Tag Archives: Racism

Honor Code: Heroism Fit for the Times, Dr. Robert Zuber

25 Jul
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Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with.  Brodi Ashton

We are all ordinary. We are all boring. We are all spectacular. We are all shy. We are all bold. We are all heroes. We are all helpless. It just depends on the day. Brad Meltzer

We find not much in ourselves to admire; we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. Mark Twain

She preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable. Louisa May Alcott

Dead people can be our heroes because they can’t disappoint us later; they only improve over time, as we forget more and more about them.  Veronica Roth

Who are these so-called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight?  Fyodor Dostoevsky

I like my heroes complicated and brooding.  Barbara Crooker

This week, the UN honored the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela in what has become an annual event for a system that is doing better and better at honoring in general, especially important as direct threats to UN personnel – peacekeepers, humanitarian workers, mine removal experts and other service providers — have risen dramatically in recent years.  Keeping people safe in the field, providing life-extending provisions of food and medical care, helping people recover from catastrophes of short and long duration, these activities are both noble and dangerous – the stuff of genuine heroism in our time.

Mandela certainly chose his own, difficult path.  When I met him briefly in South Africa he was well on his way from resistance to governance, bringing along with him values which are mirrored in the UN Charter and which are essential to both state-building and the promotion of lives of dignity.  These values were not for him, as they are so often for so many of us, attributes of adornment that we profess but don’t necessarily engage, but rather were embedded deeply in his person, a person who as noted during this event by UN Deputy Secretary Amina Mohammed, was grounded in a “stubborn optimism” which allowed him to carry on when others would have given up and allowed him as the DSG also noted to give to others in small and large ways with little regard for what he might receive in return.  He committed to ply his seminal gift, as described by South Africa’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, that ability he possessed to “see the indivisibility of the human condition in ways which were not always visible to others.”  As a result, as Gambia’s Ambassador offered, Mandela left a footprint that continues to help the rest of us and our perhaps more “obscure” heroism to leave our mark on “the sands of time.”

The Mandela ceremony and other events that defined this UN week reminded me of a long-ago incident in an Episcopal church where I was assigned in an attempt to learn how to do ministry and where I had just finished preaching about some social justice topic or other.   One of the parishioners on the way out of the service commented to me “I’m glad that someone is out there doing these things, doing the good work.”

Her comment, which I appreciated at the time more than I probably should have, was based on at least two assumptions which I later came to question.  The first of these is that because I am concerned about these issues, I am somehow contributing to their resolution – that “caring” has efficacy in its own right even when untethered to any viable, visible change strategy.   And the other, related assumption is that what I was allegedly “doing” was somehow sufficient unto itself, that is, that I magically possessed what it takes to move the pile independently of others – including her by the way – pushing and moving as well.

These are some of the lessons that I largely failed to learn at earlier stages but which have become harder to miss over time.  I have more recently embraced the importance of practicing all that we espouse and of engaging issues in a way that balances representation (which I have not always done well) and recommendation (in which I have been a bit too invested).  But I also learned of the ways in which heroism becomes a conduit for what is often a messy – borderline imaginary — brand of vicariousness, people who have (often romantic) expectations that they place upon designated heroes and that none could fulfill.  If Mandela were alive now, his life would surely be picked apart by journalists and critics; his complications would disappoint as well as inspire; but he would also likely demonstrate more than the rest of us might be prepared to accept, that heroism is often situational and that those situations call out to all of us from time to time in our lives, call us to run towards the light rather than hide from it.  

And I learned, in case there was any doubt in anyone’s mind, that I am no hero myself, that my own path has not been sufficiently transformative or radical, sufficiently determined or hopeful, sufficiently connected or willing to wrestle with critics in the public sphere. 

But not rising to the level of the heroic does not – must not – obscure the contributions to a better world we are actually able to make.  We may not leave a mark “on the sands of time,” but we do influence others; we can do more to shape and mold, to inspire and sustain, to help process the great questions of our age and within ourselves.  We do have skills and energies which, alongside the skills and energies of others, can help to overcome longstanding challenges, including those of violence, environmental degradation and racial discrimination which were raised in various UN settings this week.  And we can offer discernment, thinking through the ideas and policies that might not otherwise be sufficiently vetted and that threaten to lead us down unfruitful and even dangerous paths. 

