The
Biden administration has invited human rights and racism experts from
the United Nations to come to the U.S. to investigate racism against
Black people. And this is important. If anything positive has emerged
from the past year - the murder of George
Floyd,
the racial reawakening in America and the Capitol Insurrection - it
is the opportunity for America to finally grapple with its original
sin of racism on a world stage.
America
always wanted to keep its Black people problem a domestic civil
rights issue rather than an international human rights issue that
opens up the “land of the free” to scrutiny.
“Responsible
nations must not shrink from scrutiny of their human rights record;
rather, they should acknowledge it with the intent to improve,”
Secretary of State Antony
Blinken
said in
a statement.
“I
urge all UN member states to join the United States in this effort,
and confront the scourge of racism, racial discrimination, and
xenophobia. Because when all people – regardless of their race
or ethnicity – are free to live up to their full potential, our
collective security is strengthened.”
This
comes as the UN formed a panel of three experts to examine the roots
of racism in policing
across the globe. Michelle
Bachelet,
the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, issued a report
following the killing of George Floyd, urging countries to end
systemic racism, discrimination and police brutality - and provide
reparations. “I am calling on all states to stop denying - and
start dismantling - racism; to end impunity and build trust; to
listen to the voices of people of African descent; and to confront
past legacies and deliver redress,” Bachelet
said.
This
latest move is important because of past efforts to bring America
before the UN for its treatment of Black people. Not long after the
formation of the UN, the NAACP
presented the international body with a 98-page petition to
investigate the condition of Black people in the U.S. Malcolm
X
had planned to take the case of Black Americans to the UN for
America’s failure to protect Black people from white terrorism.
He even sought the support of African
nations
to bring charges against the U.S. for “violating the human
rights of 22 million African‐Americans.”
Malcolm
said the plight of Black people in America is beyond the nation’s
ability to solve. “It’s a human problem, not an America
problem or a Negro problem, and as a human problem or world problem
we feel that it should be taken out of the jurisdiction of the United
States government and the United States courts and taken into the
United Nations,” he
said.
“We believe that our problem is one not a violation of civil
rights but a violation of human rights. Not only are we denied the
right to be a citizen in the United States, we are denied the right
to be a human being.”
Since
its formation as a white settler colony based on genocide and forced
labor, America never had a true accounting of its racist legacy - a
legacy that inspired Nazi Germany and allowed the world to call out
U.S. hypocrisy as the self-proclaimed beacon of human rights that
fails to practice what it preaches. We cannot begin to dismantle
systemic racism in policing, criminal justice and all facets of life
until we reckon with our history of enslavement and the slave
patrols, or Jim Crow segregation and lynching.
In
2020, Black Lives Matter forced a national and international
examination of white supremacy. When white domestic terrorists
stormed the U.S. Capitol in January, it was proof positive that
America had created a monster it could no longer control, one that
threatens to eat the nation whole. The image of white supremacist
insurrectionists attacking the Capitol like Black Wall Stree t- with
off-duty
police officers, military
and elected
officials
among the participants - carrying Confederate flags and pro-police
flags while calling Black Capitol police officers the n-word points
to a hot racial mess out of America’s control.
Along
with a rising consciousness on racism in America, a white backlash
threatens to erase all history and memory of racial injustice, and
ban its teaching.
America
has no moral jurisdiction to preach to anyone in the world on human
rights. However, it has an opportunity to clean up its act with Black
people before the whole world, if it chooses to be better and do far
better than its centuries-long record plainly shows. This is why we
should welcome the UN investigation.
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