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Racism

DATELINE: 17 September, 2001

Transmitted by Kevin Carey, UK

KEVIN CAREY says the Durban Conference on Racism was more than a sad farce, it betrayed the victims of racism and banged one more nail into the UN coffin.

God knows how much opprobrium I have rained down upon the Bush administration but it was absolutely right to withdraw its delegation from the supposed Conference on Racism in Durban. Clinton would have been too ingratiating just as the European Union has been. The people I feel most sorry for are the South African people on whose soil the conference took place and who can bear personal testimony to the peculiar evil of racism.

There were two subjects, which dominated the conference. The first was the blatantly stupid allegation that the State of Israel is racist. It is certainly at war with the Palestinians and there are a few in the administration that might like to see the fledgling State of Palestine destroyed but neither of these charges have anything to do with racism. There was a time when Yasser Arafat publicly and repeatedly stated that he wanted to drive every last Israeli into the Mediterranean Sea and dissolve the State of Israel. That is an extreme and belligerent statement and it borders on an incitement to genocide but I do not recall anybody accusing him of racism.

Both sides in the war have very good reasons to make peace but even stronger reasons not to but that does not make either side racist.

The hi-jacking of the conference by the Arab league to concentrate on this was a simple piece of diplomatic grandstanding, one of a long series from the 1967 Middle East War from which time the United Nations has never made any effort to keep the Middle East conflict in some kind of proportion and to adopt a properly balanced view.

Israel might, before it walked out, have made much more of the behaviour not only of Hitler's Germany but of Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and France. There could have been endless dialogue about genocide in the former Yugoslavia and central Africa. There is no point having a conference against warfare in general and genocide in particular; such matters require treaties and a great deal of time.

The other topic to dominate proceedings was the call by some African nations upon European nations to apologise for transatlantic slavery and make reparations. This raises two issues. The first is who should make what apologies and reparations to whom? The first major slave traders to plunder Africa were the Roman aristocracy. The trade continued under the Byzantine control of North Africa and was taken up smartly by the rising Islamic powers, culminating in a massive slave trade from East Africa to the Arabian Peninsular in the 13th and 14th Centuries. I presume that their descendants are not being asked to say sorry or to make amends financially.

Turning to West Africa, there were indeed wicked traders in human flesh who arrived from Europe but there are many recorded incidents of people being sold into slavery by African chiefs and kings, and even African slave masters. As for which Europeans and who should get the money, these are questions beyond reasonable settlement.

Apparently the Conference wanted European Governments to hand money over to African Governments, some of whom are currently turning a blind eye to slavery.

The second issue is why, if the Conference was so exercised by slavery, did it not spend much more time on contemporary enslavement, much of which is perpetrated by blacks on blacks and a fair amount by Arabs on fellow Muslims.

Having worked in more than 70 of the poorest countries in the world I am well acquainted with the charge of racism. It was frequently made by government officials and ministers when I disagreed with them about some area of policy and my reply was invariably the same. We could never have equal, adult relationships as long as they could criticise me as a racist every time I disagreed with them and that, therefore, they could say anything without intellectual challenge. Within this distorted framework it is difficult to have a rational discussion.

I would urge, for example, that in the United States women are treated better than they are in Afghanistan. That is not a racist statement, though it may be inferred as anti-Islamic. It is, of course, neither pro nor anti, it is simply an analysis of social behaviour.

To have to explain this, at such great length, somehow belittles the issue of racism itself. Racism is feeling dislike for, or speaking of, acting against people purely or primarily on the ground of their race, i.e. their bone structure and skin colour. What makes it peculiar (the word I used in the first paragraph) is the degree of irrationalism involved.

I can understand why people fight over land; I can see how neighbours grow to hate each other to the extent they would like to wipe each other out; I can see how slavery drives people into treating fellow human beings inhumanely; but I cannot see why anybody in their right mind can be racist. That is why, as an irrational but extremely damaging social phenomenon, people need to meet to see how we can educate and legislate it out of ourselves and our communities.

The Durban Conference might have been a good opportunity for comparing legislation against racism and hearing about anti-racist education programmes. Delegates might fruitfully have studied some case law and the workings of tribunals. They might have studied what regulations work and what penalties bite.

The United Kingdom Government is faced with a steady stream of people seeking political asylum though many of them are economic migrants; and it is facing deeply rooted and nasty racism in some of its towns and cities where the heavy industry has died which provided poor white people with modestly paid work. There are deeply held suspicions amongst both ethnic minority victims and the liberal intelligentsia that many of our institutions are racist. These are not experiences unique to the UK.

We could have learned from New England about its handling of dying smokestack industry and the creation of new jobs. We could have learned from both France and Spain about their successes and failures in absorbing legal and illegal immigrants. We could have learned from Australia and the United States about their concepts of immigration and citizenship. Countless thousands of victims of racism might have been better off for such discussions; countless thousands might have had their lives saved. Instead a naive and sentimental confection, yet another of Annan's blunders (one would have expected more of Mary Robinson), was brutalised, like a pneumatic drill applied to a wedding cake.

God knows, to repeat the mantra, I have attacked US administrations of all sorts for refusing to pay UN dues but what happened in Durban is yet another nail in the world body's coffin. With a change in control of the Senate there was just an outside chance that it might have forced the money out of the State Department but I would not blame Bush for wanting to put American coin into Regional organisations and to bypass this self-serving mess altogether. This is not my personal preference but, after the Durban betrayal of the victims of racism, I have never been so near to giving up for lost the United Nations and all its works and pomps.

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