A UN organ is making demands so incredible it would be unbelievable had we not heard similar loud cries from race hucksters a few years ago.
The UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) published a document calling for immediate “financial compensation, educational initiatives and institutional reforms” to remedy supposed harms that persist today as a result of the transatlantic slave trade, which ended more than 200 years ago (in fact, it was the West that led the charge in eliminating chattel slavery altogether, which had been happening everywhere since time immemorial).
The committee speaks with authority. It claims that the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) treaty “imposes broad and immediate obligations.”
The recommendation is directed at the 182 countries that ratified the ICERD treaty. That includes the United States, the U.K., France, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, and many others. You can see the full list here.
Bold Claims, Bold Demands
The ICERD, though more than half a century old, is the basis for the bold demands in the CERD document. The committee also cites additional treaties for support, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Those treaties were adopted, respectively, in 1966 and 1984. The United States has ratified all of them, and they are considered binding.
According to this UN committee, the slave trade might have ended, but it still looms over contemporary laws, policies, and institutions. As a result, everything about Western society is inherently racist. According to the document, modern manifestations of this racist system “include racial profiling and the disproportionate use of force by law enforcement officials; racial disparities in criminal justice systems; and discriminatory laws, policies and institutional practices affecting access to housing, education, employment and health care.”
The documents’ authors claim:
Despite formal legal reforms, racialized violence, stereotyping and structural barriers continue to constrain, inter alia, educational attainment, economic mobility, health outcomes and environmental safety, producing enduring intergenerational disparities.
Structural Implementation
So, action must be taken. The UN Committee “recommends that structural measures be implemented as a matter of policy, thereby recognizing collective harms, even when harms to a specific individual have not been established.” This should include “compensation, restitution and other forms of satisfaction.” It repeats this point several times. And every time it does, it adds another layer of nonsense. The document also says that people may “seek reparations through restitution, compensation, cessation, guarantees of non-repetition, and satisfaction, including acknowledgement of responsibility and apologies.”
The committee also calls for “equality” in politics and the criminalization of speech that offends its version of history. Governments should “condemn and criminalize racist hate speech and the dissemination of theories of racial superiority,” say the authors.
Guilt by Association
What about the countries that weren’t involved in that slave trade? (Conveniently, there is no mention of the African accomplices who participated in the European slave trade.) It doesn’t matter. Everybody needs to pay up. The authors explain why:
While some States bear direct responsibility for trafficking in enslaved Africans and racialized transatlantic chattel slavery others may have benefited from, facilitated, or contributed to sustaining the global economic and racial structures that emerged from these systems. At the same time, there are some States that neither engaged in nor benefited from these practices. Notwithstanding this distinction, all States have a responsibility to support reparatory justice for the legacies of these historical injustices given their enduring global impacts.
There is no excuse for what happened. That includes the norms of the era. “By recognizing the persistence of systemic racism and its roots in historical slavery,” the document says, “the Committee considers that the States Parties should take action today … regardless of the legal framework applicable at the time of the historical acts.”
Hellbound and Down 