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After Durban – a Symposium Poverty & Race POVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL January/February 2002 Volume 11: Number 1 Help Us Find a New Executive Director for PRRAC – see page 4 After Durban – A Symposium The August-September 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, in Durban, South Africa, was an event of epic proportions, despite the Bush Administration’s disgraceful decision first to send a low-level delegation, then to walk out. Follow-up work by NGOs in the US (and elsewhere) was of course deeply impacted by the events of September 11 and their aftermath. We asked a number of people who attended – some PRRAC Board members (past as well as present) and other friends of PRRAC – to offer their reflections on the meaning of these events for race issues and work in the US. We welcome further observations by other readers who attended the Conference, as well as readers’ commentaries on the 12 essays offered here; we’ll consider all for publication in our next issue. The UN has prepared a Sept. 19, 2001 document – “Declaration, Adopted on 8 September 2001 in Durban, South Africa,” accompanied by this note: “This text has been put together by the secretariat on the basis of its notes. It is now being submitted to the principal officers of the Conference for their review and will subsequently go through the process of formal editing. We’ll be happy to send you a copy of this 32-page document if you’ll send us a self-addressed label and $1.33 in postage. - CH Reflections on Durban and 9/11 CONTENTS: by Linda Burnham After Durban: A Symposium Those of us who participated in past. Part of the struggle is to find our Linda Burnham ........... 1 the United Nations World Conference bearings in the these deeply unsettling Samuel L. Myers, Jr.... 3 Against Racism did so in the hopes that times, to cull some of the lessons of Cathi Tactaquin .......... 5 we could help create new conditions, Durban and link them, as best we can, Eric Mann................... 7 new understandings and new strategies to current circumstances. Makani Themba .......... 9 for the struggle against racism; that we If it was about anything, Durban Gary Delgado ........... 10 could help move the international com- was about how the past bears down Marisa J. Demeo ...... 12 upon the present, about how unevenly munity another step forward in its fit- john powell .............. 14 ful efforts to eradicate racism, ethnic the weight of history is borne. The James Counts Early . 15 conflict and xenophobia. Our time in battle over reparations was central. It South Africa was intense, and we widened out from compensatory mea- Esmeralda Simmons. 18 came home intending to work together sures for descendants of the African Howard Winant ........ 19 to evaluate what was gained and what slave trade in the Americas — an issue Wade Henderson ...... 22 was lost, and to share our rich experi- that made its way in from the outer National Low Income ences with all of you here at home. margins of political discourse, due Housing Coalition ....24 But the UN Conference was rapidly principally to the dogged persistence Resources ..................27 overshadowed, relegated to a dim, of African American activists in the possibly irrelevant pre-September 11th (Please turn to page 2) Poverty & Race Research Action Council • 3000 Connecticut Avenue NW • Suite 200 • Washington, DC 20008 202/387-9887 • FAX: 202/387-0764 • E-mail: [email protected] • www.prrac.org Recycled Paper (BURNHAM: Continued from page 1) past in the service of preserving rac- for 15 years, developed their own fear- ist, profoundly unequal relations be- some agenda. US – to include the full legacy of co- tween nations and peoples in the Ruth Manorama, a fierce advocate lonialism in Africa, Asia, Latin present and far into the future. The for the rights of India’s Dalits, spoke America, the Middle East, the Carib- US and Israel, unprepared to face the with passion at a Women of Color bean and the islands of the Pacific. horrendous consequences of past or Resource Center workshop in Durban. The yawning, ever-widening gap present policy, turned on their heels The Dalits were a huge presence at the between the nations of the North and and walked out. Convened in South UN Conference, insisting that thou- the nations of the South raised the ques- Africa, guests of the people whose re- sands of years of caste discrimination tion of debt relief – who owes what to cent triumph over a most egregious be brought to an end. Ruth and other whom, and why. In Durban, the ques- form of 20th century racialism we all Dalit leaders reminded us that while tion was asked: Having been robbed celebrate, it was not lost on many of religion