WORLD CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM

1- STATEMENT GIVEN BEFORE THE PLENARY SESSION:

ME, YOU AND WE:

Promoting Justice and Equality

Madam Chairperson, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

My name is Barry Weisberg and I am the Executive Director of the VIOLENCE PREVENTION PEACE PROMOTION STRATEGY, a non government organization in Chicago that works with 45,000 families and 200,000 people over 5-10 years to reduce and prevent the interplay between violence, racism and poverty and promote the values, attitudes, behaviors, institutions and systems of peace. This is a science based pilot project that can be replicated in communities worldwide, a practical program to reduce, prevent and eradicate discrimination and racism.

Before I begin my testimony, I would like to thank the High Commissioner and the entire staff of the Youth Forum, the NGO Forum and the WCAR for the commitment and hard work that went into the preparation and conduct of these events. I, among others, am certain that they will make a major contribution to the global struggle for justice and equality.

In addition, as an American who has been engaged in struggle with my government for four decades over such concerns as racism, poverty and war, I am not surprised by the actions of the United States. But I am compelled to condemn the arrogance, unilateralism, and racist attitude of the government of the United States. Unfortunately, Colon Powell, the first African American Secretary State, displayed the same disdain for the WCAR that he did in the bombing of Iraqi children during the Gulf War. What we are seeing is a continuation of the pattern that led the U.S. to boycott the first and second World Congresses on Racism. They do not call it a "White House" for nothing. The actions of the United State are unfortunately, consistent with a pattern of unilateralism and superpower chauvinism that has led the United States to take a series of actions at odds with the community of democratic nations. The United States has become a rogue state.

I have had the privilege and somewhat unique opportunity of visiting over half of the countries of the world and almost all of the cities of the world with more than ten million people, the mega non cities. As an American, I have been painfully aware of the unique hegemonic role of the U.S., the transnational corporations, and the myriad ways in which the U.S. dominates the world economic, social, cultural, environmental and military agenda. The U.S. has long been in the business of duplicating its national system of domestic apartheid and institutional racism worldwide. The U.S. is the foremost motor in the promotion of inequality, discrimination and racism in the world. This is accomplished by a variety of economic, social, political, cultural and environmental means - which are too numerous to itemize here. Until this Conference, race relations in the U.S. - particularly white-black relations - have dominated the dialogue about race and ethnic relations worldwide.

At the same time, in no country of the world has there been a longer and more barbaric history of racism, while doing more to document this history and pass laws against it. Yet, despite laws and popular movements, despite proclamations of equality, racism remains a more vicious aspect of everyday life than most here at this Conference can imagine, a negative example to people of the world.

Let me now turn my attention to the fundamental issue of this Conference, and many of the other world conferences of the 1990's. That is how to reduce and prevent the growing discrimination, racism and inequality that appears to be at the center of forced globalization, and promote and insure justice and equality for the majority of the people of the world. Without the capacity to achieve justice and equality for the people of the world, there appears to be little prospect for consistent democracy, sustainable development, an end to species extinction and environmental balance, or peace. While it is true that there has been some advance in meeting the human rights and human needs of a fraction of our species, this progress has been arithmetic, benefitting at best some hundreds of millions of people. By contrast, the growing inequality, polarization, deprivation and violation of billions of people has been growing geometrically. The variety, volume, velocity and vector of global violence is growing geometrically. And if we take seriously the mounting scientific evidence about global warming and related concerns, the window open to reverse these catastrophes, may be as little as 30-50 years, after which any struggle for justice and equality could be consumed by the catastrophic changes in the global environment. This is the context in which we must consider the challenge of the WCAR. What then, is to be done?

First, it should be clear that the treaties, national institutions and the rule of law may help to redress discrimination and racism, but have proven inadequate to either substantially reduce let alone eradicate discrimination, racism and inequality. It is not the case that existing legal frameworks provide sufficient remedies. Existing political and legal mechanisms must be supplemented by economic and social mechanisms. Economic and social rights must be put on a par with political rights. The world capitalist market system, the motor of forced globalization from the top down, will never insure nor safeguard human needs or human rights.

Second, the struggle for justice and equality cannot be significantly advanced without affirmative action and reparations, without mechanisms to insure that oppressed groups are provided the collective resources required to insure that the march toward equality brings all peoples to the march as equals. Affirmative action and reparations are essential first components of this process, but only a start. Such steps are not a means to rectify past inequalities, but present inequalities.

How to do this is a challenge of strategy, program and policy. We must plant the seeds in every family, school and community that can be watered by cities, countries and global organizations, such as the United Nations. The scale of this effort must be as complex and on a magnitude equal to the challenge. This means reaching, in the next 2-3 generations, a majority of the families of the world. Such an unprecedented initiative could be funded by a fraction of existing state military budgets.

