The United Nations is sending a special observer to investigate the role that racism plays in the ordinary life of the United States. With only three weeks, the special rapporteur will have a lot of ground to cover. And the visit comes at a time when America's ordinary denial on issues of racial injustice and inequality are intensified by the presidential campaign. After all, we are the nation which is about to "transcend" race.
The U.N. Investigates American Racism
By Margaret Kimberley
Doudou Diene, United Nations Special Rapporteur on racism, will visit the United States for three weeks in order to “. . . gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” Diene is a Senegalese attorney and his role is mandated by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. His United States visit is just one of many that he has made all over the world and will result in a report to be released to the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2009.
Mr. Diene has his work cut out for him. Three weeks isn’t enough time to examine the depths of racism in this country. Diene can investigate police brutality and the deaths of people like New Yorker Sean Bell. He can investigate the increased numbers of deportations that have torn families apart. He can look into the policies that have made America the nation with the greatest percentage of its population behind bars. He can investigate why half of those incarcerated persons are black. The theft of what little wealth black people had before the subprime mortgage crisis is another subject he might want to investigate. So much injustice, and only three weeks to find it all.
It is inevitable that Diene’s visit will bring howls of protest, and not just from the usual suspects on the right wing. It is now passe to acknowledge racism or its pernicious effects. In the irony of ironies, the possible election of a black person to the presidency is partially responsible for this selective, deliberate amnesia.
America’s crimes against its own citizens must be exposed to the entire world and there is no group in this country with both the power and the willingness to take on that task. The legacy of manifest destiny and the belief in American superiority and exceptionalism have created a citizenry that is largely incapable of hearing any information about their country that is less than positive and glowing. The absence of true journalism and a compromised political system combine to promote the telling of bald faced lies. Truth tellers are marginalized and consigned to oblivion so as not to disrupt the national discourse.
Only outsiders can tell us the truth, that the United States is a rogue nation by all standards of international law and acceptable moral norms. Yes, we are becoming more and more like the countries we have traditionally thought of as being inferior. Many Americans will be angry that an African representing the United Nations has the nerve to observe anything in this country and worse, has the gall to issue a report on what he sees. It is all to the good that Diene is coming to reveal the ugly but true underside of American life.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=628&Itemid=1
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