And perhaps most of all, to we can extend invitations to others to walk their paths and to share what they experience with the rest of us.   In this context, I was heartened this week during an event to assess the UN International Decade for People of African Descent regarding how the contributions of youth were depicted and encouraged.  As part of her keynote address, the Vice President of Costa Rica urged us to heed the voices of youth proclaiming that “enough is enough,” insisting that we must no longer accept any role as “accomplices” to the pain of injustice.  At that same event, a youth leader urged all to commit to being a “conduit” of change regardless of our station in life. One action at a time, she claimed, powers change in the world.

At this particular UN event as well as another focused on “open science,” there was little talk of heroism in the conventional sense and more of the need to “co-create,” to blend skills, aspirations and ideas in the service of a less competitive, more equitable, more inclusive world.  But it was also clear that the dual threats which these events exposed – racism on the one hand, climate change on the other – demanded action which is both urgent and thoughtful, both inclusive and impactful.  

One of the best presentations I heard this week was from Professor Geoffrey Boulton of Edinburgh who reinforced at the “open science” event the importance of “acting early and acting hard” on climate change as well as acting in tandem. He lamented our collective failure to heed lessons on climate change shared by both scientists and community practitioners, their collective and consistent warnings of a slow, “angry” onset of warming.  And he even wondered aloud if there is something wrong with us, if we are actually “hard-wired” for the short-term alone?

There may indeed be something wrong with us, but it is something we can still fix in ourselves, indeed that we must fix in ourselves if we are also to fix the threats now closing in around us. For all that we can gratefully learn from the paths chosen by Mandela and other heroes similarly situated, we remain today on a rather somber path, one largely unjust and unsustainable. If the times call for early and determined action, if the times call for us to co-create as “conduits of change,” it might be time for heroism that is less about superhuman and vicariously assessed contributions and more about building a roster of people committed to making and inspiring real change, keeping alive visions of a sustainable future that require many more hands and brains than are now engaged in hope-filled actions; inspiring others to overcome the fear and suspicion to which so many have succumbed and which seems to have maintained at least a good bit of its wide appeal.

If we learned anything during this time of pandemic, it is that heroism in our time takes many forms, wears many garbs, operates in many, often subtle contexts.   As our activist youth remind us, the heroes we need now are the ones who make space for others, who support and guide without regard for compensation, who dare pay attention to the aspirations and needs embedded in the people and spaces around them, and who walk the uncertain path towards a collective future that can sustain both our dreams and the life which holds them close.

For those who prefer imaginary heroes to real ones; for those who prefer their heroes dead to alive; or for those who prefer only “complicated and brooding” versions, we must continue to offer up a brand of heroism that we can honor in real time, a heroism that is hopeful and future-oriented, a heroism that is defined not so much by vicarious acts of greatness but by promising paths that we can choose to walk each day, and that we can commit to walk with others.

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Open House: Strategies for Blunting Xenophobia, Dr. Robert Zuber

21 Mar
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Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.  Michael Eric Dyson

All this because one race did not have the decency to be ashamed of dealing in human flesh.  Whitney Otto

Instead of being blind to race, color blindness makes people blind to racism.  Heather McGhee

Genie had sidestepped the daily trauma of the historical record, the sometimes brutality and sometimes banality of anti-Blackness, the loop of history that was always a noose if you looked at it long enough.  Danielle Evans

We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. Thurgood Marshall

Yeah, I love being famous. It’s almost like being white, y’know?  Chris Rock

Later today, I will be speaking on a panel, organized by my friends at LINGAP – Canada intended to give a platform to the voices of people from diverse cultures – in Edmonton and beyond – who suffer violence, injustice and discrimination on a regular basis, much of which is directed at Asian and indigenous communities and which is only now finding a place on the mainstream radar.

I generally decline invitations like this.  I have had my “say” on matters of exclusion and discrimination many times over the years and I retain platforms such as this for those of you who still honor me with your reading.  But it’s not my turn now, if it ever was.  From our policy centers to our urban streets and rural pathways, the line of people waiting for a few moments at the global podium now stretches to the ends of the earth.  As people like me are fond of saying, the problem we face is not levels of talent, but of opportunity.  It is this latter privilege we still resist sharing, resist declaring, despite what we can amply chronicle about the former.

In the twilight years of my erstwhile “career,” I want to do my full part to link talent to opportunity in all global regions, to ensure that our emerging “global commons” is more than rhetorical, is more than a branding opportunity for groups like Global Action or a business opportunity for large corporate interests.  People have a right to voices that matter, voices which influence, voices with impact. They don’t need me speaking for them and they don’t need oversized influencers packaging sound bites from the policy margins to service unrelated interests.

