SOCHUM
Topic B:Elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.
Historical Background
Race is a significant social issue because people use racial differences as the basis for discrimination. Much of today's racism can be traced to the era of colonialism that began in the 1400s. When Europeans began colonizing Africa and the Americas, the white settlers adopted the idea that they were superior to the other races they encountered and it was their job to "civilize the savages." This false notion became known as "the white man's burden," and was used to justify the Europeans' taking land and enslaving people. In this way, naturally-occurring racial differences became the basis for systems of exploitation and discrimination.
In the 19th century racism became closely intertwined with nationalism, leading to the ethnic nationalist discourse that identified the "race" to the "folk", leading to such movements as pan- Germanism, Zionism, pan-Turkism, pan-Arabism, and pan-Slavism, medieval racism precisely divided the nation into various non-biological "races", which were thought as the consequences of historical conquests and social conflicts. Michel Foucault traced the genealogy of modern racism to this medieval "historical and political discourse of race struggle". According to him, it divided itself in the 19th century according to two rival lines: on one hand, it was incorporated by racists, biologists and eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "race" and, even more, transformed this popular discourse into a "state racism" (e.g. Nazism). On the other hand, Marxists also seized this discourse founded on the assumption of a political struggle that provided the real engine of history and continued to act underneath the apparent peace. However, during the 19th century, West European colonial powers were involved in the suppression of the Arab slave trade in Africa, as well as in suppression of the slave trade in West Africa.Some Europeans during the time period objected to injustices that occurred in some colonies and lobbied on behalf of aboriginal peoples. Thus, when the Hottentot Venus was displayed in England in the beginning of the 19th century, the African Association publicly opposed itself to the exhibition During the 20th century, The Nazis considered Jews, Gypsies, blacks, Poles and other Slavic people such as the Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs and anyone else who did not belong to the "Aryan master race", was according to the contemporary Nazi race terminology classified as subhuman. With the Nazis rationalizing that the Germans belonged to the "master race", being a super human race, they had a biological right to displace, eliminate and enslave inferiors. Some 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. In the longer term, the Nazis wanted to exterminate some 30–45 million Slavs.
Different races have different history:
Against Native Americans
Millions of natives occupied the area now called the United States prior to the colonial era. In an effort to obtain much of the North America as territory of the United States, a long series of wars, massacres, forced displacements (such as the Trail of Tears), restriction of food rights, and the imposition of treaties, land was taken and numerous hardships imposed. Ideologies justifying the context included stereotypes of Native Americans as "merciless Indian savages" and the quasi-religious doctrine of manifest destiny which asserted divine blessing for U.S. conquest of all lands west of the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific.
Once their territories were incorporated into the United States, many surviving Native Americans were relegated to reservations--constituting just 4% of U.S. territory--and the treaties signed with them violated. Tens of thousands of were forced to attend a residential school system which sought to reeducate them in white settler American values, culture and economy.
To this day, Native Americans are the most harshly affected by institutionalized racism. The World Watch Institute notes that 317 reservations are threatened by environmental hazards. While formal equality has been legally granted, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders remain among the most economically disadvantaged groups in the country, and suffer from high levels of alcoholism and suicide.
Against Blacks
Slavery in the United States began soon after English colonists first settled Virginia and lasted until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. By the 18th century, court rulings established the racial basis of the American version of slavery to apply chiefly to Black Africans and people of African descent, and occasionally to Native Americans. The 19th century saw a hardening of institutionalized racism and legal discrimination against citizens of African descent in the United States. Although technically able to vote, poll taxes, acts of terror (often perpetuated by groups such as the KKK), and discriminatory laws kept black Americans disenfranchised particularly in the South.
Racism in the United States was worse during this time than at any period before or since. Segregation, racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy all increased. So did anti-black violence, including lynching and race riots.
In addition, racism which had been viewed primarily as a problem in the Southern states, burst onto the national consciousness following the Great Migration, the relocation of millions of African Americans from their roots in the Southern states to the industrial centers of the North after World War I, particularly in cities such as Boston,
Chicago, and New York (Harlem). In northern cities, racial tensions exploded, most violently in Chicago, and lynching - racially motivated mob-directed hangings - increased dramatically in the 1920s.
Prominent African American politicians, entertainers and activists pushed for civil rights throughout the twentieth century, but the 1950s and 1960s saw the peaking of the American Civil Rights Movement with the desegregation of schools in 1954 and the organizing of widespread protests across the nation under a younger generation of leaders. The pastor and activist Martin Luther King was the catalyst for many nonviolent protests in the 1960s which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act prohibited discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment, invalidating the Jim Crow laws (which mandated segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans and other non-white racial groups) in the southern U.S. It became illegal to force segregation of the races in schools, housing, or hiring. This signified a change in the social acceptance of racism that had been written into American law and a profound increase in the number of opportunities available for people of color in the United States. While substantial gains were made in the succeeding decades through middle class advancement and public employment, black poverty and education inequalities have deepened in the post-Industrial era.
Against Latin Americans
Americans of Latin American ancestry (often categorized as "Hispanic" or “Latino”) come from a wide variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds; yet, Latin Americans are often been viewed as a monolithic group by other Americans. Latinos are often portrayed as passionate, hypersexual, violent, lazy, or macho in literature, films, television and music.
Recent increases in legal (and illegal) Hispanic immigration have spurred anti-Latino sentiment, particularly in areas of the United States that have previously seen few Hispanic immigrants. The immigration debate has generated negative feelings of nativism and racist claims that Latin Americans are taking over white Anglo-American society, especially in the Southwestern United States, home to most American Latinos.
Racism against Arab Americans have risen along with tensions between the American government and the Arab world. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, discrimination and racial violence has markedly increased against Arab Americans and many other religious and cultural groups.
Iraqis in particular were demonized which led to hatred towards Arabs and Iranians living in the United States and elsewhere in the western world. There have been attacks against Arabs not only on the basis of their religion (Islam), but also on the basis of their ethnicity; numerous Christian Arabs have been attacked based on their appearances. In addition, non-Arabs who are mistaken for Arabs because of perceived "similarities in appearance" have been collateral victims of anti-Arabism.
