Horace Campbell
3 July 2009
With the US Senate approving a resolution formally acknowledging the historic injustice behind slavery and the country's 'Jim Crow' laws on 18 June, Horace Campbell asks 'Why now?'
Coming in the same week as a call for a new, multi-polar world order from the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, the timing of the apology from a US Senate edgy about the internationalisation of reparations claims is no coincidence, Campbell argues. But with the Senate clear that the resolution offers no scope for any 'claim' against the United States, Campbell situates such action within an established tradition of pre-emptive apologies designed to inhibit further action. With political circles in the US keen to ensure the country's access to Africa's abundant resources, resolutions such as the US Senate's represent an attempt to replace crude conservative tactics with a more nuanced approach to imperial expansion, Campbell contends, an approach which must be countered by sustained will from progressive forces around the world to see reparative justice fulfilled.
On Thursday 18 June 2009, the US Senate approved a resolution formally acknowledging the 'fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws' that enshrined racial segregation at the state- and local-level in the United States well into the 1960s.
Congress apologised 'to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws.' The apology also recommitted members of the US Senate 'to the principle that all people are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, call[ing] on all people of the United States to work toward eliminating racial prejudices, injustices, and discrimination from our society.'
The question however is why is the US Senate apologising at this time?
This articles argues that the US government is afraid of the recreation of a second Bandung where the peoples of Asia, Africa, Latin America and African-Americans come together to break the powers of the former slaveholders.
OUTCOMES OF THE STRUGGLES OVER THE 2009 DURBAN REVIEW CONFERENCE
Is the US Senate apologising in 2009 because of the new wave of reparative claims by India (over Gandhi's glasses) and by China (over the bronze head) and the new activism on the part of Brazil? The government of Italy forced museums all over the USA to return looted artefacts. Africans are pressing UNESCO to support the return of looted cultural treasures. These global struggles for reparations should remind readers that the apology should not be read in isolation from a new moment in international politics.
The reparations movement among Africans is as old as the anti-slavery movement, but this movement has been growing in the past 20 years. The reparations movement continues to be a grassroots movement. So many of the present black leaders are compromised by their relationship to the former colonial powers, and so one cannot turn to governments to learn about this global movement. Moreover, as the late Pan-Africanist Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem argued in one of his statements on reparations, it is in the interests of the US government to see that there are no strong connections between the reparations movement in the United States and the reparations movement in Africa and in other parts of the pan-African world.
At the inter-governmental level in Africa, the former Organization of African Unity (OAU) Legal Committee for Reparations had been a vibrant force in exposing the criminal and genocidal actions of the colonial overlords. The OAU had established a group of eminent persons, headed by Chief Abiola of Nigeria. The imprisonment and derailing of the democratic process in Nigeria was linked to the fear of the Nigerian people's throwing their collective energies behind the reparations movement. Following the death of Abiola, the OAU committee of eminent persons on reparations became comatose. The African Union (AU) has not given the same measure of support to the eminent persons. Moreover, many European states have been opposed to the centralisation of reparations within the platform of the African Union.
Hence within the pan-African world the main supporters for reparations at the state level have been from the states of Latin America and the Caribbean (Barbados, Brazil, Cuba and Venezuela). There are over 150 million African descendants in Latin America and these forces came into international prominence in the formation of the African descendant caucus at the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR). These are the forces that provided a lot of pressure for the reconvening of the World Conference Against Racism through the Review Conference in Geneva in April 2009, which the US boycotted.
THE DURBAN MEETING 2001
The third World Conference Against Racism was held in Durban in 2001. This conference had agreed on language reflecting the mass support for the recognition of the transatlantic Slave Trade as a crime against humanity.
This was a great victory insofar as the caucus of Africans and African descendants had agreed on language relating to the three important points:
- The transatlantic Slave Trade, slavery and colonialism are crimes against humanity.
- Reparations due for Africans and African descendants.
- Recognition of the economic basis of racism.
These three points were studied and circulated widely throughout the African world before the meeting, and in the final declaration of the conference the language of the declaration reflected these positions. These points remain the core organising ideas within the pan-African movement for reparations. After September 11 2001, the US government and its propaganda apparatus used the scare of terrorism to close off debate on the question of reparations.
It was in light of the preparations of the peoples of African descent that the US and Britain intensified their cooperation to isolate and marginalise the discussion on reparations. It was also significant that, in the main, the European and North American Left never supported the reparations movement. The US went on a massive campaign to organise internationally to take the issue of reparations out of the agenda of the United Nations. Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, was forced out of her position at the UN Human Rights Commission because of her principled position in supporting the follow up to the WCAR.
The issues of Palestine, the Dalit in India, and the reparations question surfaced as major dividing points before the meeting and caused a sharp division between the countries that were formerly colonised and the countries of the EU and the USA. Time and space does not allow for the depth of the issues of Palestine, but it is important to note that the Palestinian question brought out more information on the real strength of the Israeli lobby in the United States.[1] The issue of the nature of the Israeli lobby in the United States again came to the fore in 2009 over the matter of US participation in the Durban Review Conference in Geneva.
THE DURBAN REVIEW CONFERENCE 2009
For every UN conference, whether on women, the environment or development, there had been a review after five years. Three of the five permanent members of the Security Council - the United States, Britain and France - opposed a review of the Durban conference. The supporters of the State of Israel within the US Congress mounted fierce opposition to the participation of the United States in the Review Conference. Regionally, Brazil and Cuba were supporting the Review Conference while in Africa, the South Africans supported this review. China and Russia were the two other firm supporters of the Review Conference. Western Europeans had always sought to set the agenda for the rest of the world and failing to set the anti-racist agenda, the leading members of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) boycotted the conference. In the US the boycott was premised on the basis of the supposed anti-Semitism of the final document of the Durban Review Conference.
The other 8 countries that boycotted could not put up this pretence.
This is what Samir Amin had to say about the reasons for the boycott of the Review Conference by the United States.
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