The general topic of human rights is discussed at Daily Kos (virtually) seven days a week. But, with escalating bloodshed in Gaza, other ongoing events throughout the Mideast, Boko Haram savaging northeastern Nigeria, children being turned away at our border, followed by the homicides of Eric Garner on Staten Island, NY, last month, and 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, 11 days ago (along with far too many similar, less publicized homicides by police throughout this country and the world, in between), there’s been a noticeable uptick in the discussion of the topic here over the past couple of months.
So, while the average, low-info white person on Main Streets throughout America might be a bit shocked by the following story—which, and please correct me in the comments if I’m wrong, appears to have gone uncovered here in the past 24 hours—I’m pretty sure most people of color in this country are responding to this story with sentiments to the effect of: “Better late than never!” Or, “Finally!”
(The old saying: “Knowing the problem is half the solution,” applies!)
Missouri racial violence recalls apartheid, UN rights chief saysBy Stephanie Nebehay
Reuters
GENEVA Tue Aug 19, 2014 7:21pm BST(Reuters) – Clashes between police and protesters in the U.S. town of Ferguson are reminiscent of the racial violence spawned by apartheid in her native South Africa, the top U.N. human rights official said on Tuesday.
Navi Pillay, who is due to step down at the end of the month after six years in the U.N. hotseat, urged U.S. authorities to investigate allegations of brutality and examine the “root causes” of racial discrimination in America.
U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday called for calm and a change in police tactics in Ferguson, Missouri, which has been rocked by racially charged clashes and riots after a white officer killed an unarmed black teenager 10 days ago.
“I condemn the excessive use of force by the police and call for the right of protest to be respected. The United States is a freedom-loving country and one thing they should cherish is people’s right to protest,” Pillay said in a wide-ranging interview in her office along Lake Geneva.
“Apart from that, let me say that coming from apartheid South Africa I have long experience of how racism and racial discrimination breeds conflict and violence,” she said.
“These scenes are familiar to me and privately I was thinking that there are many parts of the United States where apartheid is flourishing.”
Noting that African-Americans are often among the poorest and most vulnerable U.S. citizens, and accounted for many of the inmates in the country’s teeming prisons, she added: “Apartheid is also where law turns a blind eye to racism.”…
As you’ll note in the timeline, immediately below, our community’s Managing Editor of Black Kos, the exceptionally incisive and prescient Kossack dopper0189, beat the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to the a-word, at least an hour or two earlier on Tuesday…
Black Kos, Tuesday’s Chiledopper0189
Managing Editor, Black Kos
Tue Aug 19, 2014 at 01:00 PM PDT…When the black community in a city like Ferguson loses faith in its police force, and the police respond by crushing the community’s civil and constitutional rights, it isn’t a stretch to say that the white ruling class has created de facto apartheid. Probably temporarily, perhaps without segregationist intent. But functionally, that’s what it is. They’ve also denied the people they serve the services to which they’re entitled. Ferguson’s police department commands a third of the city’s budget and they are using those resources to provide aggressive disservice to the people who finance that budget
Ferguson presents an unusually extreme and condensed example of this sort of racial-civic polarization. But you can find expressions of the same basic dynamic of white public officials using their power to socially weaken black constituents all across the country…
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