Definition & Property[1]
In the discussion of race, racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance, it’s essential to give the definitions, classification and related properties of race, racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia, due to the public policies related to racial topics usually being affected by the philosophy which the State parties adapt. Hence, we would give the precise definition and content in the following paragraph. Race[2]
Racial classification is commonplace; people routinely catalogue each other as a member of this or that race, and assume everyone could be catalogue. But, the definition of race is not quite simple but controversial. There are several kinds of theories and views to race.
Intuitively, we define race by the biological and genetic traits, such as skin colors, faces, eye color and other biological traits. Thus, we could classify human beings into many “race group” i.e. biological race. However, this kind definition lakes of scientific foundations, since there are no biological races in Homo sapiens. What we have are the difference in the frequencies of certain alleles (or chromosome) in a great multiplicity of overlapping human groups. Then, it leads to a phenotypic variation on a number traits. With a large amount of migration and interbreeding in recent centuries between hitherto isolated populations, genetic difference between human populations are sufficiently small since interbreeding is more likely to increase fitness that reduce it, especially in a new environments. Therefore, there are no human races in the sense of well-defined subspecies, but partly genetically based behavioral differences between individuals, sexes and age populations have been established. This kinds of view is called biological constructivism, which is invented by Europeans for a serious and legitimate scientific reason leading to differ strikingly from non-Europeans. In biological constructivism, a theory of racial inferiority could explain why European domination of the other continents. Besides, many countries have used the ideas of racial inferiority to support restrictive immigration and naturalization policies. For example, slavery was rationalized by the theory of racial inferiority that blacks were natural slaves, unfit and unable to govern themselves.
On the other hand, another view of race is social constructivism. In social constructivism, race is defined as social race, classes of individuals that exists only because of our ideas, beliefs, and practices. Race is constructed by the society. The difference between two theses are that if race are natural kinds, their members share essences because the members of natural kinds share essences; otherwise, they don’t share essences though they share important properties or conditions that justify their being classified together. Some social constructions are made intentionally and some unintentionally. For example, teams are made intentionally, but nations can be unintentionally. Briefly speaking, the main essences of social constructivism are quite complex. Different experts may have different accounts of how the races are socially constructed. Even the same experts would have different accounts if he has different views about what the conditions or properties are. Hence, by this view, there are no races as these are commonly understood.
In conclusion, there are common view between two theses. We cannot rule out the possibility that there are biological races and that there may be important differences between them, even if it’s almost certain that the races as commonly understood are not biological races. Philosophical meaning of race[3]
Since all the race problem are usually from the conflict and difference of the fundamental views or thoughts to the race, discussions of the philosophical meaning of race are essential and required. Otherwise, it could be impossible to touch the heart of race, racism and racial discrimination. In the philosophical discussion of race, there are four classes of theses, essentialism, Locke’s nominalism, pragmatism, and Kantian rationalism. We will just briefly introduce the basic content of those four theses.
In essentialism, they think things are what they are because they contain the essences of the kinds to which they belong. Essences inhere in individual things that are substances, and the essences of substances support their accidental attributes. Words, such as race, that refer to kinds of things have definitions that describes the essences of those kinds. That is, the concept of the race are ontological.
In Locke’s nominalism, Locke was reluctant to talk about substances because it could not be known either from perception of by reflection upon the ideas of the mind. Locke addressed essences through the analyses of the meanings of terms. For Locke, the essences of things, such as race, were ideas of the kinds of thing it was “in the mind,” and “made by” the mind. Locke also claim that those things which were to correspond to an idea could be decided without restrictions imposed by the thing themselves. Hence, what count as a species for Locke seemed to have been the result of decisions about the meaning of words. Locke deny the objectivity of natural kind taxonomy. Race cannot determined by the natural structures outside ideas and words.
In pragmatism, there are two pragmatic meaning theories that could be relevant to ‘race’ bur only the second is. The first is scientific pragmatism, which shows the purposiveness and intentionality behind all concepts, even the most exact scientific ones. This kinds of pragmatic meaning is not relevant to race because race is insufficiently empirical. There are no confirmed scientific theories about race as it is understood on a folk level, and race is not a theoretical term in science. The second kind of pragmatic meaning is axiological and it has some of the connotations of word ‘pragmatic’: efficient, useful and morally compromised.
The last is Kantian rationalism theory of race, raised by I. Kant. Kantian rationalism plays c crucial rule in racial discrimination, especially in cognitive racial discrimination. Kant argued that if a perception does not conform to the fundamental categories of thought that ensure the unity and coherence of the self, they cannot be part of our experience. He described these fundamental categories as “a priori transcendental concept of understanding,” by which he means innate rules of cognitive organization that any coherent, conscious experience must presuppose. Kant support the idea that all human beings are descend from a common stock, by an adaptation of the theory of essences. He substituted the set of what he called ‘germs’ for human essences. The original human stock possessed these ‘germs’ and passed them on to all the present human races. Kant assumed that the capacities to cause characteristics of all the human races were already present though latent in the germs of the original stock in order to explain how the race present so different from one another. He argued that when different sections of that stock migrated to different parts of the world, the different environments they encountered activated different sets of capacities in their germs, and in this way cause different race to appear. Besides, Kant utilized his moral philosophy to explain human morality problem. Last, Kant’s rationalism insist the crucial rule of reason in moral deliberation and finding solutions to race problem caused by society. The Kantians believed that reconstruction of social institution and moral education could combat racism, not merely rational arguments. Racism[4]
The definition of racism is “the theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race”. In other words, racism is a doctrine that one race is superior. By Antony Flew, he stated racism as “a meaning the advantage or disadvantage of individuals for no better reason than that they happen to be members of this racial group rather than that”. There are two racism: individual racism and institutional racism, according to the understanding of racist behavior and of its immorality. The connection between them is that racism within individual persons is of prime moral and explanatory import, and institution racism occurs and matters because racist attitudes (desires, hopes, fears, etc.) infect the reasoning, decision making, and actions of individuals not only in their private behavior but also when they make and execute the policies of those institution the operate. Racism is not primarily a cognitive matter. Racism could exist in societies in which there is no systematic oppression.