Indeed, the more we try to engage and promote it, the clearer it becomes that the agenda of ensuring inclusiveness remains among the most challenging on our collective plate.  Our news feeds are filled to the brim with images of violence against people of Asian and African descent, violence which in many instances is the jarring manifestation of many years of covert discrimination, the ways in which what for a time was left to simmer in privatized settings has been released forcefully into the public domain. We now routinely see evidence of people wearing their xenophobia like a badge of honor, a badge woven deeply into souls rather than merely being pinned to outer garments.

Our personal and cultural bubbles have lost whatever measure of clarity and transparency they once might have had, substituting instead an opaqueness that allows our grievances to multiply like in some oversized petri dish until we are ready to burst out and confront the human objects of our scorn, indeed, the humans whom we have largely objectified and now turned into threatening caricatures of themselves, caricatures about which we feel the need to actually understand little. Indeed that is part of the discriminatory deal, isn’t it, turning complex human beings and their cultures into categories worthy not of respect but of suspicion, knowing just enough about people to “know” that they are essentially unworthy of dignity or respect.

This tendency to objectify and dishonor, certainly prevalent in the US, is not confined to any one political or ideological persuasion.   A series of maps published recently chronicles the degree to which people have increasingly segregated their domiciles by political affiliation, choosing to live (and isolate themselves) in areas where most folks are tolerant (if not always accepting) of their political, cultural and religious viewpoints.  At one level this approach is understandable, especially for families caught in the current cultural crossfire.  Clearly it is not the “job” of children of “First Nations” Asian or African descent to solve the embedded racism and xenophobia that rear their ugly heads in manifold ways and which have resisted the best efforts of some remarkable figures over time to finally end their reign of terror.  Nor is it their job to “take one for the team,” to absorb the epithets and bullying, the rejections and outright violence that we adults have not done nearly enough to prevent.  From the standpoint of protecting children from the worst of our collective behavior, our thickening demographic bubbles make some sense.

But of course, the bubbles themselves don’t resolve the violence and discrimination, the objectifying and the demeaning.   If inclusion is to mean anything more than rhetoric, it cannot be attained if people are not also willing to leave their corners of the ring and engage with others in the center.  How do we create safer spaces for people to engage, to invest more in each other, to understand more about the “other” besides the ways in which they allegedly “threaten” our own, entitled ways of being?

Part of the answer clearly embodies a policy dynamic.  I was pleased this week that at the UN, alongside excellent events on preserving water resources and the impact of climate disasters on agriculture, alongside as well the gender-focused inclusivity promoted at the Commission on the Status of Women, there were several events that highlighted the growing divides of race, religion and culture that continue to impact international peace and security.  During thoughtful discussions that highlighted the toxic effects of racism, xenophobia and discrimination against Jews, Muslims and persons of African and Asian descent, it is becoming more and more apparent that diplomats worldwide are worried – as well they might be – about the many ways we seem to be tearing each other apart, rupturing what remains of human unity in ways that policy can only partially heal.

Among the highlights for me of the week’s discussions were concerns expressed by New Zealand’s Ambassador and others of the extent to which COVID-19 has helped “open fractures” wider and deeper than we have seen in some time.  Indonesia warned against our sometimes “empty words” with regard to justice and tolerance. Pakistan noted during the Islamophobia event the importance of rejecting “distortions of our common humanity and their selfish motives.”  At that same event, UN Secretary-General Guterres warned about our spreading “epidemic of mistrust and discrimination” mirroring the admonition of Niger’s Ambassador to “build bridges not burn them.” A Rabbi at this week’s event on anti-Semitism was particularly graphic in his warning to the online audience that “those who burn books would also burn human beings.”

But perhaps the finest presentation of the week on this topic was offered by the new US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield.  Her remarks were personal, poignant, and challenging.  She described the racism she has lived through as an “ignored cancer,” encouraging those impacted by it to “stare it down,” to do everything in your power not to “internalize” its messaging.  She also pointed to a role for policy in efforts to minimize such messaging, noting that “we can’t always change peoples’ hearts, but “we can change the rules.”

