Fallacies at the UN Racism Conference

1. Who is boycotting the UN Racism Conference? Those who have historically perpetrated oppression on people of colour and post-colonization, are racist societies: America, Australia, the UK, France, Holland, Germany, etc.

2. These same countries are the ones who signed a document made at the end of the last UN Racism conference in Durban in 2001, that had a sort of blueprint for tackling racism and xenophobia. Unsurprisingly, they've done little to nothing that showed any commitment to the actions outlined in those documents.

3. There is nothing 'racist' or inciteful said against Israel in those documents. Their claims that this conference is hateful and racist towards Israel has no basis in the first place.


INGRID JARADAT: Well, our first response has been the question whether these governments have actually read the original documents and the draft documents, because neither the original Durban Declaration and Program of Action nor current drafts include any inciting language against Israel. In the initial Durban documents of 2001, the only time Israel is mentioned it’s mentioned as a state entitled to security like all other states. So there is no—there has never been any sort of language that could be declared racist. And it makes you really wonder which documents people are referring to when they say they are antagonistic.

4. Its also messed up anyway that Israel isn't even called out on for what it is - a racist, apartheid state. The only one who said anything was of course, Ahmadinejad.

---- Therefore the countries who are boycotting the UN Racism Conference are Western countries who have a history of oppression and racism, and are boycotting on the claim that the conference is racist towards Israel, when the conference actually is very very careful to not say ANYTHING against Israel.

5. Obama, a biracial American president with a Kenyan father, boycotts the UN Racism Conference. Clearly the African diaspora present at the conference, is pissed off. And rightly so. Here's a guy who talks about change all day long and has a biracial background and here he is boycotting a racism conference, because he's afraid of what the Israelis might say if he actually took part.


But really, is anyone actually surprised by all of this? Did anyone actually expect Western countries to own up to the atrocities they've committed?


MARGARET PARSONS: I think it’s important to note that this unholy and cynical alliance between what is predominantly white Western countries is them not wanting to have to address the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonization, the occupation of Palestine, and the expropriation of indigenous people’s lands and resources.