may bring solace, comfort and for centuries, are not the nations of us that the US and Israel had also stood a moral compass to some, it can be, at the South due restitution from their as- arm in arm – until the bitter end – in the very same time, an instrument of sailants? Can the appetite for gobbling providing support and encouragement repression and degradation for others. up the wealth of other nations and to the terrorists of the apartheid state. Those others may be co-religionists, peoples to support the ill-gotten pros- those of other faiths or secularists. And perity of North America and Europe often enough it is women who suffer. ever be curbed? And the answer from Durban was about how Millions of crimes against women are the North: The US, fattened on the unequally the weight of committed each day in the name of land, lives and liberty of conquered history is borne. religion, custom and tradition. Reli- nations and enslaved peoples, said no gious fundamentalism – whether – not today, not tomorrow, not in this Christian, Islamic, Judaic or Hindu – millennium. What is on offer is not What has this to do with Septem- constitutes a mortal threat to women. compensation, restitution, reparations ber 11th and its aftermath? The US Neither the gated communities of and heartfelt regrets but new forms of impulse to “rule and rule without end, the upper classes, nor the star wars global plunder. And Belgium, head of forever and ever” (the phrase is missile defense shield, nor the omi- the European Union, its hands still W.E.B. Dubois’) is not an impulse to nous Office of Homeland Security can damp and sticky with the blood of the dominance simply for its own sake, protect us from the consequences of a Congo, said no, we don’t want to talk but dominance for the sake of the pro- world overflowing with men, women about it: The legacy of colonialism is tection of wealth – wealth already sto- and children whose fate, from cradle not relevant to our discussion of cur- len and wealth anticipated. If that to grave, is grinding poverty, crush- rent-day racism, and we won’t have it dominance requires alliance with un- ing labor and crippling disease. Let us mentioned in the final document. savory despots, corrupt regimes and remember that within two weeks of the This was not simple recalcitrance. fanatical reactionaries, so be it. Twin Towers tragedy, the airline in- It was willful, shameful denial of the The deal struck with the Taliban, dustry had managed to squeeze $15 through Pakistan and the CIA, must billion out of the federal budget. The have seemed like a thousand others Poverty and Race (ISSN 1075- insurance industry is in line to get its made ‘round the world: We will turn 3591) is published six times a year share, and others line up at the trough by the Poverty & Race Research a blind eye to the imposition of re- – the very same trough that can’t pro- Action Council, 3000 Conn. Ave. pressive, theocratic decrees. We will vide funds for women on welfare or NW, #200, Washington, DC turn a deaf ear to the torment of girls, free medical care for seniors on fixed 20008, 202/387-9887, fax: 202/ women and homosexuals. We will en- incomes. 387-0764, E-mail: info@prrac. sure that the American public remains $15 billion. Could the US not sur- org. Chester Hartman, Editor. comfortably ignorant of the bargain vive the demise of one or two of our Subscriptions are $25/year, $45/ struck and its terrible toll on the suf- multiple airline carriers? What if that two years. Foreign postage ex- fering Afghan people. And in ex- $15 billion were devoted to eliminat- tra. Articles, article suggestions, change, with the abundance of arma- ing infant and maternal mortality letters and general comments are ments our taxpayers provide, you will welcome, as are notices of publi- worldwide? Or to AIDS treatment and keep at bay any and all forces viewed cations, conferences, job open- prevention. Or to water, sanitation and ings, etc. for our Resources Sec- as hostile to US interests in the region. electrification. Or to eliminating tion. Articles generally may be Though the details may differ, such school fees, raising teachers’ salaries, reprinted, providing PRRAC deals are operative worldwide, backed building schools and buying books and gives advance permission. by massive military presence on every computers. To the education of the © Copyright 2002 by the Pov- continent and all the seas. But this deal girls of Afghanistan. Or to adequately erty & Race Research Action turned sour as fundamentalist tyrants, house the homeless and those who find Council. All rights reserved. encouraged, armed and emboldened shelter in the shanty towns, favelas and 2 • Poverty & Race • Vol.
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