Applying the Human Rights Perspective to the US?

By Lidija Knuth, a research fellow at the Kirwan Institute

It is not news that the majority of US citizens still consider international human rights to be something redundant. The arguments are well known: one is that 'the United Nations treaties are furthering the U.N.'s leftist agenda' and another states that 'it is up to the American people and their government to determine the best course of action to address the various issues based on America's unique history and traditions'.

The reality is that the US, a country that claims to be a role model for most other countries in the world in terms of democracy and civil rights, has failed to ratify many important international human rights treaties. For example, while to date 90 countries have already ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and 193 States of the world are parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Washington still has not ratified these treasties. The US also has not joined any of the major International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions guaranteeing core labor rights to organize and engage in collective bargaining. This exceptionalism is also manifested in the reservations the US attached to those treaties it has joined. The US ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) rejected that treaty's inclusion of effect as well as intent in determining whether laws and practices are discriminatory.

The latest example of the US government's approach towards international human rights mechanisms is its reaction towards the concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). CERD is an international 18 member Expert Committee that issued its latest observations in February of this year concerning US laws, policies and programs, and their progress in the elimination of racial discrimination. The Committee drew its conclusions after having heard from the US government and representatives of the US Human Rights Network, and after having reviewed the US state report and so called shadow reports submitted by NGOs. Although the US delegation approached its task diplomatically, it pointedly disagreed with the CERD Committee on key issues, suggesting at various points that the disparities observed by the Committee were merely the result of poverty, or related to personal behaviours, and that disparities in criminal justice outcomes are based on differential rates of commission of crimes.

Instead of taking the CERD observations seriously, (such as urging the US government “to intensify its efforts aimed at reducing the phenomenon of residential segregation based on racial, ethnic and national origin, as well as its negative consequences for the affected individuals and groups”), think tanks—whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies—still argue that these observations “address issues and allegations regarding race in the United States very little”.
Unfortunately the majority of the US public takes such arguments (articulated through the mainstream media and proclaimed by various think tanks) seriously instead of holding its government accountable and claiming that it adhere to its human rights obligations which correlatively constitute their human rights.

Barack Obama and Exceptional Black People

Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Assistant professor in the Department History with a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute

With Barack Obama on the cusp of securing the Democratic nomination for President of these here United States, it appears that white Americans (at least those who don’t live in Appalachia or think that Ann Coulter is the second coming of Mother Theresa) are in fact ready for a black President. But does this mean that white Americans are ready for black people? Dramatic pause…Jeopardy music….buzzer…..time for the answer….Nope. I hate to burst the bubble of those who believe that “We Americans” (and by “We Americans” I don’t mean everyone, just white Americans, kind of like the framers of the US Constitution when they wrote “We the people”) are on the cusp of a post-racial society, because we aren’t. We aren’t even close. But how can this be if “We Americans” are ready for a black President?

The truth of the matter is that ordinary white Americans over the last few decades have shown a remarkable ability to embrace African American super celebrities. When it comes to Oprah or Tiger or Magic or Michael (Jordan that is, not Jackson, even white people realize that Michael Jackson has lost his mind) race no longer matters. They are considered extraordinary individuals who have mastered their craft. They are admired and idolized for their professional accomplishments. Until now, the colorblindness that African American peak performers have enjoyed has been limited to those in the arts, entertainment, and sports. What we’re seeing in this presidential election is the application of this phenomenon to electoral politics. Barack Obama has become a super celebrity, and if you don’t believe me, ask any of the 75,000 people who came out to hear him speak in Portland recently.

As a super celebrity, Obama benefits from the personal exposure that ordinary African Americans don’t receive. This enables white Americans to get to know him – his character, his views, his values. Even if this exposure is only superficial – sound bites on CNN or youtube – it’s enough to humanize him, and in the process, ordinary white Americans see that the dominant stereotypes about African Americans simply don’t apply, to him at least.

