in "our" Forum are just spambots. You can see through the double-speak that is perpetrated on the helpless struggling Primada de America; That has been kept in the dust for generations by Europeans, now also their descendants the US of A. That's why I don't buy that globalism guff. We won our independence, now why give it up to a foreign faceless entity? Lo mio es mio, yo aqui tu aya...that way we can place our house in order without foreign intervention.. Laissez faire, etc.


LOS PANAS; Money attracts money?

Here's an interesting take about the crime that is being meditated against us by these monsters as we speak, my friend:

http://eldiadetodos.blogspot.com/

The issues of race and class are VERY particular to each nation. A global summit on the topic is exactly the kind of forum that would result in campaigns against places of complex heritage like DR. As the articles say Obama's unwillingness to participate, just like Bush's unwillingness, probably stem from issues around Israel. I'm not ascribing them a positive sentiment, but for their own reasons the outcome of collapsing these talks is a POSITIVE. Overall this kind of summit is about putting huge swathes of humanity into 'racial' buckets regardless of local histories, then condemning the darker ones to the endless regime of 'aid' and condescending tutelage.

It's as some people say, that countries are like individuals, what proves to be the solution of a malady in one person might result being the poison in another person's organism and viceversa.

The US constitution encourages racism so of course the US cannot attend.
"
In 1992, the court decided in R.A.V. vs. St. Paul that a cross burned in the front yard of an African American family by white teenagers was a form of protected symbolic speech. This decision effectively trumped the family’s right to live in their home free from racial terrorism. Using the artificial distinction between speech and action, the Court decided that the act of burning a cross to intimidate a black family was equivalent to freedom of speech.
"
http://academic.udayton.edu/Race/06hrights/WaronTerrorism/racial02.htm
Similarly christian 'hate' churches hide behind the constitution. e.g. articles that state : they also called Chinese people "vile oriental [sic] ingrates", and declared that "God hates China". [27]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church
Missionaries are allowed to spread the word abroard without any government monitoring of their actiivity - this Mormons spent years spreading racism thoughout the World.
http://www.i4m.com/think/comments/mormon-racism.htm
S.

Lautaro
The hypocrisy wasn't lost to me either, Arsenio, but it seems that realpolitik nowadays consists in throwing stones to the little countries unable to defend themselves.



Lautaro:

Now I realize that not all the participants in "our" Forum are just spambots. You can see through the double-speak that is perpetrated on the helpless struggling Primada de America; That has been kept in the dust for generations by Europeans, now also their descendants the US of A. That's why I don't buy that globalism guff. We won our independence, now why give it up to a foreign faceless entity? Lo mio es mio, yo aqui tu aya...that way we can place our house in order without foreign intervention.. Laissez faire, etc.


Here's an interesting take about the crime that is being meditated against us by these monsters as we speak, my friend:


Gizmo Interesting blog Lautaro.
http://eldiadetodos.blogspot.com/