Finally, race-based preference need not to be racist. Racial discrimination [5, 6]
The definition of racial discrimination could separate into two context. First is political definition, a manifest attitude in which a particular property a person which is irrelevant to judgments of that person’s intrinsic value or competence, e.g. face, gender, etc. This definition is called political discrimination. Second is cognitive definition, called cognitive discrimination. Cognitive discrimination is the concept we ordinarily understand, a manifest capacity to distinguish veridically between one property and another, and to respond appropriately to each. For example, when we say someone is discriminating person, or has discriminating judgment, we mean that he or she exercises a capacity to make fine distinction between properties of thing, and base his or her positive or negative valuation on these actual properties. Xenophobia [5]
The definition of xenophobia is a fear of individuals who look or behave differently than those one is accustomed to. It is a fear of what is experimentally unfamiliar, of individuals who do not conform to one’s empirical assumptions about what other people are like, how they behave or how they look. Ultimately, it is a fear of individuals who violate one’s empirical conception of persons and so one’s self-perception. Sometimes, it’s not easy to discriminate racism and xenophobia. Xenophobia engenders various forms of stereotyping, such as racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. It thereby reduces the complex singularity of the other’s properties to over-simplified but conceptually manageable subset, and is in turn diminishes one’s full conception of personality. Hence xenophobia is the originating phenomenon to which each of these forms of political discrimination is a response.
Past UN actions
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was adopted in 1965 and entered into force in 1969. In the convention, definitions of race and racial discrimination were given. Also, several articles were to prohibit any forms of racial inequalities in any nation’s policies, systems, law or practices. In the article 8 to 16, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) was established to govern the implement of the convention through individual complaint mechanism. The last 8 articles governs ratification, entry into force, and possible ways of amendment of the Convention. Until 2013m there are 87 signatories with ratification and 176 nations adopted.
World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination
The World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination was hold in Geneva, Switzerland in 1978 and 1983, with the resolutions A/RES/33/99, A/RES/33/100, and A/RES/37/41. During two conferences, there were four goals of setting to monitor the related Programme-Decade for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination-by resolution 3057(XXVIII) in 1973. The following are the four goals:
* Promote human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction of any kind such as race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin.
* Resist all policies and practices that contribute to the strengthening of racism, racial discrimination
* Identify, isolate and dispel the fallacious and mythical beliefs, policies and practices that contribute to racism, racial discrimination and apartheid
* Counteract the emergence of alliances based on mutual espousal of racism and racial discrimination.
In the conference, UN intended to solve the apartheid in South Africa, and call the international nations, NGOs and other organizations to assist the minorities all over the world, especially in South Africa through resolution A/RES/33/99 and A/RES/33/100 In addition, the conference in 1978 was to reiterate the importance of implement of Programme for Decade for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, and required all the assign countries to achieve the goal through domestic policies and legislations. In 1983, United Nations decided to strengthen the implement of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by several actions. In resolution A/RES/37/41, the actions to combat apartheid in Africa through several policies, included embargo actions in Security Council resolution 148 (1977), to strongly reaffirm the roles of education system and mass media in elimination for racism and racial discrimination, and to advance several effective measures for the promotion and protection of human rights of persons belonging to minority groups, indigenous populations and peoples and migrant workers who are subjected to racial discrimination.
World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR)
In 2001, the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was hold in Durban, South Africa, with a declaration raised. In the conference, UN intend to review and reaffirm the fundamental spirit of ICERD and the effort of conference in 1976 and 1983. The Conference objectives included
* Reviewing progress made in the fight against racism, xenophobia, and intolerance
* Increasing the level of awareness about racism
* Recommending ways to increase U.N. effectiveness through programs that combat racism and related intolerance.
Conference participants also aimed to recommend ways to improve regional, national, and international measures to combat racism, and ensure that the United Nations had the resources to combat racism. Compensation for Colonialism and Slavery were mentioned in the declaration, even though it’s controversial and leading to many argument. Besides, several actions and measures, include mechanism construction, were taken to protect and promote the right of slaves, victims, refugees and African descent to national and domestic resources such as health system, education system, environment, and security protection function. Ratification and implementation of relevant international and regional legal instruments in non-discrimination were also be discussion in the resolution. In the end, the strategies to achieve full and effective equality was discussed.
The second World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was held in Geneva, Switzerland in 2009, with the objectives to review, correct or strengthen the contents of declaration in 2001.
International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
In 2010, the FIFA World Cup was hold in South Africa. Therefore, the United Nation passed a resolution A/HRC/RES/13/27 to affirm and encourage the function of World sport in elimination of racism and racial discrimination. Hence, United Nation took March 21, 2013 as International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Statement of problem[7]
In 2001, the third World Conference against Racism, Racial discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was held in Durban. It reaffirmed the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and raised the attention to the problems of racial discrimination and related topics.
Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance are global problems. They affect the life-chance of individuals, social groups, institutions and public policies that seek to promote cohesion, equity and development. The world has certainly made progress in combating the scourge of racism and expanding the frontiers of citizenship. It’s difficult to find a State parties that currently defines itself in a racial terms or explicitly support public policies that are racially discriminating. However, a gulf remains between philosophical theory, law, and practice. Discussion on racism can be emotive as they often touch on issues of identity, dignity, justice and historical violations. The main problem of the statement could be discussed based on four parts: the social construction of race and citizenship; the socio-economic and political forces that drive racism and inequalities; organized responses to cultural diversity; and the impact of various type of public policies on race relations. Hence, we will discuss citizenship, justice, poverty, prosperity, policing and human right, relevant to race, racial discrimination problems.
Racism, citizenship, and justice.
Racism exists in varying degrees in all regions. It is now widely accepted that race is socially constructed. The construction of race as identity may be linked with ethnicity, especially when variations in physical characteristics coincide with assumed cultural and religious difference. Examples include relations between peoples of Indian and African origin in Guyana, North and South Sudanese, Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda, and Malays and Chinese in Malaysia, which some of them are still in conflict in the state. Racial ideas mat influence discourse on social integration and distort perceptions about citizenship. Citizens are supposed to be bears of equals equal rights and obligations. Besides, migration often affects the constructions of citizenship. For example, the Middle East has experienced massive waves of immigrants from Asian and African engaged in short-term work. Also, migrations poses a challenge to traditional conceptions of nation state in Western Europe. Furthermore, the institutional racism is currently widely debated issue of racial discrimination. It often place the victimized group in continuous disadvantage such ad biased recruitment patterns in jobs, unequal access to health care, limited career opportunities, and lower quality of educations and social services. People as blacks and Latinos in United States, Caribbean youth in the United Kingdom, Arabs and African in France, Turks in Germany and so on usually face these difficulties until now.