And here is the rub. Most white Americans see African American super celebrities as different from African Americans as a whole. These African Americans are not just exceptional individuals; they are exceptions to the group. They are articulate, well-mannered, hardworking, family oriented, and most importantly, uninterested in speaking about white supremacy. This is why Rev. Jeremiah Wright troubled so many white people, even staunch Obama supporters. Rev. Wright, in their eyes, represented the real black America – he was angry, unpatriotic, unchristian, and secretly hated white people. Those on the far Right pointed to Obama’s pastor and said, “See, we told you Obama was black. And you know what that means – he’s angry, unpatriotic, unchristian, and secretly hates white people. So don’t even think about voting for him. Better yet, you better hide the women and the children!” And many months earlier, Rush Limbaugh warned white Americans not to be fooled by the Jedi mind tricks of this “magic Negro” who has snookered so many people into believing that he is something other than a black man. On the Left, when the Rev. Wright “controversy” surfaced, quite a few asked, “Could this be true? Is Obama really like the rest of them? We thought he was different.” Consequently, they called for Obama to renounce, denounce, reject, forsake, or forswear his pastor. And when he finally did after Rev. Wright’s performance at the National Press Club, they said, “Whew, that was close. For a second, we really thought Obama was like the rest of them. Welcome back to colorblind stardom.”

So, when will we know that America is ready not just for a black president, but for black people? When white Americans realize that the personal characteristics that they admire most about Barack Obama are not his alone, but are shared widely by African Americans. Obama is an exceptional African American, but he is not an African American exception.

An Acceptable Stance for a Black Man

By Wendy Smooth, an assistant professor in the Department of Women’s Studies with a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute

History is breaking on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Well, almost breaking I should say, if an agreement can be reached between an artist and the commission in charge of art for the National Mall. Some years ago, the US Congress passed legislation to erect a monument of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the National Mall. King will become the first non US president to have a memorial erected in his honor at the foot of the Tidal Basin. This has not come about without its share of controversy. The latest is the depiction of King at the memorial site. The US Commission of Fine Arts who is responsible for overseeing projects for the National Mall has demanded that the artist Lei Yixin alter his depiction of Dr. King because the Commission finds the artist’s interpretation of King “too confrontational.” How did we get to a moment in which Dr. King, one who critiqued America’s system of racial apartheid and called on the nation to hold to the values she expressed in the constitution, could be read as anything other than confrontational? King is the iconic figure of a movement that was rooted in speaking truth to power and standing up to the powers that be in the face of great danger and ultimately death. However, today in our memories of Dr. King we conceptualize him as anything but confrontational. Talk about a recasting of history! In an op-ed appearing on theroot.com, Ibram Rogers captures it best writing, “King was never happy with America, so why are the Feds forcing him to smile now?”

Many bloggers and columnists are commenting on how this takes King out of context, so I won’t belabor that point. However, I am interested in why in the midst of honoring King he must appear more “meditative” and “less rigid”? This requirement builds on other situations in which racial reconciliatory moments have come at a cost. Moving forward and engaging in racial reconciliation seems to require that those who have experienced oppression relinquish the realities of their historic wrongs. Those who have a history of getting the shaft are often expected to bear the cost of racial transformation or reconciliation. Bearing the cost means exhibiting a willingness to pocket the pain, dispersing of any feelings of anger, disappointment, or condemnation. At any moment in which their well-earned anger is expressed they have violated the unspoken rules of reconciliation.

Now, I have always answered affirmatively the question “Can’t we all just get along?” but the question I find myself asking over and over again in powerful moments of racial transformation is on who’s terms and at what costs will this getting along occur? Does our collective “getting along” necessitate that we come to the table ignoring the conditions and histories of those who have experienced oppression at the hands of those in power? This is at the forefront of my thinking with every step of the O’Bama campaign beginning with his attempt at running a deracialized campaign yet running into the “black enough/ too black” debates. This is echoed for me with the controversy over Michelle O’Bama’s comment that she is proud of her country for the first time. And it is at the core of the outrage over Jeremiah Wright’s comments that America has not lived up to its creed. It concerns me that coming together must happen without recognition or note of the suffering that some have endured. Isn’t it possible to allow people who have suffered greatly to acknowledge their past and yet move forward together?

