By Daya Gamage - Asian Tribune News Analysis
The
United States and Sri Lanka are engulfed in a discourse since the defeat of the
LTTE in May 2009 about the importance of racial equality and justice for the
minority Tamil population and ethnic reconciliation. The U.S. Department of
State officials in Washington and the foreign service officers (FSOs) at its
diplomatic mission in Colombo have converted the 'ethnic issue', or to be
specific 'Tamil Issue', an international issue taking it all the way to Geneva
at the UN Human Rights Commission.
Successive governments in Sri
Lanka, both the previous Rajapaksa and the current Sirisena regime, created a
conducive atmosphere for the U.S. to intervene in this domestic issue,
listening to their rhetoric and lectures and allowed it to be an issue outside
the borders of the Sri Lanka state.
It has been suggested by Western
power centers which includes Washington that Sri Lanka should look into the
Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa to learn lessons to solve the
'ethnic issue' or redress the grievances of the minority Tamils in Sri Lanka.
There is no argument that the
minority Tamils who were under the brutal and despotic rule of the LTTE for
more than two decades did not find the Sri Lankan administration since the
defeat of the LTTE in May 2009 being embraced but instead allowing the
secessionist elements within the Tamil Diaspora to be their voice bringing
Washington policy framers into the dialogue that reached as far as Geneva. And
there is no doubt that the minority Tamils - not the privileged who were
domiciled in the twenty percent of urban centers - faced serious issues as much
as the majority Sinhalese who are domiciled in most parts of the seventy two
percent of the rural Sri Lanka.
But there was something missing
in this dialogue between the United States and Sri Lanka about race relations,
grievances of the minority Tamils and remedy for the most disadvantages - not
the advantaged who live in highly privileged urban sector - to solve national
issues.
Instead of looking at the South
Africa process of solving racial issues, no one in the hierarchy of the
previous Rajapaksa administration nor in the current Maitripala Sirisena
administration sat with both American and Sri Lankan experts on these issues to
figure out how each nation could learn from the other about addressing racial
issues.
The Sri Lanka side on their own
has volunteered to raise the problems it faced on Tamil issues and grievances,
and the American officials in both Washington and Colombo have highlighted
Tamil issues often advocating solutions.
Both the American and Sri Lankan
sides have gone deep into the ethnic issues and Tamil grievances since the
defeat of the Tigers in 2009, and the American side has even raised the issues
in Geneva through four resolutions at UNHRC.
What the US officials continually
emphasizes all these years to impress upon Sri Lanka is their experience in
upholding the rule of law, good governance and their adherence to human rights
and equal justice.
Apart from those, the US
officials in their dialogues and discourses with Sri Lankan officials never
compared notes about each other's experience in the areas of racial
discrimination, grievances and lack of justice.
We present here what the former
secretary of state and Democratic Party contender for the presidency in 2016
Hillary Clinton said about the minority Black racial issues faced by America in
her address before the US Mayors Conference in San Francisco on Saturday June
20.
What she described what the
minority Black (12%) population faced in America is most revealing and food for
thought for the Sri Lankan authorities. What is most interesting in what Mrs.
Clinton's revealed about the plight of the Black population is does the 11.4% Tamil minority in
Sri Lanka face the same fate as their peers in America?
Is there a comparison? Or are the
American Black population faces the worse plight than the Tamil in Sri Lanka?
Or are the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka better off than the American Blacks? And
if so, why have American officials highlight the an 'issue' faced by the Tamils
in Sri Lanka, and what lessons should the American officials give the Sri
Lankan counterparts highlighting their experience or the 'plight' of the
minority Black population?
Hillary Clinton presented these
facts and figures for the understanding of both the American and Sri Lankan
officials when they engage in the next dialogue on issues faced by the minority
Tamils in Sri Lanka.
(Excerpts) Despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s
long struggle with race is far from finished.
Race remains a deep fault line in
America. Millions of people of color still experience racism in their everyday
lives.
Here are some facts.
In America today, Blacks are
nearly three times as likely as whites to be denied a mortgage.
