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Obama Fronts for White Supremacy with Boycott of Durban Conference on Racism
Glen Ford, BAR executive editor
25 Mar 2009
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durbanA Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

The injustices of the current world order are derived from those of the old order - which was based on white supremacy. The language of Euro-American hegemony has become more refined but, with the advent of the Barack Obama presidency, it has taken only two months to demonstrate that white supremacy - and its peculiar Zionist offshoot - has no difficulty exercising its power and privilege through the agency of a Black executive." The Durban II conference on racism has been eviscerated by the Black man at the helm of the racist superpower.



Obama Fronts for White Supremacy with Boycott of Durban II

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“It has taken only two months to demonstrate that white supremacy – and its peculiar Zionist offshoot – has no difficulty exercising its power and privilege through the agency of a Black executive.”

For many on the Left, it was an article of faith that the election of Barack Obama would change the paradigm of United States and international politics – that the conversation would be fundamentally altered when a Black man became leader of the sole superpower on Earth. How anyone could believe that one man’s melanin could undo or even significantly alter an imperial edifice erected over centuries at the cost of hundreds of millions of lives and the extinction of whole peoples – is beyond me. But wishful thinking and silly assumptions are washed away by events and the passing of time. In Barack Obama’s case, it has taken only two months to demonstrate that white supremacy – and its peculiar Zionist offshoot – has no difficulty exercising its power and privilege through the agency of a Black executive.

President Obama has shown us – and very early in his term – that he is just as determined as his white predecessors in the Oval Office to maintain the global order created by the conquistadors, colonizers, and genocidal maniacs of Europe and North America. Obama threatens that the U.S. will boycott the second international gathering on racism since the turn of the millennium, scheduled for late April in Switzerland. The conference is informally called “Durban II” in reference to the first such gathering on racism, in Durban, South Africa, in 200l. George Bush pulled the U.S. out of Durban I, claiming the deck was stacked against Israel, a state whose purpose is to maintain Jewish supremacy through an apartheid-like system in Palestine.

In the interim, Israel has escalated its savage aggressions against Arabs within its borders, in the occupied territories, and among its neighbors. Thus, the question of whether Zionism is a form of racism is as relevant today, as ever.

“The European and North American imperialists are busy re-writing the agenda for Durban II.”

Since 2001, the United States has been engaged in its own, self-proclaimed war against Arabs and Muslims everywhere on the planet, and has intensified anti-Arab and anti-Muslim discrimination, here at home. The racial order in the United States has, since 2001, developed even deeper layers of hatred and discrimination directly related to American imperial policy in the world – and, of course, its connections to Israel and Zionist racism. It’s past time for Durban II, but Obama doesn’t want to go – any more than George Bush did. And for the same reasons. Imperialism is incomprehensible without an understanding of its white supremacist underpinnings.

The European and North American imperialists are busy re-writing the agenda for Durban II, so that whether they attend or not, the event will result in no indictment of white supremacy as a fundamental evil at work in the world, today. Language related to reparations to Africans for the white worldwide savagery and people-stealing that created the Black Diaspora, is gone, written out – as if the cascade of holocausts against Africa and Africans never happened.

For centuries, North American and European power and privilege has been built on the degradation of people of color. Now a Black man has been elevated to a singular status. He uses it to reinforce the system of white supremacy, and to write other Black and brown and red and yellow people out of history. His name is Barack Obama. Why should anyone be proud.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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