New York, US (PANA) – Debunking the myth of racial hierarchy is imperative to deconstruct, on a global scale, the ideological myth of a superior race and the resulting conviction of a superior culture, UN experts on racial discrimination said last week.
Speaking at a special event at the UN headquarters in New York on “Confronting the Silence: Perspectives and Dialogue on Structural Racism against people of African Descent Worldwide”, Ms. Mireille Fanon-Mendes, Chair of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, said attacks on human dignity were elaborated due to “supposed hierarchy of races and cultures and do not concern only one or another, but the entire international community.”
In addition to historical consequences people of African descent had to face, Ms. Fanon-Mendes said they are with Africans the only ones subject to discrimination based on skin colour.
“The hierarchy of races is scientifically false, morally condemnable, and socially unjust,” she stated, urging UN member states to reverse the “process of invisibility and inferiority that the people of African descent face and to acknowledge their legitimate aspirations.”
“Through the coordination of UN member states and civil society will help in ensuring that the legacy of this terrible history is overcome,” she pointed out, and called for “historicizing slave trade in order to achieve an assumed and shared history and to form an accurate sequence of the order of construction of racism.”
According to the expert, questioning the political and social construction of race, including its role at the time of the abolition of slavery during which the freemen had no other choice than to continue working on the plantations of their former masters, “is an essential step if we want to emerge from a traumatic past.”
Ms. Fanon-Mendes stressed the need to deconstruct all assumed racial myths by “flushing out” any factor that contributes to inequality and structural discrimination.
Another speaker, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Harry Belafonte, recalled his time with legendary African American actor, Paul Robeson, who had said artists are the gatekeepers of truth, and humanity’s moral compass.
Mr. Belafonte said: “To ensure respect and honour for human dignity, I am using arts as a tool to bring the human family together.”
“While the mighty alliance of the Second World War was supposed to have brought an end to fascism and intolerance, one serious flaw was that the Allies were as guilty of racial oppression as was Hitler.”
“Decades of racial oppression, discrimination and intolerance, before and since the war, have meant that most people of colour know very little about the diaspora…the depth of us as African descendants, is not known one to the other.”
In his view, the UN is the place to sit and have a conversation about settling the affairs of the cruelty of racism and classicism.
Also addressing the event, Mr. Mutuma Ruteere, UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, said the grave issue of racial profiling across the world “impairs the fundamental rights of individuals and groups and expands on discrimination already suffered as a result of ethnic origin or minority status.”
“The manifestation of racial profiling has often been observed in stop and check operations which in some places disproportionately target minority groups.”
“In Europe, for instance, minorities including Roma people suffer unequal levels of stops by police. Similarly people of African descent have historically been subjected to practices of racial profiling,” said Mr. Ruteere.
He remarked that newer patterns of racial and ethnic profiling have surfaced since UN member states took measures to counter terrorism in the recent years.
“Migrants and minority groups have been particularly susceptible to the adverse effects of these new law enforcement practices,” Mr, Ruteere said. “In the context of immigration, official border crossings and hubs of transportation, such as airports, railway stations, and bus depots, have been consistent places where racial and ethnic profiling take place.”
He expressed concern at the creation of “risk profiles” for specific ethic groups by law enforcement agencies, “as this generates fear that racial and ethnic profiling may become a regularized and permanent fixture of immigration and border control management systems around the world.”
Mr. Ruteere also said that racial profiling in administration of justice has led to “unjust and disproportionate punishment of individuals of traditionally discriminated against groups including people of African descent.”
“Studies have identified correlations between racial status and harsher criminal sentences, and evidence from different countries around the world shows that implicit biases have noticeable effects on criminal investigations,” he added.
He observed that a number of UN member states have made efforts to tackle racial profiling through the adoption of laws and policies, the establishment of adequate institutional frameworks such as oversight and
equality bodies; and the implementation of training and awareness-raising initiatives.
“I recommend that States gather law enforcement data, including statistics disaggregated by ethnicity and race, which are essential in order to prove the existence and the extent of racial and ethnic profiling,” he said.
In his remarks, Mr. Ivan Simonovic, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, said that the event was being held in the context of the International Decade for People of African Descent, who, he said are a distinct group that regrettably faces racism and structural discrimination, and continue to face impediments to the realization of their rights.
“Slavery and the slave trade are the basis of the widespread and systemic manifestations of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia, that we seen people of African descent face today,” he said.
The event was organized by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, with the co-sponsorship of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the UN Department of Public Information, UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), Black Lives Matter, and Amnesty International US.