Racism and inequalities may be linked to discriminatory public policies, the way labour markets are constructed and different access to governance institutions. Labour market may be racially segmented because of past public policies, unequal development or efforts by individuals from specific groups to protect advantages in certain activities. Inequality also arise from the impact of development policies and practices on different groups. These issue are still happened in United States, Malaysia, Indonesia and Southern Africa. Public policies that promote social justice are a fundamental requirement for achieving stability and responsible citizenship. Affirmative policies are associated with efforts to correct socio-economic disabilities, which certain groups may have suffered as a result of past discriminatory public policies. They focus on issues of employment, access to educational institutions, government contracts and broad areas of social policy. For example, inequalities in key socio-economic indicator, such as wealth are narrowed in Malaysia between Malays and Chinese due to the enforcement of ‘National Unity’.
Xenophobia and Immigration
Xenophobia with regard to foreign workers, and domestic workers in particular, has three aspects. First, the preference for temporary contract labour which precludes the possibility of citizenship. Second, preferential treatment is usually given to nationals, although particular kinds of menial work have now been allocated to foreigners. Third, disdain and abuse towards those who are visibly different (especially Sri Lankans, Ethiopians and other Africans) can be observed in the kind of treatment that is meted out to them by nationals, particularly employers. Besides, foreign females domestic employees and foreign maids are now often under the threat of violence and subjected to physical, sexual, psychological and emotional abuse. Many so-called suicides have been reported of Sri Lankans, Filipinas and Ethiopian women.However, under the effort of International Labour Organization (ILO), not all immigrant workers are treated badly. Many are treated with respect and dignity, are paid on time, give time off and return to their home countries having eared up to three or four times what they could have eared if they have not migrated. In West Europe, immigration also poses a challenge not just to labour market needs but also to the welfare systems. Usually, most of countries would adapt the integration polices, which can be examined along two dimensions- the subjects and the fields aimed at. On the issues of subjects, a distinction can be made between general and targeted policies. When focus is on the fields of integration, policies may aimed at welfare system or labour market. Moreover, the necessary basis for equality would be a body of legal provisions, both in civil and in penal law, which, for instance, France and Germany don’t have. In conclusion, governments should in every way possible combat irrational discrimination in all areas of society.
Poverty and Prosperity
In poverty and prosperity, we often focus on the economic trends in relative economic well-being indicator, such as GNP or GDP. However, there are four areas, based on social psychological view, to focus on this topic: racial disparities in wealth; perceptions of racial inequalities and emotional well-being; the perceptions of racial discrimination and rational attitudes; and the interrelationships among racial integration. For instance, in the US, blacks and whites with the same income tend to have different levels of economic security. In a national survey, African American families not only have lower levels of wealth and economic security, they also have low expectations about their prospects for attaining racial equality in economic well-being. Besides, racial stratification has negative effects on racial minorities regardless of their socio-economic status. Lastly, there are still three major facets defined the contemporary race problem: racial integration, racial parity, and racial harmony. Racial integration focus on bringing members of each race into close proximity. Racial parity focus on the goal of equalizing the distribution of outcomes for comparable whites and blacks in domains such as education, incomes, life, etc. Racial harmony reflects a situation in which antagonism is low and positive effect is high. Although progress along one of these dimensions does not guarantee progress along the others, it’s still need the efforts of State parties to reduce racial economic disparities with policies. Possible solutions[7]
To solve the problem of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, we need not only to promote the power of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination through the legislation of national and domestic level. Besides, there are three important public policy issues that have been central to debates on racism-the citizenship, social justice and equitable governance. These are needed to achieve stability and consolidate the values of citizenship. Redistribution policies could be considered, especially in the land problem, even though they are not always easy to implement. Integration policies are required to solve the immigration problem. Two additional public policy mechanism for addressing the employment problems of racial minorities are (a) enhance antidiscrimination enforcement in the housing market (e.g. rental, sales) to facilitate racial residential integration (b) enhanced anti-discrimination enforcement in the labour market (e.g. employer recruiting) to improve employment opportunities for minorities. Last, education is essential to eliminate the racial discrimination, although there are still lacking efficient educational policy to achieve it.
Question to be considered
Delegates should keep in mind that all resolutions need to be within the scope of the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, outlined in Chapter IV of the United Nations Charter.104. Besides, delegates should take care not to impose on any nation’s sovereignty
1. Try to build monitor system to make all the State parties adopt and ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, since there are still some nations yet to ratify or adopt this convention.
2. How to solve the racial discrimination through educational system?
3. In economic system, try to sketch out the possible solution to eliminate the poverty between black and white, Malay and Chinese, etc.
4. In many nations, the rights of immigrant workers are yet to be defined, and often lead a consequence of xenophobia. Hence, try to consider some possible article in the draft resolution to solve this problem.
Endnotes
1. Boxill, B.R., Race and racism. 2001: Oxford University Press New York.
2. Taylor, P.C., Race: A philosophical introduction. 2013: Polity.
3. Zack, N., Race and philosophic meaning. Race/sex: Their sameness, difference, and interplay, 1997: p. 29-43.
4. Garcia, J.L., The heart of racism. Journal of Social Philosophy, 1996. 27(1): p. 5-46.
5. Piper, A.M., Two kinds of discrimination. Yale Journal of Criticism, 1993. 6: p. 25-25.
6. Wasserstrom, R., Rights, human rights, and racial discrimination. The Journal of Philosophy, 1964. 61(20): p. 628-641.
7. Bangura, Y. and R. Stavenhagen, Racism and public policy. 2005: Palgrave Macmillan New York.
8. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CERD.aspx 9. A/RES/33/99 http://www.refworld.org/docid/3b00f1b820.html 10. A/RES/37/41 http://www.racism.gov.za/substance/confdoc/decl1983.htm
11. Declaration of World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination http://www.un.org/WCAR/durban.pdf
12. Resolution 3057 (XXVIII)
http://daccessddsny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/281/29/IMG/NR028129.pdf
13. A/HRC/RES/13/27 http://www.un.org/wcm/webdav/site/sport/shared/sport/pdfs/Resolutions/A-HRC-RES-13-27/A-HRC-RES-13-27_EN.pdf
14. International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination http://www.un.org/en/events/racialdiscriminationday/
Race is a significant social issue because people use racial differences as the basis for discrimination. Much of today's racism can be traced to the era of colonialism that began in the 1400s. When Europeans began colonizing Africa and the Americas, the white settlers adopted the idea that they were superior to the other races they encountered and it was their job to "civilize the savages." This false notion became known as "the white man's burden," and was used to justify the Europeans' taking land and enslaving people. In this way, naturally-occurring racial differences became the basis for systems of exploitation and discrimination.
