Reflections on Durban and the war: Rinku Sen compares U.S. behavior at the World Conference Against Racism and after 9/11.

Before September 11, the big news among people who cared about race was the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa. Although that conference has been largely overlooked as the country was swept up by that day's attacks and the subsequent war on Afghanistan, Durban events point to important lessons for activists. The broadened definition of racism embraced by the WCAR enabled the inclusion of anti-Semitism as a racial issue, and, ironically, worked to position the Bush Administration's racist response to terrorism. Before and after September 11, the Administration has attempted to redefine the real racists and control the debate to build public support for its actions. Before and after September 11, activists have learned that the line between domestic and foreign policy is thinner than we thought, requiring us to take on new strategies.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Durban was the inclusion of "xenophobia and related intolerances," which raised the prospects of many oppressed groups. Because racial and ethnic groups from around the world have been shut out of other UN conferences, WCAR provided an important opportunity to hit the world stage. Thus, groups refrained their grievances and struggles to fir into a frame of structural racism. So, caste, national origin, forms of religious repression, efforts to promote indigenous rights, and anti-colonial struggles were all framed racially.

Clearly, anti-Semitism fits into this framework as a related intolerance, a connection that has been made by many racial justice activists in the U.S. However, the Administration used that opening to control the Durban debate and set the stage for a racist resurgence in foreign and domestic policy. Early in the conference preparation, the U.S. government threatened to boycott the conference on the premise that the insistence of Arab states in addressing the Israeli government's military behavior constituted anti-Semitic racism. U.S. government delegates explicitly communicated this frame to other governments, U.S. non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the press. Deborah Carr, director of the Interagency Task Force on the WCAR told U.S. NGOs, "We can't participate in a conference that is in itself racist." With its concentration on protecting Israel from Arab criticism, the Administration advanced Islamaphobic stereotypes of Arab nations as extremist anti-Semites, anti-Americans and bad team players withi n the UN.

The U.S. media picked up this characterization and ran with it. On August 16, the New York Times ran an editorial entitled "A Mean Spirited UN Conference" defending the U.S. boycott on the basis of Middle East issues. "Arab countries are irresponsibly proposing that the conference single out Israel for criticism...The Bush Administration is rightly incensed by these efforts and must use its influence to block them."

The media focus only got narrower during the conference itself. Manning Marable, professor of history and political science at Columbia University, said his attempts to work with a New York Times reporter to place stories reflecting the variety of WCAR issues were thwarted by her editor's daily insistence on "more about Israel and Palestine."

While the press accused Arabs of hijacking the conference and distracting the UN from dealing with legitimate racial issues such as the struggles of Dalits and Roma, few in the mainstream shifted the blame to the shoulders of the U.S. government. The threat and actual boycott created a red herring forcing U.S. NGOs away from focusing on racial disparities in criminal justice and education, indigenous and immigrant rights. The most common question I encountered from NGO and government delegates from other countries was not "what are the problems you deal with," but "what do you think of your government's boycott?"

Defining the Terms