| Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney speaks
out on need for US participation in UN Conference Against Racism
[8-2-01]
from the Presbyterian Washington Office:
After reading this statement by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, I had
to sit back in my chair and say 'whew.' Some will find this very
partisan. There is partisanship in this statement. Others will find it
refreshing. There is the frustration of an oppressed people in this
statement.
All should find it compelling enough to make a phone
call to the White House to urge President Bush to take the UN World
Conference on Racism seriously enough to send a strong delegation.
There is a possibility that the US will either not
attend or send a low level delegation. If the US wants to continue to
hold its head up as the strongest democracy in the world, then we must
be present. Call the White House at 202-456-1414.
The WCAR will begin on August 28th in Durban, South
Africa.
To keep up with official events and to see the
documents first hand, you may also wish to go to the official web
site of the UN Conference. The PC(USA) will have a delegation in
Durban.
Elenora Ivory
==============
PRESS RELEASE Contact: Jocco Baccus July 31, 2001
202-225-1605
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
(D-GA) WCAR Statement
In recognition of the importance of the Conference
nearly every country has so far indicated a readiness to send
delegations and hundreds of NGOs are sending representatives. The WCAR
is something truly special to the world community and surely, on any
view, something that our country should give complete support to.
Our attendance is especially important because we hold
ourselves out to be a nation that is the champion of human rights and
the preeminent democracy in the world today.
I must say Madam Chair that I am surprised that
President Bush and his Administration do not share this view on the
importance of the WCAR but instead have publicly adopted an
intransigent, if not outwardly hostile, view of the entire Conference.
I find the Bush Administration's public criticisms of
the WCAR at odds with his carefully crafted public image, created for
him by his minders: that is: the "compassionate conservative,"
"a uniter not a divider."
The WCAR is a perfect opportunity for the Bush
Administration to dispel criticisms that they don't care about race
issues and are more content to make empty and meaningless statements
about deploring racism during "meet and greets" on the
campaign trail.
The Bush Administration could use the WCAR to publicly
show a commitment to ending racism in this country. Given that 30% of
the US population consists of people of color and that we have all
experienced racism first hand, I have to wonder if the Bush
Administration's position on the WCAR is just politically dumb or if it
is perhaps indicative of something more malignant.
We all can understand political naivete. However,
these Bush folks got together and conspired to deprive blacks in Florida
of their right to vote. Naivete is not one of their more prominent
characteristics.
I am compelled to ask the obvious question, then, that
no one will ask: Is the Bush White House just full of latent racists?
Could it be that the Bush Administration's opposition
to participating in the World Conference flows naturally from his
Presidential campaign?
We all remember the Bush Presidential Campaign which
featured town hall events with him on stage with selected and
prominently placed blacks, Asians, and Hispanics. Were they there
because he wanted them there or were they there because they were
strategically positioned to be with him inside contrived camera shots?
And we remember how the President spoke in Spanish to
Latino audiences. Did he do that because he really cares about Hispanics
or was it because the politically necessary thing to do.
I've really tried to give the new Administration the
benefit of the doubt.
I've reached out to them on a number of occasions,
offering to work with them on issues affecting people in my district.
But I am becoming concerned that they really don't care about racism. I
think the Administration's opposition to the WCAR is a clear example of
their indifference to racism.
Madam Chair, you can tell a lot about a man the way
they act when they think no one is watching. And I'm watching President
Bush's Administration closely and I've learned a lot from comparing what
the Bush people say publicly and the way they act privately.
I must say that I was speechless that while President
Bush said on many occasions throughout his campaign that he deplored
racism and anti-Semitism; but then he chose to speak at Bob Jones
University in South Carolina - an institution that is well known for its
virulent racist views and homophobic statements. If Bush was at all
sensitive to African Americans and our sensitivity to the racist and
hateful diatribe directed at us by the Bob Jones institution, then
surely he would have not gone there.
Indeed, this is the same institution in which a
Professor attacked GOP Presidential candidate Senator Bob McCain and his
wife for having adopted a young Bangladeshi girl.
If candidate Bush really felt that he had the need to
go and speak and this type of institution, then he should have gone
there and taken the opportunity to publicly condemn the institution for
its vile views on segregation and for sewing the seeds of hate in this
country.
But he didn't do that, instead he went there and
reached out to the racists because he believed that he needed to show
the extreme right in his party that he was still one of them. But the
cost to his credibility as being a uniter and not a divider was great.
While President Bush continued to travel around the country campaigning
and continuing to call out that he deplored racism, he steadfastly
refused to support Hate Crimes legislation in Texas. Not surprisingly he
came under intense criticism for his refusal to intervene in the
execution of Gary Graham despite the availability of evidence pointing
to his innocence on the charge of murder.
And then what of the revelations that the Bush
Campaign's Louisiana campaign chair, Governor Mike Foster, reportedly
purchased mailing lists from the infamous David Duke. How could anyone
priding themselves in being a uniter not a divider believe that no one
would be shocked that a Presidential candidate was going to reach out to
David Duke's base supporters?
So you see Madam Chair, I'm more than a little
suspicious that President Bush is disingenuous with respect to his
opposition to racism and that in truth he really doesn't care about it
at all. And therefore no wonder he doesn't see the need for this country
to support the World Conference Against Racism.
The recently published Henry Kaiser Family
Foundation/Harvard University/Washington Post study on white
misperceptions on the state of black America confirms that President
Bush is not alone in placing little or no importance on racism and the
state of black America. The central finding of the study was that 40-60%
of all whites questioned believed that the average African-American is
faring about as well and perhaps even better than the average white
American and perhaps in some cases even better than the average white
American. But as the study noted, government statistics confirm that
this white view of the state of black America is misplaced and that
black America actually falls way behind whites in terms of employment,
income, education, and access to health.
Despite this evidence that black America still lags
way behind white America, the Clinton Administration undertook to
introduce a number of reforms that were extremely harmful to people of
color in America. President Clinton signed a Crime Bill that increased
the penal population to over 2 million, two-thirds of which are black
and Latino.
The Clinton Administration repealed Welfare and in so
doing took away billions of dollars of subsidies from poor and minority
families.
President Clinton presided over the quiet dismantling
of the affirmative action policy. And he could do that because the
leadership in this country doesn't really believe that black America is
in dire condition, and perhaps worse still, many don't actually care.
This public misconception about the state of black
America is significant and owes much of its pervasiveness today to
decades of leadership figures in our society trivializing both the
history and extent of racism in our society.
Discussion of lynchings, police beatings, slavery,
racial segregation, and poverty in inner city ghettos have all been
reduced to euphemisms like racial discrimination, racial profiling,
strained race relations and economically distressed communities. And
today while the US press is fascinated with the treatment of people in
Sudan and China and routinely describes alleged human rights in those
countries in inordinate detail, the US press seems steadfastly
disinterested in talking about the appalling condition and present day
treatment of people color in this country. And despite the credibility
and timeliness of the Kaiser/Harvard/Washington Post study it largely
passed without and discussion in the mainstream press. And most
importantly, I suspect that the findings of the study would not have
been discussed at all in the White House.
Madam Chair, the World Conference Against Racism is a
perfect opportunity for President Bush to detail a clear commitment to
preserve and extend civil rights in this country. George W. Bush could
use this as an opportunity to allay fears among many of us that his
attendance at Bob Jones University, his refusal to intervene on Gary
Graham's behalf, and his failure to sign Hate Crimes legislation in
Texas are aberrations and not demonstrative of a serious personal flaw
related to racism.
I can tell you with some confidence that if the Bush
Administration fails to provide a serious commitment to the WCAR then he
will live to regret it in 2004.
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