Facing the Re-emergence of Race-as-Biology

By Andrew Grant-Thomas, Deputy Director of the Kirwan Institute

That race is socially constructed is widely seen as a truism within academia. Racial meanings, we argue, are not inscribed biologically on the bodies to which racial identities attach, but instead owe to particularities of history, geography, and politics.

Today, the scientific consensus about the relationship between race and biology is fraying. It’s true that we have never behaved as if we really believed that race is “socially constructed.” Within and outside the academy we talk and write about Whites, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans as if these were natural, well-defined groups of people that have always existed as such. The 2000 Census was the first that allowed respondents to “mark all that apply” in identifying themselves racially.

Even as we have continued to act as if race were an objective fact, and a specifically biological one, for some time now that conventional wisdom has lacked the imprimatur of Science. This is changing, and we can expect the effects of that change to ripple increasingly into the cultural mainstream.

In 1994, the publication of The Bell Curve marked popular re-engagement with the relationship between race and genetics and its implications for social outcomes and policy. A decade later, the FDA approved its first race-targeted drug, a heart failure medication for African Americans. Recent developments in genetic science lead some to argue that race remains a useful proxy for genetic variations meaningful in the health context.

Last fall, Nobel Laureate James Watson, who helped discover the double-helix structure of DNA in the 1950’s, said that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really.”

Remarks like these and a long, grim history of scientific authority in the service of racist ideology have sparked concerns about the destructive ends the re-emerging notion of race-as-biology could be made to serve. We must not run from the work or the rhetoric. Instead, we must engage and understand them, ask our own questions, and shape informed, thoughtful responses.

What is the evidence for the biological basis of race? What do we know and what remains to be learned? What is the relationship between “race-as-biology,” and race, defined sociologically? How can we take advantage of the promise of genetic science without falling prey to the pitfalls of biological reductionism?

To be continued.

Toast for a thing named love…

By Hiram José Irizarry Osorio, Research Associate at the Kirwan Institute

“I toast for the woman, but for one, for the one that offered me her raptures and wrapped me in her kisses; for the woman who lulled me to sleep in the cradle.

“For the woman who taught me as a child the value of exquisite, deep, and real fondness; for the woman who lulled me to sleep in her arms and who gave me in pieces, one by one, the entire heart.”

These are a few of the last strophes of a long poem entitled in Spanish “El brindis del bohemio”. In this poem, a series of male friends take turns toasting the end of another year in a bar. The translated strophes included here are delivered by the last of these bohemians. In contradistinction to his preceding toasters, he decides to toast for that particular and important women of his life: his Mother.

This poem is recited every December 31st (on TV and radio) in Puerto Rico. It was not written by a Puerto Rican, but I do remember when growing up, our New Year’s Eve family parties came to a complete stop to listen to low-pitched baritone voiced men reciting this poem. As a child, and even until recently, I did not give much thought to it. More than anything else, this poem’s reciting felt like a nuisance to me and an interruption of the good times I was having with my cousins, because of the need to stop playing and listen to a bunch of old men talking around a table, reading -incomprehensible words for me. In other words, I was always looking forward to its end (and it was a long wait because the poem is quite long). I felt no connection whatsoever with the subject matter of this poem: a bunch of bohemians toasting about their female adventures, with the exception of the last one, toasting in remembrance of his dead mother.

Why do I write about this? I do so because yesterday in many countries in the world (although not all of course), Mothers’ Day was celebrated.

A day like today, a mother that needed to suffer the lost of a son one day after Mother’s Day in 1981 was Cedella Marley Booker. Bob Marley passed away on Monday May 11, 1981. Because of this, I would like to close this entry with a quote from him: “Overcome the devils with a thing named love”.

Would we be able to do so? Would we be able to embrace love and transcend those socially constructed divisions that are so real, while imagined? That is for us to decide and do, but in the meantime let us toast for that nature’s “monster” of love and caring (like Lope de Vega was once called, “el monstruo de la naturaleza”, for his creative and prolific literary genius): Mothers.

“Mama,” this is my treat to you from afar (now empathizing a bit more with that last bohemian because of the geographic distance between us while living): I love you. Let the work toward justice continue once we have re-fueled and embraced motherly love…