March 21 - International Day Against Racism

npearson — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:27:47 -0500

Today, March 21, is recognized as the International Day Against Racism. The date is significant. On March 21 in 1960, police opened fire and killed 69 people at a peaceful demonstration in Sharpeville, South Africa, against the apartheid "pass laws". As usual, it took a number of years, but in 1966 the United Nations General Assembly called on the international community to redouble its efforts to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination.

Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights states, Racial discrimination is wrong and harmful in itself. It is a denial of human rights, an affront to human dignity and a direct assault on the foundation of the human rights edifice – the principle of equality. Discrimination and bias also have a direct impact on a society’s development. A society that tolerates discrimination holds itself back, foregoing the contribution of whole parts of its population, and potentially sowing the seeds of violent conflict.

We have certainly seen in stark and tragic detail how discrimination can lead to violent conflict in far too many countries over the course of our human history. In the United States, it was fitting that on Tuesday, March 18, Senator Barack Obama made a speech he titled A More Perfect Union, addressing the question of racism that has been raised in the current US presidential campaign. It was not a only timely speech but essential to facing our collective history - a history of development that came at the expense of our first people's, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latin Americans, and other immigrant groups throughout our history. Racism persists today and few in the political arena have an interest in opening this perverbial "can of worms" that continues to eat away at the fabric of our nation.

This persistance of discrimination is a problem in every country. No, to be honest, in every community and more to the point, in every home. I can remember a "simple" song from the musical South Pacific - "You've got to be carefully taught" - it very powerfully tells the roots of racial discrimination. The words go like this:

“You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught.”

(Richard Rodgers)

What will we choose to teach the next generation? And how will be choose opporunities to re-educate ourselves, now that we're older, and hopefully wiser?

Testing for Discrimination

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:17 -0500

Testing for Discrimination: Identifying and Prosecuting Human Rights Abuses

By Bea Bodrogi

Download full notebook below.

This tactical notebook focuses on the successful transplanting to Hungary of "testing," a tactic developed in the antidiscrimination movement in the United States. In testing, an advocacy organization that has received a complaint of an incident of discrimination, immediately sends out "testers" to replicate the incident. If a person, for instance, is denied a job based on their identity, "testers" are sent out immediately to apply for the same job and document their treatment. This documentation will be legitimate evidence of the systematic nature of the discrimination.

The Legal Defence Bureau for National and Ethnic Minorities (NEKI) was founded in 1994 in response to problems caused by longstanding prejudices against the Roma, the largest ethnic minority in Hungary. NEKI seeks to document the experience of discrimination and demonstrate the absence of legal protection for the Roma. The organization has been involved with cases including police brutality, skinhead attacks, and the denial of employment, housing and service in public accommodation.

Since discrimination is often subtle, direct evidence is rare. Adapting a method used by U.S. organisations, NEKI uses testing to collect evidence with which to challenge discrimination in court. After an incident of discrimination is reported to NEKI by a Roma victim, testers – both Roma and non - Roma – are sent to repeat the experience in order to document whether the incident represents a case of systematic discrimination, and to collect evidence for a possible court case. Testing is thus an evidence-gathering tactic that can fit directly into the legal strategy of an organization like NEKI, one confronting the impunity and public apathy about the prevalent problem of racism and discrimination.

The process is quite straightforward: Once NEKI receives a complaint, testers are sent to the place of the alleged discrimination. If the allegation concerns employment, for instance, testing is done by sending out a Roma and a non-Roma person who have similar characteristics and qualifications but differ primarily in their ethnicity. They are sent out at closely spaced intervals on the same day to apply for a job. To make the comparison clear, each tester is asked to take actions comparable to those of his fellow testers. Immediately after completing the test they record their experiences on a questionnaire detailing all the questions asked at the interview, treatment of the applicant, and the description of the job, including salaries and benefits. The test coordinator can then evaluate from this data whether differential treatment has taken place and decide if legal action can be initiated on the grounds of discrimination.

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anti-discrimination

March 21 - International Day Against Racism

Testing for Discrimination

Testing for Discrimination: Identifying and Prosecuting Human Rights Abuses