Confronting the Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

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Building Conditions to Eliminate Discrimination and/or Racism

• There is a tendency for racial tensions to persist in transitions to democracy where a political or legislative transition to racial equality is not accompanied by an economic transition that benefits formerly oppressed and disadvantaged racial groups.
• A closely related concern is the persistence of racial tensions where de jure/legal remedies, be they constitutional or legislative, are not accompanied by more substantive strategies of redress to create a level playing field between formerly advantaged and disadvantaged racial groups.
• From the standpoint of formerly disadvantaged racial groups, there is also the tendency for the issue of race and racism to be swept aside or ignored, or for an encoded discourse about race to develop that reinforces stalemate and misunderstanding. There is thus a very profound psychological dimension to the issue of racism that must be confronted in fashioning a conversation about eliminating racism.
• An assertion was made during the workshop that racism should be approached from an individualistic perspective that focuses on "equal opportunity" rather than from a perspective of "an equality of outcomes." This generated lively debate, with an opposing observation voiced that race and racism are associated with historically-grounded collective identities and experiences.
• The "racial equation" within multiracial societies tends to expose the limits of formal democracy, the quality of which is contingent on the balance of power within a given society, a situation that is dynamic and subject to change. Thus, in the case of the U.S. during post-Reconstruction, political tyranny based on race could still exist within an otherwise democratic system.
• Similarly, in the case of Brazil, former slaves became marginalized after slavery was abolished in 1888 as the government and political and intellectual elites set in train a process to transform Brazil into a "white" country. This was followed by a process of forming the national identity around the notion of "racial democracy" that belied the fact of a black population that continued to be marginalized and where poverty coincided with those of African origin. In this regard, three societies - Brazil, South Africa, and the U.S. - can be seen to share in the common coincidence of race, poverty, and marginalization.
• Important references were made to other cases of group discrimination and oppression based on culture, religion, and ethnicity, as well as race. In one Persian Gulf country, for example, various forms of discrimination and persecution have been allowed because the government, under the cover of not allowing discrimination of any kind, has failed to gather social statistics that might be useful in monitoring discrimination. Cases of black-on-black racial and/or ethnic oppression and discrimination were discussed in the cases of the Sudan and Fiji.

• The World Movement should explore structuring an ongoing international forum on race and racism, the purpose of which would be to advance a constructively critical discourse on race and to facilitate monitoring of racial tensions and conflicts on a global basis.
• The issue of discrimination in countries that have a policy of not keeping social statistics, based on the rationale that there is no race discrimination and that the government opposes it, should be addressed.
• The international community should respond to racial persecution and exclusion on Fiji in the same way that it did in the case of South Africa.
• The World Movement should explore the feasibility and means of supporting the development of racial conflict resolution methodologies and strategies aimed at promoting racial justice and interracial reconciliation (which could include examining South African experiences in monitoring the impact of legislation and racial conflict management).
• Governments should be made accountable for implementing the International Labor Organization (ILO) convention on combating racism.