Indeed, we must change the rules and then insist that those rules be followed.  But as this UN week made clear, as my own experience confirms, we must never abandon the task of changing hearts, the hearts of the racists and anti-Semites, the hearts of those pumping out grievance and affixing them to alleged, objectified threats, and yes, our own hearts as well.  Indeed, if we want better policies, policies that incorporate diverse voices and retain the trust of global constituencies, we who have regular access to policy processes must become better people ourselves.  The wider public will never fully trust our treaties and resolutions unless they can also trust those who craft them.  Opening safe space for other perspectives, other views, is one sure avenue to that trust.

And there is another dimension to this, one which some in the Edmonton community I will later address have taught me well – that the path to a genuine understanding of others across divides of culture, race and faith while long, is also rich.  To reach the finish line, we must be willing to get close enough to touch complexity, to replace assumptions with realities, to dwell in the nuances of other lives long enough to understand that our own personal challenges are not so different than theirs, and that we too have ideas, prejudices, assumptions and behaviors that would be better off relinquished than reinforced.

At the same time, we would do well to remember that there are things that you can never know about people unless you have spent time in their homes, to see first hand how people organize their lives and care for their families, to get a sense of their priorities and how they invest their precious hours, to better understand the multiple influences that inspire and guide what they care about more and less.

In my life, I have been multiply blessed by often-remarkable and honorable people from many global regions, people of diverse backgrounds and interests who have opened their homes to me, who have honored me with their hospitality and complexity, who have helped ensure that their joys and burdens become part of the backdrop of my own work in the world.  It is a gift I can never repay; indeed it is a gift that enlarges souls, expands minds, and makes hearts beat a little differently, and can do so for many others as it has done for me. As the UN diplomats themselves have attested, we can and must change the rules.  But we should also encourage others (and maybe even ourselves) to take a few more risks and engage more deeply those experiences, those stories, those voices that can inspire the changes we are obligated to make in the world and in ourselves.

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Perseverance: Reaching the Bars We Set for Ourselves, Dr. Robert Zuber

21 Feb
Members of NASA's Perseverance rover team react in mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, after receiving confirmation the spacecraft successfully touched down on Mars on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021.
 (Bill Ingalls/NASA)

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.  Maya Angelou

Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Beckett

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.  Thomas A. Edison

A bend in the road is not the end of the road.   Helen Keller

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.  James A. Michener

I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them.  Walt Whitman

The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. Mahatma Gandhi

This was one of those weeks which stretched our recognition of human capacity and human ineptitude both in the wider world and within our bubbles of global policy.

In the US alone, emotions were yet again stirred as the Perseverance Rover managed a damage-free landing on the surface of Mars and Special Envoy John Kerry announced (with what might be considered excessive fanfare) a “humble” but determined return by the US to the Paris Climate agreement.  The Rover’s mission, no doubt watched with interest by other orbiting probes from China and the United Arab Emirates, demonstrated the technology and tenacity over a decade + that we would do well to see more of in these precarious times, a combination that will eventually result in a joint US-European Union effort to bring samples of the Martian surface back to earth by 2031.  And while perhaps not as dramatic or romantic as previous successes placing humans on the lunar surface, some viewing the remarkable images now emanating from Mars gleaned similar lessons to place our earthbound follies in context. Indeed, as one commentator on a relevant Washington Post report stated, “It makes all these earthly fights and wars over politics, power and property seem pretty primitive and clueless.”

Beyond the justifiable cheers from the Perseverance control room, there was plenty else happening this week for which “primitive and clueless” might also be appropriate.  Despite the fact that the US is one of the ten countries worldwide at this moment with access to 75% of the world’s COVID-19 vaccine supplies, production and supply chain issues continue to impede vaccine delivery with direct implications for the health and safety of the elderly, store clerks and a bevy of other front-line workers – often people of color and those of limited financial means.  Such supply issues and parallel wasting of precious vaccine stocks has been exacerbated by a massive winter storm which both affected vaccine delivery and left millions (especially in Texas) without heat or potable water for days. The storm provided a different sort of optic – not of sophisticated technology on the Martian surface but of long lines of people standing in the cold hoping to return home with a bit of food or water to keep their families afloat until their own damaged infrastructure can be successfully repaired.

This is where we are now, or so it seems:  Mind-boggling technology that with the right levels of tenacity and perseverance can accomplish miracles, from soft landings on other planets to effective vaccines developed in record time.  But alongside this are horrific images of children in Yemen dying of famine; children in Texas dying of hypothermia, children being denied educational opportunity due to a combination of pandemic and armed violence, children whose vaccinations for the diseases which predate COVID-19 are being interrupted by security deficits and the often-related damage to health infrastructure.