Fourth, an urgent need is to identify the policies and programs at the family, school, community, city/state/province, country, region and global level that are required. This is not a question of "best practice," but proven or promising programs that are demonstrably science based and that include an evaluation component. It is not the fragmented work at the micro, meso or macro level alone that is needed, but the interplay between such efforts that is required. It is not the work at the government, corporate, non government or other levels that is important, but the interplay between such efforts that will evoke lasting, sustainable change. How to create, sustain and safeguard such coordination is a problem to be solved at the community, city, country and global level. In this process the United Nations and its NGO network must play a pivotal role, by collecting and making available programs and policies at every level of struggle and forging a global agenda.

Fifth, there is an urgent need to conceptualize alternatives to the five hundred year history of race relations. If racism and colonialism are social constructs, then we must figure out not only how to de-construct them, but to construct new systems of human relations, understanding the interplay between the individual family, the human family, and the family of life; between me, you and we. Such terms as "multi-culturalism" and "people of color," reflect the reality that we do even have an adequate vocabulary to describe the human condition. While safeguarding local and indigenous peoples and cultures, a global cosmopolitan, multi faceted culture of consistent democracy must be evolved; insulated from the market based system of forced globalization. Human dignity, human rights and human needs must be insured for everyone.

Finally, I would like to once again stress the very precarious and urgent character of the present moment. We have entered a window in which we are confronted with limited time and limited resources to reverse a five hundred year legacy of racism, colonialism and imperialism. Not only will the human population grow from the present six to perhaps nine billion people in the lifetime of our children, but devastating shortages of basic resources such as water, food or materials are certain. These factors coupled with impending environmental disasters, such as global warming, are certain to lead hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of people toward migration, conflict, and war. In the lifetime of our children we will either reverse the vector of discrimination, racism and inequality, or loose the opportunity, perhaps, forever. But in the words of the great U.S. human rights activist, Cesar Chavez, "Si se puede!" Thank you for the privelage to speak to you today.

An Opinion Editorial Article, No to the U.S. - Yes to the WCAR, was distributed on September 4, 2001. The pocket pamphlet, Preventing Discrimination and Racism, Promoting Justice and Equality, will be published in October, 2001.

<From Durban, South Africa, Submitted for Publication, September 4, 2001>

NO TO U.S. - YES TO WCAR

Concerns about the failure of the United States to send a high level delegation to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, and the withdrawal, are misplaced. More important is for the world community to condemn the United States - both for its failure to fully participate in the process of the World Conference and its historical failure to remedy the long barbaric history of discrimination and racism.

In the period leading up to the WCAR, particularly during the Bush Administration, the United States worked aggressively to undermine and sabotage the Conference, both by withholding funding and by pressuring other governments to undermine the strength of the Final Declaration and the Plan of Action. This should come as no surprise, since the US boycotted the prior two conferences on racism, refuses to sign the Convention on the rights of the Child, support the Land Mine Treaty, the world Criminal Court, and other initiatives supported by virtually every democracy. The U.S. has become a rogue state, at odds with the world community. The absence of Colin Powell or other top level US State Department officials will mean that the Conference will work more effectively to accomplish its goals, while Powell's credibility is further eroded at home.

Some skeptics question the value of the Conference. But world Conferences, particularly this one on racism, are extremely important steps in creating a global consensus and strategy against discrimination and racism. Contrary to exaggerated press reports, the Conference has not been divided by differences over the Middle East, the vast majority of States support both the Palestinian and the Israeli right to autonomy. It has been the unilateralism of the United States and its allies that threatens the Conference. The most important shortcoming of such Conferences has always been the failure of the member States to meet the timetables and obligations established by the Plan of Action. Nevertheless, such goals and timetables create momentum, that together with the work of the non government organizations and the growing popular struggle against the pernicious affects of globalization, strengthen the struggle to defend human rights and insure human needs worldwide.

In addition, it is increasingly important for the world community to learn the lessons of both the historical and contemporary institutionalization of racism in the United States. Slavery existed in the U.S. from 1619 - 1865. For another one hundred years Jim Crow laws created a form of apartheld in the United States. The multi faceted institutionalization of racism in the United States has meant that proportionally, four times more African American males are incarcerated in the U.S. today than were under Apartheid in South Africa. Today, school segragation is growing in the United States even as the diversity among school age children is greater than ever before. Diversity, alone, is no guarantee of either justice or equality. With such a history, reparations are essential to achieve either justice or equality. The United States has done more to both document and pass laws against racism than any other country. It is time to recognize the limits of legal remedies to reduce, prevent, control or eradicate extreme inequality, discrimination and racism, taking the next step to insure the social and economic foundations of equality at the family, school, community, city, state and global levels. After five centuries of racism, colonization and imperalism, for the first time, a global consensus has emerged against discrimination and racism. Now the challenge is to build a social movement capable of turning that consensus into reality for billions of people worldwide.

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