AT a recent event at the United Nations (UN) in New York, Raull Santiago, a Brazilian human rights activist, recounted a harrowing scene he witnessed. Some members of the audience flinched noticeably when Santiago, a resident of the notoriously dangerous Brazilian favelas, Complexo do Alemao, described how the military police “slammed a young man against a wall, threw him to the ground and shot him in the head.”Mr. Santiago, co-founder of the Coletivo Papo Reto (Straight Talk Collective), a network of young activists who use smartphones to “record racist attacks” of Brazilian police against residents of the favelas, spoke at a UN panel debate organised by the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the United Nations.
The panel debate, themed ‘Self-Representation as a Strategy to Fight Racism’ was the first of a series of decade-long planned events to examine the experiences of people of African descent; a people “in deep crisis,” according to Dr. Molefi Asante of Temple University in Philadelphia.
The crisis, to which Dr. Asante refers, runs the gamut: frequent police murders of Africans in countries such as the United States and Brazil; alleged state-sanctioned murders of hundreds of Africans in Guyana under the regime of former President, Bharrat Jagdeo; widespread poverty among Africans across North and South America and the Caribbean; limited educational opportunities; poor healthcare, etc.
This crisis, Dr. Asante explains, is, in part, the result of the “African Diaspora losing its identity and appreciation of its culture.” The United Nations General Assembly attributes the crisis to more concrete factors such as the ‘lack of adequate representation in the administration of justice,’ resulting in the mass incarceration of Africans in the United States, and barriers to ‘quality education, health services and housing which results in the intergenerational transmission of poverty’ for huge swaths of the African diaspora, notably Haiti.
Celso Athayde blamed the “political framework” for the ongoing racist oppression of Africans in the diaspora. Mr. Athayde is a Brazilian activist who works with young people living in the favelas. He aims to change the “political framework.” Athayde is the founder of CUFA – Central Unica das Favelas, a non-governmental organisation which works with young people in some 400 cities throughout Brazil to build institutional capacity that’s sustainable. Favela Holding is one of those institutions. It’s a venture comprising several companies that promote social inclusion through entrepreneurship and job creation. “Either the world shares the wealth with people of African descent or it will suffer the consequences of its exclusion” of African people, Athayde warned at the UN panel debate.
In its proclamation, the United Nations, recognising the institutional racism that’s pervasive in many countries, urged its member nations, inter alia, to ensure African people enjoy ‘equality before the law;’ enjoy equal treatment ‘before the tribunals and all other organs administering justice;’ and, provide ‘equal access to all levels of quality education.’
Dr. Gerald Horne saluted the UN for proclaiming 2015 – 2024 as the International Decade for People of African Descent. However, Horne, author of the ground- breaking new book, The Counter-Revolution of 1776, which chronicles the centuries-long, valiant struggles of enslaved Africans in the Americas and Caribbean for freedom, said that the UN’s urgings to its member states will be meaningless “unless reparations are placed on the table.”
Dr. James Conyers of Kean University in New Jersey was dismissive of the UN proclamation: “Any recommendations made without a call for reparations will not make us whole. I don’t see this going anywhere!” Conyers added that “considering how much Africans have suffered at the hands of Europeans, the UN should have issued a call for reparations.” Dr. Asante, who has just finished writing his 78th book entitled The African Pyramids of Knowledge, does not expect much from the UN on the subject of reparations either: “There is no voice in the United Nations for reparations” for African people, he declared. Asante continued: “The UN can advance useful proposals like its proclamation, but we have to save ourselves.”
A sentiment echoed at the UN panel debate by Mahen Bonetti, a filmmaker from Sierra Leone who lives in New York. Bonetti, founder and executive director of New York’s African Film Festival, believes that African people must be “self-validating,” advising that African economic empowerment “starts with us without looking to others for validation.” The UN’s theme for the next decade is: People of African Descent: recognition, justice and development. Africans will be recognised and there will be justice as governments around the world are forced by activists to prosecute state actors who murder African people. However, without reparations, economic development will be our cross to bear.