It is, indeed, a measure of our sometimes “primitive and clueless” selves that we are unable or unwilling to deploy that combination of ingenuity and tenacity which clearly lies at our disposal to address some of the other, looming global threats, to do more than talk about the urgency of things, the unfairness of things but rather to sustain levels of commitment and skill commensurate with current challenges here on the only planet we have.  We are still, as noted this week by the World Health Organization’s Dr. Mike Ryan, “writing checks that we will be unable to cash,” unable because we continue to talk a better game than we play.  Our power (and often petty) politics at national and global levels are too-often “in the way” of goals that would otherwise be well within our grasp – including to rebuild our frayed infrastructure, eliminate digital divides, and ensure greater equity in the distribution of health-related and other resources.

As our partners on sustainable development are fond of reminding us, we know what needs to be done and largely have the tools with which to do so.  What is lacking is the will to persevere, the will to employ the best of our minds and character, the will to push through failure until we can grasp the success that might actually be closer than we allow ourselves to believe.

If only we had fewer deficits to overcome.  At the UN this week, we witnessed a dazzling, bewildering array of events and report launches, including on peacekeeping reform, on “making peace with nature” (report here), on “digital inclusion for all,” on efforts to stabilize states such as Iraq and Libya, and on the annual Munich Security Conference which brought together UN officials and others (including heads of state of the US, Germany and France) to discuss how to revitalize our fraying trans-Atlantic alliances as well as how we can better collaborate on climate threats, what SG Guterres rightly characterized as “the race of our lifetime.”

And for us these weren’t even the most important discussions of the week.  That designation went to a Security Council meeting this past Wednesday on COVID-19 and conflict and a Thursday discussion hosted by the president of the Economic and Social Council on “Reimagining Equality.”  These two discussions had more points of convergence than might otherwise meet the eye.  For as important as it would be to successful vaccination efforts to adopt and sustain a global cease fire, our current patterns of what Niger described as “vaccine hegemony,” patterns which persist amidst the rhetoric of “global public goods,” have clear discriminatory overtones.  Indeed, we heard during this Council session that as many as 130 countries have yet to see a single vaccine shipment; we heard the warnings from Mexico that some countries might not even see vaccines before 2023; we heard frustration about vaccine hoarding and a reminder from UNICEF Director Fore that violence in many forms continues to destroy health infrastructure, continues to complicate efforts to vaccinate in the global south even where the resolve to do so exists.

We know that “vaccine nationalism” persists.  We know that we have often “dropped the ball” regarding funding for health infrastructure, even by some of the wealthiest countries on the planet.  We know that we remain woefully unprepared for the next iteration of pandemic. And we know that our current failures on vaccine distribution endanger many lives, not only within the countries of greatest need but globally as new variants evolve and spread, complicating the resolve to rebuild economies in a more climate-friendly manner and overcome what one diplomat this week deftly referred to as our “baggage of biases,” the ones which trick our minds into thinking we’re being equitable and inclusive when the data suggests otherwise.

As the Perseverance Rover captures informative and inspiring images from the Martian surface, it transmits them home to a planet still reeling from, as one speaker noted during the “Reimagining Equality” event, our “tsunami’s of hate,” our inattentiveness to the pervasiveness of racism and other forms of discrimination as well as to the specific communities which bear that brunt year after year, the communities still on the outside of access to education, to economic opportunity, to adequate climate adaptation, to the vaccines which represent an investment in the lives of all of us.

Amidst this current swirl of global need, of articulated commitments often masking their practical neglect, we must find and sustain that tenacity to navigate the many bends in the roads we have chosen to travel, to learn how to “fail better,” to keep consulting all relevant evidence and not give up until we succeed in the tasks that we have collectively set out for ourselves – a world free of famine, free of discriminatory practices, free of neglected and traumatized children, free of governance more corrupt than responsive, free of biological extinctions, free of armed violence and mass atrocities.

The human community that can set a rover safely on Martian soil can figure out how to distribute the vaccines that our science raced to provide, can find the means to ensure access to education and technology for all, can silence the guns that kill and traumatize millions, can make a more convincing case for human solidarity over human discrimination. We have established diverse and daunting policy bars for ourselves. But as several speakers noted during this busy week, we are running out of time to demonstrate the tenacity and perseverance needed to reach them.

