Posted on: Wednesday, September 5, 2001

Editorial
Racism conference failing in its mission

The tragedy of the U.N. racism conference in Durban, South Africa, is that in being co-opted by the vociferous forces of anti-Zionism, the assemblage failed to make progress on its charter:

That is, to live up to its billing as a World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

The row over Israel has caused the conference to neglect other equally important problems. Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's president, fumed: "It is wrong to treat this whole issue of racism, which affects millions of people, including in the United States, as if it's subsidiary to the Middle East."

The conference appeared close to collapse after the United States and Israel walked out in protest of Arab countries and their Third World allies, who were determined to use the conference as a platform to assail Israel.

The Canadians were considering walking out as well, and the Europeans were playing their cards close to their vests as negotiations, led by the Norwegians, faltered.

The question that may be unanswerable is whether the United States, by attending in full force led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, might by dint of moral suasion have guided the conference away from shipwreck and toward positive accomplishment.

By sending a mid-level delegation, Washington seemed to have written the conference off as hopeless.

As indeed it may have been. Zionism wasn't the only stumbling block; another is a dispute concerning slavery and colonialism.

African and black American campaigners want the conference to declare that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a "crime against humanity," and that colonialism was a form of racism. Many want an apology for both ills, and some want financial reparations.

No one disputes that slavery was an abomination, but Washington does not want to apologize for it, on the rather thin pretext that it might come back to haunt the government in U.S. courts.

Several prominent African-Americans are planning to sue the U.S. government for compensation for slavery. They claim that America owes them a multibillion-dollar debt for exploiting their ancestors.

The suit is unlikely to succeed. What jury would decide that current American taxpayers, none of whom has ever enslaved anyone, owe money to black Americans who have never been enslaved? Senegal's president, Abdoulaye Wade, pointed out that he was himself descended from a wealthy family of slave-owners, and asked if anyone was going to claim compensation from him.

Other African leaders have a point in asking Western nations to increase aid to their struggling economies rather than pay reparations.

Both the anti-Zionists and the pro-reparations forces have the right to be heard in vigorous debate. But it's tragic that this theoretically promising conference — in preparation for about six years — had to be hijacked by them.