Tue 25 Mar 2008
Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, annually observed since 1966 to commemorate the Sharpeville massacre of young South African students peacefully protesting apartheid laws. It’s a fitting occasion to examine recent international attention to racism in the U.S.
On Tuesday, the same day as Senator Obama’s speech on race in America in which he proclaimed that “race is an issue that…this nation cannot afford to ignore right now,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said before a high-level panel convened in Geneva, “48 years after the Sharpeville shootings, no country can claim to be free of racism’s destructive influence.” And earlier this month, in an event that received far less coverage in U.S. media than Obama’s speech, a U.N. human rights body reviewed the United States’ record on racial justice, and found that we are in breach of our human rights obligations to end racial discrimination. After these recent pronouncements from Geneva, it’s clear that we, as a nation, can no longer deny the problems of racial discrimination, from racial profiling to unequal access to educational opportunities, that persist here.