Posted 6:38 PM by Mary
To: Members and Friends of the NGO Committee on Children’s Rights
From: Co-Chairs Corann Okorodudu (the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and the American Psychological Association)
and Cristina S. Blanc (International Women’s Anthropology Conference and the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences)

Date: May 2, 2004
Subject: May Meeting, Thursday May 6, 2004, 1:15 – 2:45 PM,
Conference Room 4, UNICEF House

Preliminary Agenda

I. Chairs’ Update

A. Progress Report on Work Plan Implementation

B. Update on Meeting with Ces Adorna, Office of Partnerships and Programs, UNICEF

C. Report from the Steering Committee

II. Report from the Task Force on Human Rights Programming

A. Status of the Brochure on the Dec 4, 2003 Briefing; next steps

B. Plans for the 2004 Commemoration of the adoption of the UN/CRC

III. Report from the Task Force on HIV/AIDS

A. Status of the Lesotho Concept Paper

B. Plan for DPI/NGO Conference Mid-day Workshop

IV. Other business; announcements

Feel free to email or call Corann Okorodudu (okorodudu@rowan.edu; 856/848-4961) or Cristina S. Blanc (csblanc@igc.org 718-548 4170) if you would like to suggest items for the agenda.

Posted 10:41 AM by Mary
Edit your blog: WCAR: SER-NGOCHR

Posted 11:30 AM by Mary
The Mother of all Racial Preferences,, by Tim Wise

ZNet Commentary May 25, 2003 Ask a fish what water is and you'll get no answer, and not only because fish lack the capacity to speak. Even if they were capable of vocalizing a reply they would likely have none for such a question. When water surrounds one every minute of every day, explaining what it is becomes difficult if not impossible. It simply is. It's taken for granted.

So too with this thing we hear so much about called "racial preference." While many whites seem to think the notion originated with affirmative action programs, intended to expand opportunities for historically marginalized people of color, racial preference has actually had a long and very white history.

Affirmative action for whites was embodied in the abolition of European indentured servitude, which left black (and occasionally indigenous) slaves as the only unfree labor in the colonies that would become the U.S.

Affirmative action for whites was the essence of the 1790 Naturalization Act, which allowed virtually any European immigrant to become a full citizen, even while blacks, Asians, and American Indians could not.

Affirmative action for whites was the guiding principle of segregation, Asian exclusion laws, and the theft of half of Mexico for the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny.

In recent history, affirmative action for whites motivated racially-restrictive housing policies that helped 15 million white families procure homes with FHA loans from the 1930's to the '60's, while people of color were mostly excluded from the same programs.

In other words, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that white America is the biggest collective recipient of racial preference in the history of the cosmos. It has skewed our laws, shaped our public policy and helped create the glaring inequalities with which we still live.

Like the fact that white families, on average, have a net worth that is eleven times the net worth of black families according to a recent study; and this gap remains substantial even when only comparing families of like size, composition, education and income status.

Or like the fact that a full-time black male worker in 2003, makes less in real dollar terms than similar white men were earning in 1967. Such realities are not merely indicative of the disadvantages faced by blacks, but indeed are evidence of the preferences afforded whites--a demarcation of privilege that is the necessary flipside of discrimination.

Indeed, the value of preferences to whites over the years is so enormous that the current baby-boomer generation of whites is currently in the process of inheriting between $7-10 trillion in assets from their parents and grandparents--property handed down by those who were able to accumulate assets at a time when people of color by and large couldn't.

To place this in the proper perspective we should note that this amount of money is more than all the outstanding mortgage debt, all the credit card debt, all the savings account assets, all the money in IRAs and 401k retirement plans, all the annual profits for U.S. manufacturers, and our entire merchandise trade deficit combined.

Yet few whites have ever thought of our position as resulting from racial preferences. Indeed, we pride ourselves on our hard work and ambition, as if somehow we invented the concepts.