In the 19th century racism became closely intertwined with nationalism, leading to the ethnic nationalist discourse that identified the "race" to the "folk", leading to such movements as pan- Germanism, Zionism, pan-Turkism, pan-Arabism, and pan-Slavism, medieval racism precisely divided the nation into various non-biological "races", which were thought as the consequences of historical conquests and social conflicts. Michel Foucault traced the genealogy of modern racism to this medieval "historical and political discourse of race struggle". According to him, it divided itself in the 19th century according to two rival lines: on one hand, it was incorporated by racists, biologists and eugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "race" and, even more, transformed this popular discourse into a "state racism" (e.g. Nazism). On the other hand, Marxists also seized this discourse founded on the assumption of a political struggle that provided the real engine of history and continued to act underneath the apparent peace. However, during the 19th century, West European colonial powers were involved in the suppression of the Arab slave trade in Africa, as well as in suppression of the slave trade in West Africa.Some Europeans during the time period objected to injustices that occurred in some colonies and lobbied on behalf of aboriginal peoples. Thus, when the Hottentot Venus was displayed in England in the beginning of the 19th century, the African Association publicly opposed itself to the exhibition During the 20th century, The Nazis considered Jews, Gypsies, blacks, Poles and other Slavic people such as the Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs and anyone else who did not belong to the "Aryan master race", was according to the contemporary Nazi race terminology classified as subhuman. With the Nazis rationalizing that the Germans belonged to the "master race", being a super human race, they had a biological right to displace, eliminate and enslave inferiors. Some 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. In the longer term, the Nazis wanted to exterminate some 30–45 million Slavs.
Different races have different history:
Against Native Americans
Millions of natives occupied the area now called the United States prior to the colonial era. In an effort to obtain much of the North America as territory of the United States, a long series of wars, massacres, forced displacements (such as the Trail of Tears), restriction of food rights, and the imposition of treaties, land was taken and numerous hardships imposed. Ideologies justifying the context included stereotypes of Native Americans as "merciless Indian savages" and the quasi-religious doctrine of manifest destiny which asserted divine blessing for U.S. conquest of all lands west of the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific.
Once their territories were incorporated into the United States, many surviving Native Americans were relegated to reservations--constituting just 4% of U.S. territory--and the treaties signed with them violated. Tens of thousands of were forced to attend a residential school system which sought to reeducate them in white settler American values, culture and economy.
To this day, Native Americans are the most harshly affected by institutionalized racism. The World Watch Institute notes that 317 reservations are threatened by environmental hazards. While formal equality has been legally granted, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders remain among the most economically disadvantaged groups in the country, and suffer from high levels of alcoholism and suicide.
Against Blacks
Slavery in the United States began soon after English colonists first settled Virginia and lasted until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. By the 18th century, court rulings established the racial basis of the American version of slavery to apply chiefly to Black Africans and people of African descent, and occasionally to Native Americans. The 19th century saw a hardening of institutionalized racism and legal discrimination against citizens of African descent in the United States. Although technically able to vote, poll taxes, acts of terror (often perpetuated by groups such as the KKK), and discriminatory laws kept black Americans disenfranchised particularly in the South.
Racism in the United States was worse during this time than at any period before or since. Segregation, racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy all increased. So did anti-black violence, including lynching and race riots.
In addition, racism which had been viewed primarily as a problem in the Southern states, burst onto the national consciousness following the Great Migration, the relocation of millions of African Americans from their roots in the Southern states to the industrial centers of the North after World War I, particularly in cities such as Boston,
Chicago, and New York (Harlem). In northern cities, racial tensions exploded, most violently in Chicago, and lynching - racially motivated mob-directed hangings - increased dramatically in the 1920s.
Prominent African American politicians, entertainers and activists pushed for civil rights throughout the twentieth century, but the 1950s and 1960s saw the peaking of the American Civil Rights Movement with the desegregation of schools in 1954 and the organizing of widespread protests across the nation under a younger generation of leaders. The pastor and activist Martin Luther King was the catalyst for many nonviolent protests in the 1960s which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act prohibited discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment, invalidating the Jim Crow laws (which mandated segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans and other non-white racial groups) in the southern U.S. It became illegal to force segregation of the races in schools, housing, or hiring. This signified a change in the social acceptance of racism that had been written into American law and a profound increase in the number of opportunities available for people of color in the United States. While substantial gains were made in the succeeding decades through middle class advancement and public employment, black poverty and education inequalities have deepened in the post-Industrial era.
Against Latin Americans
Americans of Latin American ancestry (often categorized as "Hispanic" or “Latino”) come from a wide variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds; yet, Latin Americans are often been viewed as a monolithic group by other Americans. Latinos are often portrayed as passionate, hypersexual, violent, lazy, or macho in literature, films, television and music.
Recent increases in legal (and illegal) Hispanic immigration have spurred anti-Latino sentiment, particularly in areas of the United States that have previously seen few Hispanic immigrants. The immigration debate has generated negative feelings of nativism and racist claims that Latin Americans are taking over white Anglo-American society, especially in the Southwestern United States, home to most American Latinos.
Racism against Arab Americans have risen along with tensions between the American government and the Arab world. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, discrimination and racial violence has markedly increased against Arab Americans and many other religious and cultural groups.
Iraqis in particular were demonized which led to hatred towards Arabs and Iranians living in the United States and elsewhere in the western world. There have been attacks against Arabs not only on the basis of their religion (Islam), but also on the basis of their ethnicity; numerous Christian Arabs have been attacked based on their appearances. In addition, non-Arabs who are mistaken for Arabs because of perceived "similarities in appearance" have been collateral victims of anti-Arabism.
