International Day Against Racism

You might not have known it (due to the staggering lack of media coverage) but today is the International Day Against Racism.

On this day in 1960, police in Sharpeville, South Africa, shot and killed 69 people (including eight women and ten children) who were demonstrating peacefully against apartheid. More than 80% of those massacred had been shot in the back.

In 1966, the UN General Assembly called on the international community to increase its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination, and designated March 21st as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Kofi Annan, U.N. Secretary General, today called on everyone, from parents to schools to governments, to fight everyday discrimination:

The focus of this year’s commemoration, “Fighting Everyday Discrimination”, challenges us to take meaningful steps to fight commonplace discriminatory practices in our societies. We are all aware that many of man’s greatest atrocities have had racial underpinnings, but the collective toll inflicted by routine racism is frequently overlooked. Indeed, the edifices of humanity’s most horrific crimes have often been built on the foundations of banal bigotry.

From name-calling in schools to hiring and firing decisions in the workplace, from selective media or police coverage of crimes to unequal provision of Government services, the mistreatment of racial or ethnic groups not only abounds in our societies, but often passes unchallenged. That such everyday racism remains prevalent is undeniable. But for it to pass unchallenged is unconscionable.

We must not tolerate the creeping rot of routine discrimination. Nor can we resign ourselves to it as a regrettable attribute of human nature. None of us is born to hate. Intolerance is taught and can be untaught. Legal guarantees are a fundamental part of this fight. But education must be its vanguard. Education can foster awareness and cultivate tolerance. It should begin at home -- where, after all, many racist attitudes have their origin -- continue in school, and become integral to our public discourse. In this struggle against intolerance, citizens must simultaneously be teachers and students.

The United Nations, through its awareness programs, international law-making and rights-monitoring roles, has an important part to play. But all of us need to join this battle. On this International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, let us reaffirm that ultimate success in this struggle rests with ordinary citizens speaking out against “ordinary” intolerance. It is they who must refuse to tolerate discriminatory acts in their daily lives. It is they who must ensure that there is nothing “everyday” about discrimination. And it is they who will benefit the most from communities built on rights and respect for all.

Today is also the anniversary of another important moment in the struggle against racism.

On March 21, 1965, more than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began their "Freedom March" from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to win voting rights for African Americans.

According to an article published in the N.Y. Times the following day:

Backed by the armed might of the United States, 3,200 persons marched out of Selma today on the first leg of a historic venture in nonviolent protest.

The marchers, or at least many of them, are on their way to the State Capitol at Montgomery to submit a petition for Negro rights Thursday to Gov. George C. Wallace, a man with little sympathy for their cause.

Today was the third attempt for the Alabama Freedom March. On the first two, the marchers were stopped by state troopers, the first time with tear gas and clubs.

The article adds:

The marchers, a large majority of them Negroes, walked a little over seven miles today.

Governor Wallace is not expected to be at the State Capitol when the marchers arrive at the end of their 54-mile journey. An aide has said that he will probably be "in Michigan, or someplace" making a speech Thursday.

The article goes on to quote Dr. King:

"You will be the people that will light a new chapter in the history books of our nation. Those of us who are Negroes don't have much. We have known the long night of poverty. Because of the system, we don't have much education and some of us don't know how to make our nouns and verbs agree. But thank God we have our bodies, our feet and our souls."

"Walk together, children, don't you get weary, and it will lead us to the promised land. And Alabama will be a new Alabama, and America will be a new America."

Resources:

"None of us is born to hate" - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

The Big Parade: On the Road to Montgomery - NY Times article

Tags: Racism, Race, Freedom March, United Nations, Martin Luther King Jr.

Posted by elcanche at March 21, 2006 11:00 PM