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Race Track: Driving Discrimination from our Ranks, Dr. Robert Zuber

8 Nov
Social diversity is initially threatening but people do adapt over time – new research

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men. Alice Walker

We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust.  Thurgood Marshall

My color is my joy and not my burden. Bebe Moore Campbell

Wherein is the cause for anger, envy or discrimination?  Mahatma Gandhi

But she knows where her ticket takes her. She will find her place in the sun. Tracy Chapman

The Black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons and nephews had her heartstrings tied to a hanging noose.   Maya Angelou

Excessive praise arises from the same bigotry matrix as excessive criticism. Stefan Molyneux

It is a glorious November Sunday in New York, a day more like late September than the Sunday after a US presidential election.  I had vowed not to say much about the election results, though there is plenty to reflect on, plenty that elicits fair portions of both celebration and caution; with especially deep gratitude to the remarkable poll workers and vote tabulators who ignored and even at times defied a bevy of threats, including from the leadership of the US Postal Service, armed protestors and a spreading pandemic, to deliver what appears by all independent accounts to be free and fair voting for some 150 million US citizens.  

Despite this gift, we know that threats to this democracy, as to others worldwide, have not been laid to rest.  We know that there are tricks left to be played by those still in power (and those heaping “excessive praise” on them), people who understand full well the metaphorical knives that have been drawn by prosecutors and regulators once they leave the sanctuary of the White House.  Those of us who have been holding our breath (at times even our tongue) that this period of political – even criminal – hardball will soon pass recognize that democratic oxygen is still in short supply and that the grievances – legitimate and otherwise – that have driven us to an authoritarian brink are likely only to intensify over the next 10 weeks.

Assuming that a genuine political transition occurs in my country, and that is no foregone conclusion, we anticipate that (what we interpret as) benefits from a new US administration will accrue in the form of climate action and other multilateral efforts to curb the pandemic, reduce social and economic inequalities, disarm weapons and promote sustainable development.  The UN, which has largely refrained from criticism of the US (as it does routinely with all major state powers and funders), can expect a bit of a post-inaugural holiday as dues are paid in full and abandoned political commitments that can readily be reinstated will be.

This US election season also cast light on a UN agenda that is often-discussed but less-often implemented, and that is the concern for inclusion, the basic belief that all should have a say on matters which affect them; the belief that our increasingly inter-dependent world requires diverse voices on a wide range of matters both complex and mundane, including on matters of governance.  In  the US, our own myth of inclusivity has taken a pounding in recent years by those in positions of authority espousing equivalences between “whiteness” and “greatness.” This has resulted in some hard-to-remove stains on our national character including children separated from families and parents afraid to send their children to the grocery store for fear of confrontation with store managers or police; but also ordinary citizens having to fight through what appears to be willful disenfranchisement as polling places were closed, ballots arbitrarily rejected,  and voting lines in some “minority” neighborhoods permitted to stretch for miles.   

While grievances in my country now spring forth like weeds in an abandoned garden, there are some that have deeper roots, louder echoes of oppression, producing more pervasive anxieties.  There is much listening we need to do far beyond our comfort zones, ideological bubbles, evidence-less presumptions and political preferences.  And a special listening post must be dedicated to those whose “ticket” has yet to guarantee them a seat on most every ride, the mothers and grandmothers whose heartstrings are “tied to a hanging noose,” those who live under threat every day that their next venture outdoors will trigger some hate-filled response or even a one-way trip across the nearest border.  

The UN in its own way has tried to keep alive the flickering flame of inclusiveness, insisting with varying levels of success that we find the courage and the means to ensure that those habitually left behind are invited to the head table; that their “ticket” to viability and safety is deemed as valid as any other’s; that their full franchise is both encouraged and protected; that the fruits of development (or a COVID vaccine) are distributed without politics or prejudice; and that the justifications we employ regarding the “causes” of our discriminatory ways are recognized to be largely without merit.

This past week there were several key events (mostly virtual) at the UN that underscored the ever-deepening relationship between inclusiveness and the promotion of peaceful societies. In the Security Council, in the General Assembly, and during events celebrating the increasingly gendered commitments of UN policing and highlighting efforts to abolish capital punishment, the mantra of inclusiveness and an end to discriminatory practices — as well as the incitement which stokes racism, xenophobia and other human behavior we could better live without — were duly reinforced.