Definition & Property[1]
In the discussion of race, racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance, it’s essential to give the definitions, classification and related properties of race, racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia, due to the public policies related to racial topics usually being affected by the philosophy which the State parties adapt. Hence, we would give the precise definition and content in the following paragraph. Race[2]
Racial classification is commonplace; people routinely catalogue each other as a member of this or that race, and assume everyone could be catalogue. But, the definition of race is not quite simple but controversial. There are several kinds of theories and views to race.
Intuitively, we define race by the biological and genetic traits, such as skin colors, faces, eye color and other biological traits. Thus, we could classify human beings into many “race group” i.e. biological race. However, this kind definition lakes of scientific foundations, since there are no biological races in Homo sapiens. What we have are the difference in the frequencies of certain alleles (or chromosome) in a great multiplicity of overlapping human groups. Then, it leads to a phenotypic variation on a number traits. With a large amount of migration and interbreeding in recent centuries between hitherto isolated populations, genetic difference between human populations are sufficiently small since interbreeding is more likely to increase fitness that reduce it, especially in a new environments. Therefore, there are no human races in the sense of well-defined subspecies, but partly genetically based behavioral differences between individuals, sexes and age populations have been established. This kinds of view is called biological constructivism, which is invented by Europeans for a serious and legitimate scientific reason leading to differ strikingly from non-Europeans. In biological constructivism, a theory of racial inferiority could explain why European domination of the other continents. Besides, many countries have used the ideas of racial inferiority to support restrictive immigration and naturalization policies. For example, slavery was rationalized by the theory of racial inferiority that blacks were natural slaves, unfit and unable to govern themselves.
On the other hand, another view of race is social constructivism. In social constructivism, race is defined as social race, classes of individuals that exists only because of our ideas, beliefs, and practices. Race is constructed by the society. The difference between two theses are that if race are natural kinds, their members share essences because the members of natural kinds share essences; otherwise, they don’t share essences though they share important properties or conditions that justify their being classified together. Some social constructions are made intentionally and some unintentionally. For example, teams are made intentionally, but nations can be unintentionally. Briefly speaking, the main essences of social constructivism are quite complex. Different experts may have different accounts of how the races are socially constructed. Even the same experts would have different accounts if he has different views about what the conditions or properties are. Hence, by this view, there are no races as these are commonly understood.
In conclusion, there are common view between two theses. We cannot rule out the possibility that there are biological races and that there may be important differences between them, even if it’s almost certain that the races as commonly understood are not biological races. Philosophical meaning of race[3]
Since all the race problem are usually from the conflict and difference of the fundamental views or thoughts to the race, discussions of the philosophical meaning of race are essential and required. Otherwise, it could be impossible to touch the heart of race, racism and racial discrimination. In the philosophical discussion of race, there are four classes of theses, essentialism, Locke’s nominalism, pragmatism, and Kantian rationalism. We will just briefly introduce the basic content of those four theses.
In essentialism, they think things are what they are because they contain the essences of the kinds to which they belong. Essences inhere in individual things that are substances, and the essences of substances support their accidental attributes. Words, such as race, that refer to kinds of things have definitions that describes the essences of those kinds. That is, the concept of the race are ontological.
In Locke’s nominalism, Locke was reluctant to talk about substances because it could not be known either from perception of by reflection upon the ideas of the mind. Locke addressed essences through the analyses of the meanings of terms. For Locke, the essences of things, such as race, were ideas of the kinds of thing it was “in the mind,” and “made by” the mind. Locke also claim that those things which were to correspond to an idea could be decided without restrictions imposed by the thing themselves. Hence, what count as a species for Locke seemed to have been the result of decisions about the meaning of words. Locke deny the objectivity of natural kind taxonomy. Race cannot determined by the natural structures outside ideas and words.
In pragmatism, there are two pragmatic meaning theories that could be relevant to ‘race’ bur only the second is. The first is scientific pragmatism, which shows the purposiveness and intentionality behind all concepts, even the most exact scientific ones. This kinds of pragmatic meaning is not relevant to race because race is insufficiently empirical. There are no confirmed scientific theories about race as it is understood on a folk level, and race is not a theoretical term in science. The second kind of pragmatic meaning is axiological and it has some of the connotations of word ‘pragmatic’: efficient, useful and morally compromised.
The last is Kantian rationalism theory of race, raised by I. Kant. Kantian rationalism plays c crucial rule in racial discrimination, especially in cognitive racial discrimination. Kant argued that if a perception does not conform to the fundamental categories of thought that ensure the unity and coherence of the self, they cannot be part of our experience. He described these fundamental categories as “a priori transcendental concept of understanding,” by which he means innate rules of cognitive organization that any coherent, conscious experience must presuppose. Kant support the idea that all human beings are descend from a common stock, by an adaptation of the theory of essences. He substituted the set of what he called ‘germs’ for human essences. The original human stock possessed these ‘germs’ and passed them on to all the present human races. Kant assumed that the capacities to cause characteristics of all the human races were already present though latent in the germs of the original stock in order to explain how the race present so different from one another. He argued that when different sections of that stock migrated to different parts of the world, the different environments they encountered activated different sets of capacities in their germs, and in this way cause different race to appear. Besides, Kant utilized his moral philosophy to explain human morality problem. Last, Kant’s rationalism insist the crucial rule of reason in moral deliberation and finding solutions to race problem caused by society. The Kantians believed that reconstruction of social institution and moral education could combat racism, not merely rational arguments. Racism[4]
The definition of racism is “the theory that distinctive human characteristics and abilities are determined by race”. In other words, racism is a doctrine that one race is superior. By Antony Flew, he stated racism as “a meaning the advantage or disadvantage of individuals for no better reason than that they happen to be members of this racial group rather than that”. There are two racism: individual racism and institutional racism, according to the understanding of racist behavior and of its immorality. The connection between them is that racism within individual persons is of prime moral and explanatory import, and institution racism occurs and matters because racist attitudes (desires, hopes, fears, etc.) infect the reasoning, decision making, and actions of individuals not only in their private behavior but also when they make and execute the policies of those institution the operate. Racism is not primarily a cognitive matter. Racism could exist in societies in which there is no systematic oppression.
