As soon as the UN was formed, black leaders and organizations began to turn to it as a forum to attack racism and white supremacy in the United States. In 1946 the National Negro Congress filed a petition with the UN Social and Economic Council protesting the oppression of African Americans. The document, prepared by Herbert Aptheker, cited the sections of the UN charter dealing with human rights, reviewed evidence on discrimination and violence against blacks, and called for actions to protect their rights. In 1947 DuBois presented to the UN on behalf of the NAACP An Appeal to the World detailing the oppression of blacks in the Southern states and calling for action by the international community. The appeal was endorsed by hundreds of black organizations and several Third World leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. In 1955 Congressman Charles Diggs wrote Undersecretary General Bunche requesting his assistance in submitting the race question in America to the proper agency within the United Nations. And at the time of his death in 1965, Malcolm X was seeking support among African and Islamic nations for a petition charging the United States with violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although the UN did not act on any of these appeals, it did provide a forum for the internationalization of the Civil Rights movement, and in the context of the cold war, these appeals for redress were a source of embarrassment and pressure on the U.S. government. In the post–civil rights era, black leaders and organizations continued to use the UN as a forum to protest racism in the United States. In 1969 the UN approved the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination. It allowed victims of discrimination to file complaints directly with the UN. Although the United States signed the convention, it did so with the usual reservation that it was not bound by any parts of it not consistent with the Constitution. As part of the implementation of the convention, the UNs General Assembly declared three decades to combat racism and discrimination, with international conferences to receive reports and adopt recommendations and resolutions. The United States boycotted each of the three conferences. Jimmy Carter refused to send a delegation to the first conference in 1978; Ronald Reagan refused to participate in the second decade conference in 1982; and the administration of George W. Bush refused to send a delegation to the 2001 conference. The United States refused to send delegations to each of the conferences because of concerns that they would pass resolutions condemning Zionism as a form of racism. In addition, at the 2001 conference Secretary of State Colin Powell, on behalf of the George W. Bush administration, expressed concerns about a resolution proposed by African and African-American leaders condemning slavery as a crime against humanity and calling for reparations.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 19:35:02 +0000
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