[NYTr] Report on Race Whitwashes Reality of Discrimination in US

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

US Human Right Network via Common Dreams - Dec 10, 2007
http://www.commondreams.org/news2007/1210-03.htm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - DECEMBER 10, 2007
	

CONTACT: US Human Rights Network
Ateqah Khaki and David Lerner, Riptide Communications, 212-260-5000
 
Whitewash: Human Rights Group Says 
US Report On Race Covers Up Reality of Discrimination in America

Human Rights Network Issues “Shadow Report” to UN Committee Report
Challenging State Department View 

NEW YORK - December 10 - A report released today by the US Human Rights
Network (USHRN), a coalition of over 250 social justice and human
rights groups across the country, charged the Bush Administration with
failing to comply with its obligations under the International
Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination
(ICERD), an international treaty that carries the force of law in the
United States. The report, known as a shadow report, was filed with the
United Nations committee that monitors compliance with the treaty based
in Geneva.

“Our analysis reveals that the Bush Administration is utterly out of
touch with the reality of racial discrimination in America,” said Ajamu
Baraka, the Executive Director of the USHRN. “From failing to address
the chronic persistence of structural racism to even acknowledging the
disparate racial impact on people of color of Hurricane Katrina, the
State Department reports reads like a fantasy; unfortunately a fantasy
that is to often experienced as a nightmare for American’s of color,”
he added.

The Convention, adopted by the United States in 1969, requires
signatory countries to periodically report on their progress in
identifying, correcting, and remedying racism and racial
discrimination. The U.S. quietly submitted a report to the U.N.
Committee that monitors compliance with the Convention last spring.
Lisa Crooms, a Howard University law professor, and an author of the
USHRN report says the State Department report “blatantly overlooks and
misrepresents ongoing racial disparities and discrimination in the US.”
Among the concerns identified in the USHRN analysis are:

    * The U.S. government's report does not mention the internationally
recognized race and poverty related impacts of Hurricane Katrina and
its aftermath.

    * The report completely ignores the issue of policy brutality,
recognized by many Americans as one of the most blatant and common
forms of ongoing differential treatment based on race.

    * The report does not discuss the well documented “school to prison
pipeline,” in which discriminatorily applied “zero tolerance” policies
and criminal justice based responses to overcrowding and under
resourcing of public schools drive children of color out of schools and
into the prison system

    * Required to provide information about compliance with the
Convention at the State level, the government only chose to provide
comprehensive information on four states: Oregon, South Carolina,
Illinois and New Mexico, notably overlooking States with some of the
country's largest populations of people of color and immigrants, such
as New York, California, Texas and Florida, as well as the Gulf Coast
States victimized by Katrina.

    * The government's report suggests that stark racial disparities in
incarceration rates (African Americans and Latino/as make up 60% of the
over 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, but less than
a quarter of the population) may be “related to differential
involvement in crime” rather than a result of the cumulative impacts of
racial disparities in the treatment of minorities at every stage of the
criminal justice process. Adding insult to injury, the U.S. report
fails to cite evidence that rates of involvement in many criminalized
activities, including drug use, are actually very similar across race.

    * The report highlights training and outreach programs for law
enforcement agencies encouraging sensitivity to Arab and Muslim
communities developed in the aftermath of 9/11, while completely
failing to acknowledge widespread racially and ethnically targeted law
enforcement practices such as the special registration program and
aggressive round-ups and interviews of thousands of non-citizen
Muslims, Arabs and South Asians.

    * Indigenous people continue to suffer profound and ongoing effects
of the legacy of colonialism and racial discrimination in the U.S. 

The report was simultaneously submitted, on behalf national, state and
local organizations from across the country, to the U.N. Committee
today. The same committee will be questioning the U.S. government on
its compliance with its obligations under the Convention early next
year, as a counterpoint to the U.S. report.

To view a copy of the shadow report submitted by the US Human Rights
Network, please visit:
http://lacccenter.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/shadowrptsummary2008.doc

The US Human Rights Network was formed to promote US accountability to
universal human rights standards by building linkages between
organizations and individuals. The Network strives to build a human
rights culture in the United States that puts those directly affected
by human rights violations, with a special emphasis on grassroots
organizations and social movements, in a central leadership role. The
Network also works towards connecting the US human rights movement with
the broader US social justice movement and human rights movements
around the world. To learn more, please visit:
http://www.ushrnetwork.org

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