Finally, race-based preference need not to be racist. Racial discrimination [5, 6]
The definition of racial discrimination could separate into two context. First is political definition, a manifest attitude in which a particular property a person which is irrelevant to judgments of that person’s intrinsic value or competence, e.g. face, gender, etc. This definition is called political discrimination. Second is cognitive definition, called cognitive discrimination. Cognitive discrimination is the concept we ordinarily understand, a manifest capacity to distinguish veridically between one property and another, and to respond appropriately to each. For example, when we say someone is discriminating person, or has discriminating judgment, we mean that he or she exercises a capacity to make fine distinction between properties of thing, and base his or her positive or negative valuation on these actual properties. Xenophobia [5]
The definition of xenophobia is a fear of individuals who look or behave differently than those one is accustomed to. It is a fear of what is experimentally unfamiliar, of individuals who do not conform to one’s empirical assumptions about what other people are like, how they behave or how they look. Ultimately, it is a fear of individuals who violate one’s empirical conception of persons and so one’s self-perception. Sometimes, it’s not easy to discriminate racism and xenophobia. Xenophobia engenders various forms of stereotyping, such as racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. It thereby reduces the complex singularity of the other’s properties to over-simplified but conceptually manageable subset, and is in turn diminishes one’s full conception of personality. Hence xenophobia is the originating phenomenon to which each of these forms of political discrimination is a response.
Past UN actions
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was adopted in 1965 and entered into force in 1969. In the convention, definitions of race and racial discrimination were given. Also, several articles were to prohibit any forms of racial inequalities in any nation’s policies, systems, law or practices. In the article 8 to 16, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) was established to govern the implement of the convention through individual complaint mechanism. The last 8 articles governs ratification, entry into force, and possible ways of amendment of the Convention. Until 2013m there are 87 signatories with ratification and 176 nations adopted.
World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination
The World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination was hold in Geneva, Switzerland in 1978 and 1983, with the resolutions A/RES/33/99, A/RES/33/100, and A/RES/37/41. During two conferences, there were four goals of setting to monitor the related Programme-Decade for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination-by resolution 3057(XXVIII) in 1973. The following are the four goals:
* Promote human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction of any kind such as race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin.
* Resist all policies and practices that contribute to the strengthening of racism, racial discrimination
* Identify, isolate and dispel the fallacious and mythical beliefs, policies and practices that contribute to racism, racial discrimination and apartheid
* Counteract the emergence of alliances based on mutual espousal of racism and racial discrimination.
In the conference, UN intended to solve the apartheid in South Africa, and call the international nations, NGOs and other organizations to assist the minorities all over the world, especially in South Africa through resolution A/RES/33/99 and A/RES/33/100 In addition, the conference in 1978 was to reiterate the importance of implement of Programme for Decade for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, and required all the assign countries to achieve the goal through domestic policies and legislations. In 1983, United Nations decided to strengthen the implement of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination by several actions. In resolution A/RES/37/41, the actions to combat apartheid in Africa through several policies, included embargo actions in Security Council resolution 148 (1977), to strongly reaffirm the roles of education system and mass media in elimination for racism and racial discrimination, and to advance several effective measures for the promotion and protection of human rights of persons belonging to minority groups, indigenous populations and peoples and migrant workers who are subjected to racial discrimination.
World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR)
In 2001, the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was hold in Durban, South Africa, with a declaration raised. In the conference, UN intend to review and reaffirm the fundamental spirit of ICERD and the effort of conference in 1976 and 1983. The Conference objectives included
* Reviewing progress made in the fight against racism, xenophobia, and intolerance
* Increasing the level of awareness about racism
* Recommending ways to increase U.N. effectiveness through programs that combat racism and related intolerance.
Conference participants also aimed to recommend ways to improve regional, national, and international measures to combat racism, and ensure that the United Nations had the resources to combat racism. Compensation for Colonialism and Slavery were mentioned in the declaration, even though it’s controversial and leading to many argument. Besides, several actions and measures, include mechanism construction, were taken to protect and promote the right of slaves, victims, refugees and African descent to national and domestic resources such as health system, education system, environment, and security protection function. Ratification and implementation of relevant international and regional legal instruments in non-discrimination were also be discussion in the resolution. In the end, the strategies to achieve full and effective equality was discussed.
The second World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was held in Geneva, Switzerland in 2009, with the objectives to review, correct or strengthen the contents of declaration in 2001.
International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
In 2010, the FIFA World Cup was hold in South Africa. Therefore, the United Nation passed a resolution A/HRC/RES/13/27 to affirm and encourage the function of World sport in elimination of racism and racial discrimination. Hence, United Nation took March 21, 2013 as International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
Statement of problem[7]
In 2001, the third World Conference against Racism, Racial discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was held in Durban. It reaffirmed the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and raised the attention to the problems of racial discrimination and related topics.
Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance are global problems. They affect the life-chance of individuals, social groups, institutions and public policies that seek to promote cohesion, equity and development. The world has certainly made progress in combating the scourge of racism and expanding the frontiers of citizenship. It’s difficult to find a State parties that currently defines itself in a racial terms or explicitly support public policies that are racially discriminating. However, a gulf remains between philosophical theory, law, and practice. Discussion on racism can be emotive as they often touch on issues of identity, dignity, justice and historical violations. The main problem of the statement could be discussed based on four parts: the social construction of race and citizenship; the socio-economic and political forces that drive racism and inequalities; organized responses to cultural diversity; and the impact of various type of public policies on race relations. Hence, we will discuss citizenship, justice, poverty, prosperity, policing and human right, relevant to race, racial discrimination problems.
Racism, citizenship, and justice.
Racism exists in varying degrees in all regions. It is now widely accepted that race is socially constructed. The construction of race as identity may be linked with ethnicity, especially when variations in physical characteristics coincide with assumed cultural and religious difference. Examples include relations between peoples of Indian and African origin in Guyana, North and South Sudanese, Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda, and Malays and Chinese in Malaysia, which some of them are still in conflict in the state. Racial ideas mat influence discourse on social integration and distort perceptions about citizenship. Citizens are supposed to be bears of equals equal rights and obligations. Besides, migration often affects the constructions of citizenship. For example, the Middle East has experienced massive waves of immigrants from Asian and African engaged in short-term work. Also, migrations poses a challenge to traditional conceptions of nation state in Western Europe. Furthermore, the institutional racism is currently widely debated issue of racial discrimination. It often place the victimized group in continuous disadvantage such ad biased recruitment patterns in jobs, unequal access to health care, limited career opportunities, and lower quality of educations and social services. People as blacks and Latinos in United States, Caribbean youth in the United Kingdom, Arabs and African in France, Turks in Germany and so on usually face these difficulties until now.
