Oral Statement to the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination
and the Protection of Minorities, August, 1999
Provisional Agenda Item 8: Prevention of discrimination against and the protection of minorities
While we, the so-called African Americans, are a people and not a minority, in the United States we are placed within a minority status. Hence, we call upon the U.N. to come to our succor both under Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: the one the U.S. has ratified; and under the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in resolution 47/135 of 18 December, 1992.
We charge civil death. The U.S., with knowledge that it has denied us our identity for the past 400 years, is in violation of both the aforementioned Covenant and Declaration. In articles 2 and 4, the Declaration stipulates that minorities have the right to protect their culture and identity.
Professor Guillaume Siemienski’s working paper on Education rights of minorities: Hague Recommendation states that language, but not just any language, one’s "mother tongue" is intimately bound with identity.
Professor Mustapha Mehedi defines the essence of identity in his writings on education. He states, the discovery of one’s own identity means not that it is mapped out in isolation, but that it is negotiated (infused) through a dialogue, partly external, partly internal, with others. Education plays a fundamental role in the formation of personal identity. Thus, the right to education is an identity right.
Owing to plantation slavery, intercultural education is an impossibility for us. By forcibly depriving us of our "mother tongue," the Government of the U.S. deracinated our collective identity, making our condition irreversible. We need specific U.N. assistance.
Absent knowledge of our mother tongue, how could and can we speak it with other members of our community, and preserve our individual identity? The annihilation of our "mother tongue" is the extermination of our identity. Absent our identity, we do not have our own culture. Absent culture, we are in a state of civil death. To destroy a people and their shared life is a crime.
The U.N. can provide a remedy by establishing a forum for so-called African-Americans at the U.N. in New York. We want a forum for the purpose of restoring our human rights -- which only we can reclaim or choose. Within a forum, we will 1) rebuild a kind of council or governing body amongst ourselves; 2) openly discuss the devolution, in pertinent parts, of the Constitution of the U.S., which defines us as three-fifth of a human being; 3) make choices on the "mother tongue" or tongues we wish to speak; 4) discuss and conclude on the issues of reclamation, restoration, reparations and migration of some of us to a friendly nation; 5) then present this package to the U.N. in order that the U.N. can facilitate dialogue between us and the U.S. Government.
The forum will provide a peaceful and protected environment for the resurrection of our legal, political being and status as a people. To finance the forum, we would gratefully accept the sponsorship of the U.N. or any compassionate government which aims at liberty.
In closing, we thank the Sub-Commission for calling upon the Working Group on Minorities to address the continuing legacies of the slave trade in the Americas and throughout the Diaspora.
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