In 2013, the median wealth of
Black families was around $11,000. For white families, it was more than
$134,000.
Nearly half of all Black families
have lived in poor neighborhoods for at least two generations, compared to just
7 percent of white families.
African American men are far more
likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced
to longer prison terms than white men, 10 percent longer for the same crimes in
the federal system.
In America today, our schools are more segregated than they were in the 1960s.
We can’t hide from any of these
hard truths about race and justice in America. We have to name them and own
them and then change them. (End
Excerpts)
Here are more facts as a
result of our research:
The wealth of white households
was 13 times the median wealth of black households in 2013, compared with eight
times the wealth in 2010, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center analysis of
data from the Federal Reserve.
US racial and ethnic groups
differ dramatically in their life chances. Compared to whites, for example,
African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans have much lower family incomes
and much higher rates of poverty; they are also much less likely to have
college degrees. In addition, African Americans and Native Americans have much
higher infant mortality rates than whites: Black infants, for example, are more
than twice as likely as white infants to die.
Finances. Between 1967 and 2011 the median income of a black
household of three rose from about $24,000 to nearly $40,000. Expressed as a
share of white income, black households earn about 59% of what white households
earn, a small increase from 55% in 1967. But when expressed as dollars, the
black-white income gap widened, from about $19,000 in the late 1960s to roughly
$27,000 today.
Other indicators of financial
well-being have changed little in recent decades, including home-ownership
rates and the share of each race that live above the poverty line. The black
unemployment rate also has consistently been about double that of whites since
the 1950s.
Education. High
school completion rates have converged since the 1960s, and now about
nine-in-ten blacks and whites have a high school diploma. The trend in college
completion rates tell a more nuanced story. Today, white adults 25 and older
are significantly more likely than blacks to have completed at least a
bachelor’s degree (34% vs. 21%, a 13 percentage point difference).
Incarceration. Black men were more than six times as likely as white men
in 2010 to be incarcerated in federal and state prisons, and local jails. That
is an increase from 1960, when black men were five times as likely as whites to
be incarcerated.
An increasing amount of evidence
suggests that being black in a society filled with racial prejudice,
discrimination, and inequality takes what has been called a “hidden toll” on
the lives of African Americans.
African Americans or Blacks on
the average have worse health than whites and die at younger ages. In fact,
every year there are an additional 100,000 African American deaths than would
be expected if they lived as long as whites do. Although many reasons probably
explain all these disparities, scholars are increasingly concluding that less
access to healthcare facilities and the stress of being black is a major
factor.
African Americans are much more
likely than whites to be poor, to live in high-crime neighborhoods, and to live
in crowded conditions, among many other problems.
The advantages that US whites
enjoy in their daily lives simply because they are white. Social scientists
term these advantages white privilege and say that whites benefit from being
white.
Whites can usually drive a car at
night or walk down a street without having to fear that a police officer will
stop them simply because they are white.
Whites can count on being able to
move into any neighborhood they desire to as long as they can afford the rent
or mortgage. They generally do not have to fear being passed up for promotion
simply because of their race. White students can live in college dorms without
having to worry that racial slurs will be directed their way. White people in
general do not have to worry about being the victims of hate crimes based on
their race. They can be seated in a restaurant without having to worry that
they will be served more slowly or not at all because of their skin color. If
they are in a hotel, they do not have to think that someone will mistake them
for a bellhop, parking valet, or maid. If they are trying to hail a taxi, they
do not have to worry about the taxi driver ignoring them because the driver
fears he or she will be robbed.
A dialogue between the US
officials and the GSL could be very interesting if both situations are compared
instead of focusing on the South African scenario.
No one has seen the United States
officials presenting the Black Community as an example for Sri Lanka to address
its own ethnic issues. The stress on the American side is America's great
tradition of upholding the rule of law, good governance, equal justice and
human rights.
But the issue that has been
evaded is: Does the United States use its great achievement of rule of law,
good governance, equal justice and human rights to alleviate problems faced by
the 12% Blacks what was described by Hillary Clinton?
- Asian Tribune –