As if we have worked harder than the folks who were forced to pick cotton and build levees for free; harder than the Latino immigrants who spend ten hours a day in fields picking strawberries or tomatoes; harder than the (mostly) women of color who clean up messy hotel rooms, or change bedpans in hospitals, or the (mostly) men of color who collect our garbage--a crucial service without which we would face not only unpleasant smells but the spread of disease.

We strike the pose of self-sufficiency while ignoring the advantages we have been afforded in every realm of activity: housing, education, employment, criminal justice, politics, banking, and business.

We ignore the fact that at most every turn, our hard work has been met with access to an opportunity structure to which millions of others have been denied similar access. Privilege, to us, is like water to the fish: invisible precisely because we cannot imagine life without it.

It is that context that best explains the duplicity of the President's criticisms of affirmative action at the University of Michigan. President Bush, himself a lifelong recipient of affirmative action for the rich and mediocre argues that the school's policies are examples of unfair racial preference, and has announced that he will be adding his Administration's voice to those seeking to undo the policies before the Supreme Court on April 1st.

Yet in doing so he has not only showed a profound ignorance of the Michigan policy, but has made clear the inability of yet another white person to grasp the magnitude of white privilege still in operation.

To wit, the President has attacked Michigan's policy of awarding twenty points (on a 150-point evaluation scale) to undergraduate applicants who are members of underrepresented minorities (which at U of M means blacks, Latinos and American Indians). To many whites such a "preference" is blatantly discriminatory.

Yet what Bush fails to mention are the greater numbers of points awarded for other things, and which have the effect of preferencing whites to the exclusion of people of color.

For example, Michigan awards twenty points to any student from a low-income background, regardless of race. Since these points cannot be combined with those for minority status (in other words poor blacks don't get forty points), in effect this is a preference for poor whites.

Then Michigan awards sixteen points to students who hail from the Upper Peninsula of the state: a rural, largely isolated, and almost completely white area.

Of course both preferences are fair, based as they are on the recognition that economic status and even geography (as with race) can have a profound effect on the quality of K-12 schooling that one receives, and that no one should be punished for such things that are beyond their control. But note that such preferences--though disproportionately awarded to whites--remain uncriticized, while preferences for people of color become the target for reactionary anger.

Once again, white preference remains hidden because it is more subtle, more ingrained, and isn't called white preference, even if that's the effect.

But that's not all. Ten points are awarded to students who attended top-notch high schools, and another eight points are given to students who took an especially demanding AP and Honors curriculum.

As with points for those from the Upper Peninsula, these preferences may be race-neutral in theory, but in practice they are anything but. Because of intense racial isolation (and Michigan's schools are the most segregated in America for blacks according to research by the Harvard Civil Rights Project), students of color will rarely attend the "best" schools, and on average, schools serving mostly black and Latino students offer only a third as many AP and honors courses as schools serving mostly whites.


So even truly talented students of color will be unable to access those extra points simply because of where they live, their economic status, and ultimately their race, which is intertwined with both.

Four more points are awarded to students with a parent who attended the U of M: a kind of affirmative action with which the President is intimately familiar, and which almost exclusively goes to whites. Ironically, while alumni preference could work towards the interest of diversity if combined with aggressive race-based affirmative action (by creating a larger number of black and brown alums), the rollback of the latter, combined with the almost guaranteed retention of the former will only further perpetuate white preference.

So the U of M offers twenty "extra" points to the typical black, Latino or indigenous applicant, while offering various combinations worth up to 58 extra points for students who will almost all be white. But while the first of these are seen as examples of racial preferences, the second are not, hidden as they are behind the structure of social inequities that limit where people live, where they go to school, and the kinds of opportunities they have been afforded.

White preferences, by being the result of the normal workings of a racist society, can remain out of sight and out of mind, while the power of the state is turned against the paltry preferences meant to offset them.

Most telling is the oft-heard comment by whites that "if I had only been black I would have gotten into my first-choice college."

Such a statement not only ignores the fact that whites are more likely than members of any other group--even with affirmative action in place--to get into their first-choice school, but it also presumes, as anti-racist activist Paul Marcus explains, "that if these whites were black, everything else about their life would have remained the same." In other words, that it would have made no negative difference as to where they went to school, what their family income was, or anything else.

