2878 Gresham Road, SE

Atlanta, GA 30316-4304

March 31, 2010

The Honorable Alex Van Meeuwen

President UN Human Rights Council

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

Palais des Nations

CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Honorable Sir:

Recently, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton held a press briefing to announce that the United States (US) was abandoning its head-in-the-sand approach to the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR). As you know, the Bush administration boycotted the process and did not seek membership on the council but participated only as an observer with no voting power. Bush claimed countries with poor human rights records dominated the council. However, slave descendants in the United States (US) believe Bush did not want blacks to have a legitimate platform that would cause the US to respond to charges of institutionalized racism, a hostile criminal justice system and ongoing economic slavery. Statements from President Barack Obama's administration regarding the URP have created grave concern that African Americans will be unable to give their bottom-up view of their human right's treatment in the US.

Secretary of State Clinton opened her remarks with some sweeping generalizations regarding human rights. "The idea of human rights begins with a fundamental commitment to the dignity that is the birthright of every man, woman and child. ... The principle that each person possesses equal moral value is a simple, self-evident truth, but securing a world in which all can exercise the rights that are naturally theirs is an immense practical challenge."

For a fifth generation descendant of American slavery, these words do not match the reality slave descendants face, even if Ms. Clinton is truly sincere in her statement. First, black people in America have never been accorded civil rights let along human rights. Moreover, her reference to, "a fundamental commitment to the dignity that is the birthright of every man, woman and child" ignores a fundamental truth which is slaves and their descendants were denied such rights by Article I Section II (the 3/5 Compromise) of the US Constitution. This article codified discrimination by making blacks 3/5 of white men. The 3/5 Compromise has never been repealed, so it is still intact in the Constitution -- it covers the Electoral College which elects the President and governs Senatorial representation.

This section is the foundation of discrimination against slave descendants and the underpinning of white privilege, as well as the entitlements they enjoy. The 3/5 Compromise was the basis for the Dred Scott (1858) decision in which Chief Justice Roger B. Taney stated, "A black man had no rights that a white man is bound to respect." Thus this ruling became the precedent in Plessy v Ferguson (1896) and the era of federal and state sponsored "separate-but-equal" (segregation) discrimination that lasted until the 1980s.

Madam Secretary boldly asserted, "Human rights are universal, but their experience is local. This is why we are committed to holding everyone to the same standard, including ourselves." The "local experiences" of African Americans are tainted by racism, de-facto segregation and discrimination which is a legacy US society perpetuates but who is held accountable for this? Once our ancestors were turned off plantations, they were re-enslaved through economic discrimination and legal incarceration; then, they were kept ignorant through inferior education and impotent through political disenfranchisement. Simultaneously, blacks paid taxes that benefited white-only institutions and other public facilities they could not utilize.

It was as if Secretary Clinton was only looking outward in order to point a finger when she said, "As we work to protect human rights at home and abroad, we remember that human rights begin, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, "in small places close to home." So when we work to secure human rights, we are working to protect the experiences that make life meaningful, to preserve each person's ability to fulfill his or her God-given potential - the potential within every person to learn, discover and embrace the world around them...."

Mrs. Clinton seems to have forgotten that Mrs. Roosevelt lived during a time when white men in the US lynched over 100 black men every year. Moreover, these lynchings were not dark secrets hidden away from view; they were attended by community business leaders, politicians, preachers, teachers, women and children - they were community entertainment. Newspapers announced lynchings in advance, like sports events and law enforcement facilitated such murder. Mob rule allowed white men to take a black man's land, wife or life and nothing was done.

Today, whites say forget about all of that, it is behind us, we are a color blind society now. However, some of the same community business leaders, politicians, preachers, teachers, women and their children who were a part of segregation and lynching are still in power. The system of legal discrimination erected during segregation was never dismantled; whites just covered it over with words like "equal opportunity employer," "fair housing" and "affirmative action." The words today are "post racial" but everyone adds, "We still have a long way to go!"

This is because America's claims of freedom, justice and equality for black people are all just words that can be changed, depending on who occupies the White House. They are a sale's pitch to the world, just as participation in the UN Human Rights Council's UPR is a sale's pitch by Mrs. Clinton. "This year, the United States is participating in the Universal Periodic Review process in conjunction with our participation in the UN Human Rights Council. In the fall, we will present a report, based on the input of citizens and NGOs, gathered online and in face-to-face meetings across the country."

Sir, these so-called citizens are not blacks who are going to tell this story. They are hand-picked to wave the stars and stripes at the UN. Economist Dot M. Smith documented the relevance of the 3/5 Compromise today, so the complaints of slave descendants are based on what is happening today not the past. Mrs. Smith examined unemployment and median family income using US Labor Department data. She found that the disparity between black and white unemployment and median family income has remained remarkably stable over the last 50 years and the gap between black and white median family incomes mimics the 3/5 Compromise. Expressed in everyday economic terms, black are twice as likely to pay higher interest rates, higher rent, more for less insurance, be the last hired and the first fried, live in a substandard redlined community filled with predatory businesses, liquor stores and fast food restaurants.

Obviously Sir, this situation breeds poverty, desperation and crime. Facing a hostile criminal justice system, even though blacks are only 13% of the US population, they are over 45% of those incarcerated. The public school system for black youth is a fast track to prison. Those blacks who escape being stigmatized by criminal records face discrimination getting into major universities (less than 5% on average), graduate or professional schools (less than 2%). Those with degrees have incomes 2.5 times less than white high school graduates and unemployment rates 2.5 times higher.

Michael Posner, assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor at the State Department said, "Information gathered from the series of meeting will be used in the 20-page report it plans to submit to the United Nations Human Rights Council in November. It is inconceivable that Mrs. Clinton could hold meetings around the US and in 20 pages give a comprehensive picture of just some of the issues raised here. What the world needs to understand is that the US government enforced segregation against blacks for 80 years, which gave whites the advantages they currently hold. More importantly, the federal government has done nothing that corrects for those years of discrimination, so the situation continues. Programs, such as affirmative action, were designed to help all minorities but did more to help white women like Mrs. Clinton than it helped blacks.

The genocide that has occurred in America over the last 100 years is no different from what happened in Bosnia or any other place where ethnic cleansing occurred. For the Human Rights Council to accept a report of just 20-pages in length which purports to address the outrageous treatment slave descendants in the US are presently enduring is worst than hypocrisy and deceit; it is criminal negligence.

Sir, it is patently obvious that the US does not plan to allow slave descendants to speak on their own behalf. President Barack Obama has made it clear that he will not do anything to change the status of blacks because he does not want to be perceived by whites as doing anything that will help only blacks, even though slavery and segregation only hurt blacks. Therefore, this letter is a formal request for the right to submit directly to the Human Rights Council our assessment of America's human rights record during the Universal Periodic Review. Sir, there is no other international forum uniquely situated that can give slave descendants the opportunity to tell our side of the discrimination and racism story in America, where the US government must listen and be held accountable for it responses. Slave descendants have waited over 400 years to address the world in this matter. The chance for slave descendants in America to fashion a new future is now in your hands.

Respectfully,

John Burl Smith

The Dialogue on Race International Network (www.thedish.org)