Minority Death Match by Naomi Klein

I'm going to keep this short since recent posts have been so long. I enjoyed this article, and to me this piece is about two things: one, the prisonhouse of rhetoric, and, two, who controls it. According to Klein, organizers of both Durban I and Durban II (Review), UN-sponsored conferences on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, strongly desired to "bring Obama's government to the table," perhaps more than any other government. Why? Well, I figure America was needed at the table not so much to legitimate the conference but because Obama at once both stands as a symbol of the possibility either that racism is not eradicated simply by electing a minority as head of state or that it is in fact so eradicated. A second reason is because of America's deep and unchanging commitment to Israel.

Klein suggests that opponents to the conference, believing that the number one purpose of the meeting was to charge Israel once and for all with racial injustice, swiftboated the gathering. She writes that in fact it matters little what the actual documents produced by the conference, namely the declaration, stated. These days if not always only perception matters, and she does seem to conclude that the opponents won the battle of perceptions and who has gotten to control them. On that basis, and of course under much pressure, Obama chose neither to attend the first conference or the second. Many people were disappointed. Late Latino activist Juan Santos referred to Obama as "a muzzled black Emperor." Is the title not appropriate? Do not even Obama's domestic politics prove this? Obama cannot talk about race here in America or abroad. Obama is a pragmatist, yet some people believe that when the time is right he is going to be able to tell certain truths. In situations like this I love to call up the words of one of my pastors: "Where are the examples of that?"