It is to once again miss the reality of white preferences, which have generally placed these whites in a better position for college or jobs than any of the persons of color whom they seem to think are taking "their" slots in school.

The ability to believe that being black would have made no difference (other than a beneficial one when it came time for college), and that being white has made no positive difference, is rooted in privilege itself.

The privilege that allows one to not have to think about race on a daily basis.

The privilege of not having one's intelligence questioned by best-selling books like The Bell Curve, or one's culture attacked as "dysfunctional" by politicians and mainstream "scholars."

The privilege of not having to worry about being viewed as a "problem" or being "out of place" when driving, shopping, buying a home, or for that matter attending the University of Michigan.

The privilege of not being denied an interview for a job because your name sounds "too black," as a recent study discovered happens often to African American job-seekers.

So long as those privileges remain firmly in place and the preferential treatment that flows from those privileges continues to work to the benefit of whites, all talk of ending affirmative action is not only premature but a slap in the face to those who have fought and died for equal opportunity.

Not that the President would know anyone like that, of course. After all, in the late '60's while brave men and women were risking their lives to create a more just society, Mr. Bush had more important fraternity business to which he needed to attend.

Some things never change.

Tim Wise is an antiracist activist, essayist and lecturer. He can be reached at (and footnotes for this article can be procured from) timjwise@msn.com.

Posted 7:48 PM by Mary
Attn: U.S. Communities against Racism and for Human Rights!!
During these times of mass destruction and assault on civil liberties -
Unite together to reclaim our freedoms!!

Movement Beyond Borders After Durban: U.S. Communities Building a MultiRacial Justice & Human Rights Vision - May 1st - May 4th, 2003
George Washington University - Marvin Center, Washington DC

Join African American and others of African descent, Arab, Asian, Indigenous, Latino, Pacific Islander, and South Asian community activists as they unite to develop and implement a antiracist agenda that incorporates human, civil, immigrant and refugee rights, Indigenous peoples, women, LGBT and queer, interfaith, people of color and human rights groups to advance the antiracist agenda put forth at the UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, September 2001! As a global force of justice, we will focus on developing a shared political agenda - now more critical due to the heightening state of violence in communities of color!

Conference Highlights: featuring Unity and Diversity Day (sponsored by DC's African American Holiday Association) Youth Summit, Movement Building Exchange, Plan of Action to advance the Racial Justice Movement, Culture and Resistance and more!!! Plenaries include: Bringing Durban Home, Building Solidarity, War & Racism. Intersectionality and Strategizing Workshops: Immigrant Rights, Reparations, Environmental Racism, Education, Criminal Justice, LGBT, Indigenous Peoples and more

Registration Fee: In Advance (by April 15th, 2003): $35 /
At Door: $45 / Low Income/Student: $20
(No one will be turned away due to finances.)
individual and organization Scholarships are limited!!!!!
Contact IMMEDIATELY for Scholarship Guidelines!

To Register and more information:
contact Shweta Parmar, Conference Coordinator
(215) 241-7255, (215) 241-7177 - fax
sparmar@afsc.org
movementbeyondborders.org
wcar mailing list wcar@lists.antiracismnet.org http://lists.antiracismnet.org/mailman/listinfo/wcar

Posted 12:31 AM by Mary
EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

In commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the NGO Sub-Committee for the Elimination of Racism cordially invites you to join the discussion of strategies to eliminate racism on Thursday, March 20, 2003 from 1:15 pm until 2:45 pm in United Nations Conference Room 8.

Welcome: Luvuyo Lonsdale Ndimeni, First Secretary Permanent Mission of South Africa to the UN
Moderators: Melba Smith, Sub-Committee Co-Chair Lyndon Wilburg, Sub-Committee Co-Chair

Discussion Topics:
**Indigenous Youth confronting racism on reservations and in urban settings in the United States.
Vena Ade Romero, Undergraduate Student, Princeton University

**Grassroots Organizations -- using peer counseling worldwide.
Kay Webster, United to End Racism member, Re-evaluation Counselor Anti-Bias Education: Dialogue to counter prejudice & racism in communities, schools and homes. Rachelle De Blass, Projects, A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE Institute, Anti-Defamation League

**Steps that governments and the United Nations can take to free the world of racism.
Mr. Luvuyo Lonsdale Ndimeni, First Secretary, Permanent Mission of the Republic of South Africa to the United Nations.