Among the primary takeaways from this long and exhausting week included Malaysia’s lament in the General Assembly’s 3rd Committee that the COVID pandemic “has brought out the worst in us,” specifically with regard to racial and religious discrimination. And in a Security Council discussion on “drivers of conflict, Sir Hilary Beckles underscored the tangible steps needed to reinforce this current “age of apology,” while the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines reminded delegations that we cannot hope to overcome chasms of distrust and apathy unless we can speed up our current “baby steps”

There was even more of value to digest including UN Special Rapporteur Day’s plea to address and eliminate the “habituation” in many societies that allows people to tolerate discrimination, Mexico’s call for higher levels of government consultation and trust-building with the most vulnerable and marginalized within national borders, and the Netherlands urging of UN member states to be better “truth-tellers” on racial justice.

While one could surely chide the UN for its own “baby steps” regarding its long-delayed success in gender-balancing peace operations and other core security-sector functions, the UN also enables valuable guidance on how hold together a global community which has too often threatened to disengage from one another. Keys to the reconciliation we need include broader-based consultations, higher levels of truth telling and truth-hearing, firmer commitments to address the scourge of incitement in public and online settings, and better protection of spaces where “public goods” (such as a potential COVID vaccine) take precedence over private interests.

But will we listen? The US president-elect’s oft-repeated claim to represent all US citizens — “those who voted for me and those who didn’t” — is a welcome if somewhat conventional claim, albeit with challenges destined to frustrate all but the most sincere and robust of -commitments. We have, regrettably, conspired over many years to create a culture that is long on acrimony and short on listening; long on grievances and conspiracies and short on evidence and compassion; long on self-delusion and short on self-reflection. We are less mindful than it is in our best interest to be, both about the demonizing we do routinely within our own borders, and the violence we inflict — directly or by proxy — beyond them. We simply cannot survive much more of this no matter who occupies the White House.

I want to end on a more hopeful note by referencing last night’s speech by vice-president-elect Kamala Harris. She delivered a strong and humane point of contact with women and men across my country (and likely beyond) for whom “color” has been a burden; a burden for those who have suffered much, often over many generations, but also a burden for those who can see no way out of their own predicaments other than through more threats, more intolerance, more dubious claims of “superiority.”

For Ms. Harris, her own burden seemed, for a glorious moment at least, to have become something more akin to a joy. As she proclaimed with great enthusiasm, “I am the first, but I will not be the last.” She has found her well-deserved place in the sun, but she also recognizes that if that same sun is somehow prevented from shining on all, the ones we like and the ones we don’t, the ones we trust and the ones we don’t, then the democratic values and processes we presume to cherish will eventually and finally slip through our grasp.

Clearly we need more “firsts” in our country and our world, “firsts” emanating from every corner of human community, especially where people are feeling neglected or abandoned, disrespected or humiliated. And as Ms. Harris rightly suggested, we need more “seconds” and “thirds” as well.

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Passion Play: The UN’s Drowsy Acknowledgement of Racist Violence, Dr. Robert Zuber

31 Mar

Old Man

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.  Audre Lourde

No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them. Elie Wiesel

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.  Ta-Nehisi Coates

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.  Lydia Maria Child

White privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism: an absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost.  Reni Eddo-Lodge

Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.  Martin Luther King Jr.

This past week at the UN was reminiscent of some of the energy surrounding the opening of the General Assembly in September.  Many heads of state and foreign ministers were in the building weighing in on climate change and sustainable development, on peace prospects for Mali and its Sahel neighbors, on pledges to enhance the UN Secretary-General’s Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative, on collaborative actions to stem the financing of terrorism, on ways that the General Assembly and the Peacebuilding Commission can collaborate on conflict prevention and building “national ownership for sustaining peace,” and on the largely-US-initiated controversy around sovereign jurisdiction over the Golan Heights.  Beyond the rooms where the political dignitaries could be found, the UN also hosted some excellent side events on the preservation of biodiversity in the ocean waters beyond national jurisdiction, one piece of a larger treaty-based effort to promote global ocean governance in the vast, threatened, open ocean.

It was all breathtaking and challenging for us to process while running from one conference room to another to catch and share (@globalactionpw) the most important moments of too-often parallel events .  Much of the energy of the week, especially on peacekeeping and peacebuilding, was positive, though in some instances not always sufficiently urgent.  As was duly noted in several conference rooms, both our climate and our oceans are deteriorating more rapidly than our collective responses are ratcheting up, threatening small island states and regions such as the African Sahel, the latter of which is already groaning under burdens of drought, weak institutions of governance, and unwelcome external interference including in the form of pervasive violence from armed groups operating across multiple borders.

