By George E. Curry
A war on racism has been
waged all week in Durban, South
Africa, and Colin Powell, the Bush
administration's best-equipped general, has been missing in action.
Actually, it is more like
missing without action. It's not like
the retired four-star general wasn't eager for international combat. It's that
his commander-in-chief ordered him to stay home rather than return to his
ancestral homeland. The purported reason was that the United
States, a country that prides itself on its
First Amendment protection of free speech, was afraid that what might be said
at the gathering would "isolate" its pal, Israel.
Consequently, a low-profile
diplomat led the U.S. delegation to the World
Conference Against Racism (WCAR). But
just because the U.S.
attached low-level significance to the world conference, many other countries did
not. There were more than 15 heads of states representing their respective
nations.
Not only did this country's
head of state decline to attend, but he wouldn't even let the head of the State
Department participate. Despite being
Bushwhacked, the show went on in Durban.
"Each conference helps to reveal
the global dimension of a problem, and thereby creates new networks-bringing
new participants from many countries into a common debate, and sometimes
leading to a worldwide campaign," explained U.N. Secretary General Kofi
Annan. "I believe that is happening here."
And what is happening on the
world stage stands in sharp contrast to what is happening in the U.S.
Increasingly, other nations are willing to face up to past sins by offering reparations-making
amends for a past wrong or injury inflicted-and public apologies. Germany has
agreed to pay $60 billion to victims of the Holocaust. Japan is compensating
its "comfort women" and Austria
has set up a $380 million fund to compensate Nazi-era slave laborers. Even the U.S.
has paid $1.2 billion to Japanese-Americans placed in concentration camps
during World War II. But it wanted no part in seriously discussing reparations
at the international conference.
On the eve of WCAR, Pope
John Paul II said that at the very least there should be an "apology or
expression of regret to the victim state by the state responsible for the wrong."
The official statement from the Vatican
added, "It is not the church's task to propose a technical solution to so
complex a problem. But the Holy See wishes to emphasize that the need for
reparation reinforces the obligation of giving substantial help to developing
countries, an obligation weighing chiefly on the more developed countries."
It was not the first time
John Paul felt the need to speak out on the issue. In 1992, while visiting Goree
Island, near Senegal,
the Pope asked forgiveness for the role Christians played in the trafficking of
African slaves. Contrast such
forthrightness with Bush's insensitivity on the issue. Bush is in a state of denial.
Or, to put it in the vernacular, "'de Nile isn't just a river in Egypt."
But most Whites are in
denial, according to a Gallup Poll issued this summer. "Large differences between
the views of White and Black Americans persist on key measures of the state of
race relations in the U.S.,"
a summary of the findings noted. "One in four White Americans-and one in
10 Black Americans-believes that Blacks are treated the same as Whites in the United
States." Moreover, the survey found,
nearly half of all Whites and two-thirds of all African-Americans think race
relations will always be a problem in this country.
Since the New Deal, dealing
forthrightly with the issue of race has been a major problem for the Republican
Party. That's why it would have been a smart move to dispatch Powell to Durban,
a move that would have helped Bush's anemic standing among African-Americans
and would have signaled to the rest of the world that although not perfect, the
U.S. is willing
to place a high priority on dealing with the legacy of slavery and colonialism.
In a one-on-one interview I conducted
with Powell in 1996 on BET's "Lead Story," the general acknowledged
that many African-Americans were suspicious of him because he rose through the
ranks with the help of conservative benefactors.
"I was elevated to the
highest positions within the national security structure of America
by Republican presidents," Powell said in the interview. "It was
Ronald Reagan who made me the first Black deputy national security advisor. It
was Ronald Reagan who made me the first Black national security advisor. It was
George Bush who made me the first Black chairman of the joint Chiefs of
Staff."
But Powell was quick to
specifically thank civil rights stalwarts Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse
Jackson and Joseph Lowery for opening doors that allowed him to advance in the
U.S. Army before coming to the attention of Republican presidents. Under George W. Bush, Powell became the first
African-American secretary of state. But instead of leading a diplomatic
entourage to an international conference on racism, the retired general is
being treated like a buck private. George
E. Curry is former editor-in-chief of Emerge: Black America's Newsmagazine. He
can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com.