Discussion You are invited to join the discussion of strategies to eliminate racism

Posted 9:24 AM by Mary
Sub-Committee for the Elimination of Racism
March 6, 2003

Attendance: Kevin, Bernadette, Bernice, Thema, Lyndon, Natalie, Judith, Pamela,
Martha , and Melba
I. Review of Minutes
Spelling changes were made to the February minutes for names of committee members
and names of potential speakers:

II. The March 20th morning Briefing has been planned.
A. The title for the morning is "Perspectives on Migration and Discrimination"
B. The speakers are Howard Dotson, Bacre Ndiaye, and there will be one more person
C. The moderator of the program will ask members of the sub-committee to stand to be acknowledged
D. We will distribute 250 copies of our Mission Statement and the bottom of the Mission Statement will have in bold the meeting time and location for our group as well as the contact information of our co-chairs
III. Afternoon Briefing
A. Melba will Xerox the programs for the afternoon. The back of the afternoon program will have an excerpt from a speech by Nelson Mandela
B. The program will be from 1:15-2:45 and will be called "Steps on the Road to Free the World of Racism"
C. Bernadette gave minutes from the small planning group meeting that was held with Bernadette, Thema, Melba, and Bernice to plan the afternoon session
D. Melba asked some of the people who were on our original list of speakers if they could come, but they were not available
E. One speaker will be a Native American youth, Vena Ade Romero from Princeton University. She will speak on "Indigenous Youth confronting racism on reservations and in urban settings in the United States"
F. One speaker will possibly be K Webster from our group. She would represent her organization, United to End Racism, and discuss "Using peer counseling to eliminate racism"
G. Another speaker will be Michelle DeBlass from the Anti-Defamation League
H. Another speaker will be a representative from the South African government who will discuss "Steps that governments and the UN can take to create a world free of racism"
I. Bernice from our group has been asked to give some remarks but she is still deciding about her participation
J. The American Sociologist Association and the American Psychological Association will have hand outs available at the program. Any other organizations that would like to display materials should bring them as well.
K. Judith wanted the afternoon program to focus more on the work of our committee but is willing to support the program as it has been developed
L. Melba will get the location for the afternoon program
M. If you would like passes for people to attend the program who do not have UN passes please give their names to Melba by Wed. March 12th or Friday March 14 at the latest
N. Bernadette will email K to ask her to be a panelist
O. We will host our morning and afternoon speakers at a lunch in the Delegates Dining Room. Thema will pay for the student. Melba will pay for Mr. Dotson and other committee members will pay for the other speakers.
P. Thema will take notes during the afternoon session
Q. Contacts for the speakers should email their bios to Melba so she can introduce them
R. Melba and Lyndon will serve as moderators for the afternoon program. One will open it and the other will close it.
S. The possibility of an invitation letter coming from the group for potential attendees was discussed. It was concluded that there is not enough time
IV. Announcements
A. A French group is coming to fast for peace in the UN Chapel from March 9-16th. They are asking Americans to fast with them. If you are interested in participating please email Bernadette.
B. This Sunday there will be a program from 9:30-3:30 in the Church Center. It will focus on women of African descent.
C. Sister to Sister is March 12th
D. SCOWL - The sub-committee for older women began in 1999. They have issued statements on several issues related to our committee
E. Everyone who comes to the March 20th program should bring their IDs
F. The Committee will invite Joy Bostick and Sankofah from Brooklyn to come to the afternoon briefing
G. If committee members can think of people that they want the committee to work with in the future, invite them to the briefing so they can get a sense of our work

Posted 2:51 PM by Mary
New list-serv established at: wcar@cebo.org.
Unmoderated, all may post as of today. Mary