Racism and inequalities may be linked to discriminatory public policies, the way labour markets are constructed and different access to governance institutions. Labour market may be racially segmented because of past public policies, unequal development or efforts by individuals from specific groups to protect advantages in certain activities. Inequality also arise from the impact of development policies and practices on different groups. These issue are still happened in United States, Malaysia, Indonesia and Southern Africa. Public policies that promote social justice are a fundamental requirement for achieving stability and responsible citizenship. Affirmative policies are associated with efforts to correct socio-economic disabilities, which certain groups may have suffered as a result of past discriminatory public policies. They focus on issues of employment, access to educational institutions, government contracts and broad areas of social policy. For example, inequalities in key socio-economic indicator, such as wealth are narrowed in Malaysia between Malays and Chinese due to the enforcement of ‘National Unity’.
Xenophobia and Immigration
Xenophobia with regard to foreign workers, and domestic workers in particular, has three aspects. First, the preference for temporary contract labour which precludes the possibility of citizenship. Second, preferential treatment is usually given to nationals, although particular kinds of menial work have now been allocated to foreigners. Third, disdain and abuse towards those who are visibly different (especially Sri Lankans, Ethiopians and other Africans) can be observed in the kind of treatment that is meted out to them by nationals, particularly employers. Besides, foreign females domestic employees and foreign maids are now often under the threat of violence and subjected to physical, sexual, psychological and emotional abuse. Many so-called suicides have been reported of Sri Lankans, Filipinas and Ethiopian women.However, under the effort of International Labour Organization (ILO), not all immigrant workers are treated badly. Many are treated with respect and dignity, are paid on time, give time off and return to their home countries having eared up to three or four times what they could have eared if they have not migrated. In West Europe, immigration also poses a challenge not just to labour market needs but also to the welfare systems. Usually, most of countries would adapt the integration polices, which can be examined along two dimensions- the subjects and the fields aimed at. On the issues of subjects, a distinction can be made between general and targeted policies. When focus is on the fields of integration, policies may aimed at welfare system or labour market. Moreover, the necessary basis for equality would be a body of legal provisions, both in civil and in penal law, which, for instance, France and Germany don’t have. In conclusion, governments should in every way possible combat irrational discrimination in all areas of society.
Poverty and Prosperity
In poverty and prosperity, we often focus on the economic trends in relative economic well-being indicator, such as GNP or GDP. However, there are four areas, based on social psychological view, to focus on this topic: racial disparities in wealth; perceptions of racial inequalities and emotional well-being; the perceptions of racial discrimination and rational attitudes; and the interrelationships among racial integration. For instance, in the US, blacks and whites with the same income tend to have different levels of economic security. In a national survey, African American families not only have lower levels of wealth and economic security, they also have low expectations about their prospects for attaining racial equality in economic well-being. Besides, racial stratification has negative effects on racial minorities regardless of their socio-economic status. Lastly, there are still three major facets defined the contemporary race problem: racial integration, racial parity, and racial harmony. Racial integration focus on bringing members of each race into close proximity. Racial parity focus on the goal of equalizing the distribution of outcomes for comparable whites and blacks in domains such as education, incomes, life, etc. Racial harmony reflects a situation in which antagonism is low and positive effect is high. Although progress along one of these dimensions does not guarantee progress along the others, it’s still need the efforts of State parties to reduce racial economic disparities with policies. Possible solutions[7]
To solve the problem of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, we need not only to promote the power of International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination through the legislation of national and domestic level. Besides, there are three important public policy issues that have been central to debates on racism-the citizenship, social justice and equitable governance. These are needed to achieve stability and consolidate the values of citizenship. Redistribution policies could be considered, especially in the land problem, even though they are not always easy to implement. Integration policies are required to solve the immigration problem. Two additional public policy mechanism for addressing the employment problems of racial minorities are (a) enhance antidiscrimination enforcement in the housing market (e.g. rental, sales) to facilitate racial residential integration (b) enhanced anti-discrimination enforcement in the labour market (e.g. employer recruiting) to improve employment opportunities for minorities. Last, education is essential to eliminate the racial discrimination, although there are still lacking efficient educational policy to achieve it.
Question to be considered
Delegates should keep in mind that all resolutions need to be within the scope of the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, outlined in Chapter IV of the United Nations Charter.104. Besides, delegates should take care not to impose on any nation’s sovereignty
1. Try to build monitor system to make all the State parties adopt and ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, since there are still some nations yet to ratify or adopt this convention.
2. How to solve the racial discrimination through educational system?
3. In economic system, try to sketch out the possible solution to eliminate the poverty between black and white, Malay and Chinese, etc.
4. In many nations, the rights of immigrant workers are yet to be defined, and often lead a consequence of xenophobia. Hence, try to consider some possible article in the draft resolution to solve this problem.
Endnotes
1. Boxill, B.R., Race and racism. 2001: Oxford University Press New York.
2. Taylor, P.C., Race: A philosophical introduction. 2013: Polity.
3. Zack, N., Race and philosophic meaning. Race/sex: Their sameness, difference, and interplay, 1997: p. 29-43.
4. Garcia, J.L., The heart of racism. Journal of Social Philosophy, 1996. 27(1): p. 5-46.
5. Piper, A.M., Two kinds of discrimination. Yale Journal of Criticism, 1993. 6: p. 25-25.
6. Wasserstrom, R., Rights, human rights, and racial discrimination. The Journal of Philosophy, 1964. 61(20): p. 628-641.
7. Bangura, Y. and R. Stavenhagen, Racism and public policy. 2005: Palgrave Macmillan New York.
8. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CERD.aspx 9. A/RES/33/99 http://www.refworld.org/docid/3b00f1b820.html 10. A/RES/37/41 http://www.racism.gov.za/substance/confdoc/decl1983.htm
11. Declaration of World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination http://www.un.org/WCAR/durban.pdf
12. Resolution 3057 (XXVIII)
http://daccessddsny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/281/29/IMG/NR028129.pdf
13. A/HRC/RES/13/27 http://www.un.org/wcm/webdav/site/sport/shared/sport/pdfs/Resolutions/A-HRC-RES-13-27/A-HRC-RES-13-27_EN.pdf
14. International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination http://www.un.org/en/events/racialdiscriminationday/