“While we pat ourselves on the back for being rainbow countries, the reality is that there are still race tensions in our societies,” said Professor Rose Marie Belle-Antoine, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Commissioner and Rapporteur on People of African Descent and Against Racial Discrimination,.
“In more modern times this has manifested itself most prominently in the relations between Indo and African-Caribbean peoples, particularly in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago,” she added.
Belle-Antoine, the wife of the St. Lucia Prime Minister, Dr. Kenny Anthony, was commenting on the recently released IACHR study that looked at the “Situation of People of African Descent in the Americas”.
The background to the study was the Preparatory Regional Conference to the World Conference against Racial Discrimination, Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Chile, in 2000, which provoked the governments of the Americas to “advance substantively toward the establishment of a conceptual framework in order to raise the visibility of afro‐descendants, recognize the persistence of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance that specifically affect the afro‐ descendant population”.
The study found that although the problem of racial discrimination is most persistent in the Caribbean, is it is also most subtle and Belle-Antoine suggested that the subtle persistence of racial profiling and discrimination in the Caribbean could only be because people have grown to accept it.
“Colour prejudice is…perhaps the most under reported form of discrimination that we have but at the same time perhaps it is the most complained about in informal ways,” she said, noting that while there is an acknowledgement of social and cultural differences among races in the Caribbean, there still is anxiety when it comes to full and deep acceptance of these differences.
“We have had our own Trayvon Martin’s here in the Caribbean. It is not long ago that a young non-white male was beaten up and murdered for daring to enter a disco apparently reserved for whites – no, not in South Africa, but in Trinidad and Tobago.
“We can also recall a young, as they are called ‘Black Moslem’ young man was targeted and singled out for ‘loitering’ while working on the construction of his resturarant – he too ended up dead. We heard of this perhaps only because that young man turned out to have belonged to a prominent family. How many others have gone unnoticed?”
The Inter‐American Commission said it is concerned that “racial profiling is widely applied in the region as a selective and discretionary mechanism for detaining and investigating people, and directly affects the Afro‐descendant population.
In this regard, the IACHR points out that it is essential that countries eliminate these practices, abolish the norms that establish a legal basis for them, draw up protocols to govern the behaviour of the security forces that take ethnic and racial diversity into account, and implement appropriate mechanisms for monitoring and overseeing the activity of State agents, so as to detect and eradicate these practices in law enforcement agencies.
The Commission said that it considers it vital both to modify institutionalized stereotypes concerning the Afro‐ descendant population and to apply appropriate sanctions against security personnel who act on the basis of racial profiles.
The IACHR said that it has received information on the selective detention of Afro‐descendant people, on the grounds of racial profiling, 269 unjustified police surveillance and negative interactions with the police, 270 disproportionate arrest rates and over‐representation of Afro‐descendants in the criminal justice system.
“The Commission urges the States to revise their policies and legislation regarding citizen security in order to identify and eradicate the use of racial profiling as a valid mechanism of detention and investigation of persons”.
IACHR president Jesus Orozco-Henriquez said as the Americas move forward with consolidating strong democracies, the Commission and Inter-American Court of Human Rights are addressing the related human rights challenges.
“There are a number of shared, priority concerns, and the inter-American human rights system offers approaches that are both necessary and useful,” he said, adding that the Commission conducts a number of visits to various countries with recommendations to support states in implementing positive reforms.
“In this regard, the Commission will soon be publishing the report it has prepared on Jamaica,” he added.
Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretary General, Irwin La Rocque, said that the study which was conducted to coincide with last year’s International Year of People of African Descent, “may be a sober reminder of the deep-rooted problems which remain in the hemisphere”.
He said the study looked at the situation of 30 per cent of the population of the Americas and seeks to “render visible” a social group which has been marginalised to the point of being invisible.
“Invisible in the sense that many countries do not collect or make public statistics on social indicators of their Afro-descendant populations.
“We in the Caribbean must take careful note of the report given the demographics of our region. Many of the findings of the report resonate with the situation for people of African descent in our Community. Our reality may not be as stark or as widespread as some outlined by the report but there is enough discrimination, injustice, deprivation, and psychological trauma existing in the Region to give us pause for thought and action,” he said.
La Rocque said that too many people of African descent in the Americas do not have access to basic services in health and education and therefore have difficulty in realising their full potential and contributing meaningfully to the advancement of their families, communities and nations.
He said it was one of the reasons which prompted the CARICOM to co-sponsor a success resolution at the 61st General Assembly of the United Nations which resulted in the United Nations designating 25th March 2007, as the International Day to mark the Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
“That year was the 200th Anniversary of the Abolition and the observance was one means of highlighting the challenges faced by the descendants of slaves,” he said, adding “in the face of those challenges there is no doubt that people of African descent have made a significant deposit in the treasury of human civilisation in this hemisphere”.
In presenting the report, Belle-Antoine said that while there may be less overt displays of racism, especially between people of African and European descent, there are still some very strong structural paradigms that exacerbate inequalities between the races.
“Financial power is still largely in the hands of white minorities in the region because of business patterns that have shifted little in the centuries”, she said, pointing to studies done in Barbados which show that black entrepreneurs have greater difficulty in securing business loans and capital than their white counterparts, which she said places them at a disadvantage from the outset.
The study also examined the problems faced by Afro-Caribbean people within the justice system.
“Some of the difficulties that Afro Descendants confront in the justice system are intimately connected to the persistent poverty that the group as a whole faces. In other respects, it has more to do with social dynamics and stereotypes that colour relationships with other communities and more particularly with authority and security figures, such as the police, court personnel and prison authorities.
“Afro descendants systematically inhabit the poorest areas with the most precarious infrastructure and are more exposed to crime and violence,” the study found.
CMC/pr/2012