Obama should have attended U.N. racism conference

I am missing something here. President Barack Obama just went to Europe and Iraq and made speeches saying that he would be deferential to Communist China, that he would meet without conditions with the leadership of Iran and that he wanted to open up a new relationship with the Islamic world. Then he went to the Conference of the Americas in Trinidad and shook the hand of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela who has said some devilish things about America and the Bush administration. But the key issue that took the conference over was the American overture to Cuba to talk, in response to Raul Castro’s statement that he would talk with the U.S. and that everything would be on the table. Moreover, the Obama administration has said that it wanted to open up a new chapter in its relationship with the United Nations. To that end, it has appointed an African-American Ambassador and put in its application for a seat on the Human Rights Commission. Against this background, the decision of the Obama administration not to go to the United Nations Conference On Racism in Geneva, Switzerland April 20-24 would appear to be a powerful refutation of this relatively liberal approach to the international community it has established.

This was a conference on racism, which means that the interests of those who experienced racism around the world and especially in this country were involved in their representation at this forum. Not only are African-Americans implicated as victims of racism because of their experiences in this country, they are taxpayers and should be able to depend upon representation by their government to deal with this issue in such a forum. Then, of course, there is the obvious point that an African-American president and an African-American U. N. Ambassador are involved in this decision not to send a representative.

No doubt, they would protest that they are following the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement in their position and thus their right to make such a decision, but its basis seems to be narrow and counter to the worldwide problem of racism.

The administration sent a delegation to Geneva in February to the preliminary meeting and left concerned about the fact that language equating Zionism with racism was carried forth from the Durban Conference of 2001 to this one. On that basis, they decided – like their counterpart Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell – not to send an official delegation.

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