With all that was taking place in the worlds inside and outside the UN, there were three distinct images from this past week that touched a not-particularly-happy chord.  One of these, courtesy of CNN, was of the town hosting the so-called “doomsday vault” (Svalbard Global Seed Vault) that is apparently now warming faster than anywhere else on earth, threatening the integrity of the vault’s precious storage.  Back at the UN, the Security Council discussion on the validity of what Israel called the “just proclamation” by the US on the Golan deteriorated at the end into a bit of a shouting match with the Syrian and Israeli Ambassadors attempting to “shame” one another, as though there isn’t already plenty of unacknowledged and unconfessed shame at the UN to go around, certainly by these two states but also by myself and others who need to do more than the modest part we are playing now to help keep this UN ship steered in the right direction.

The third disturbing image for me was not about melting and shaming, but about absence.  After two weeks of crowded hallways, overflow conference rooms and passionate speeches from UN officials courtesy of the Commission on the Status of Women, the General Assembly held two events on Monday, essentially back to back, ostensibly to reflect with the international community on the scourges of racial discrimination and the slave trade, including its grave contemporary manifestations.

For both events, the GA Hall was largely empty at all seating levels, including the section where we were stationed. Only a half-dozen or so non-diplomats were witness to the first morning conversation in a level of the Hall that can seat hundreds.  One of those was an elderly African-American woman seated in one corner of what was otherwise a vast sea of empty seats. We wondered if all the open space disturbed her.  It disturbed us.

Some salient insights were communicated during this day though the speeches were often uttered without much passion, “whispers” easily swallowed up by vast, empty spaces.   There were exceptions: participating states including Cuba, Kenya, San Marino and Guyana exposed “doctrines of racial superiority” and the “hatred that could lead to genocide” while insisting that the UN take the lead in educating people about what Guatemala called “pernicious” and all-too common racism and discrimination.

The president of the General Assembly, María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés added some important dimensions to this discussion in what, for her, became quite a remarkable week of events and interventions. She underscored that the UN has not kept its “never again” promise; that “stereotypes and micro-aggressions” persist and inflame conditions that lead to racial intolerance.  And she restated the commitment of the General Assembly to the 2030 Development Agenda and its promise to eliminate the gaps that leave space in our world for race-based discrimination and abuse, for the hate crimes, abuses of authority and family-separated children that stain our very souls.

But it was two other insights from the president that particularly piqued our interest:  her lament that “inhumane subjection” continues to take so many ugly forms in our modern world, and her call to honor the (trans-Atlantic) slave women who endured “physical exploitation” but who nevertheless reached beyond their own suffered indignities to “uphold the dignity of others.”

In the aftermath of the CSW (whose side events we regularly attended), the implications of these two comments seemed clear.   First that “inhumane subjection” now casts a broad and nefarious shadow over the entire human condition, affecting too many women to be sure; but a shadow that engulfs and shrouds persons of many racial and religious backgrounds, including indigenous people of course but also persons with disabilities and disabling diseases, the chronically poor and politically marginalized. And second, that if “physically exploited” women can find it within themselves to uphold the dignity of others, then surely the rest of us privileged folks have far fewer excuses for neglecting this fundamental duty towards the building of a world of genuine reconciliation and sustainable peace.

For all the chatter about “intersectionalities” around the UN, we seem to have misplaced a good portion of that (probably now overused) term’s implications.  It is not just about multiple forms of discrimination experienced by such as indigenous women, as pervasive as those forms are. It is also about extending meaningful solidarity to other “sections,” identifying with their diverse humiliating and abusive contexts, supporting their calls for justice and reconciliation and, as with this past Monday, showing up at events where the abuse and discrimination of focus are not focused specifically on “us.”

At the end of a week of so many UN discussions both exhilarating and frustrating, the most hopeful image for me was the one at the top of this post, a 95 year old man who traveled on four buses to make an appearance at a rally to show support for New Zealand’s mourning Muslim community, thereby adding his voice to what must become our common call to take racial, ethnic and religious discrimination – and the multi-layered “crushing” and “trampling” which it now spawns in all parts of our world – with greater seriousness.

We could have used his presence and inspiration in the General Assembly Hall this past Monday.

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