Civil Rights Groups

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | April 21, 2009 | Leslie Fulbright

[KingofZion]

The nation's largest civil rights organizations said Monday that they were profoundly disappointed by the Obama administration's decision to boycott the U.N. conference on racism this week in Geneva.

After weeks of discussion, the White House announced Saturday that it would not send a delegation to the Durban Review Conference because of objectionable language in the gathering's official document.

There had been concern that the document and speakers at the conference would be critical of Israel, because at the last race summit in South Africa in 2001, some Middle Eastern states compared Zionism to racism. On Monday, several diplomats walked out of the conference when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Israel is ruled by racists and that the West used the Holocaust as a pretext for aggression against Palestinians.

While they didn't support the statement, American civil rights leaders said a world conference on racism is the perfect place to discuss controversial opinions and views.

Hilary Shelton, vice president of advocacy and director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, said that debate and disagreements are productive. *** "It saddens us that we could have such an extraordinary event as an African American president and then decline to provide leadership at a race conference."

*** Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said her members were "deeply dismayed" by the boycott announcement.

"This decision is inconsistent with the administration's policy of engaging with those we agree with and those we disagree with," she said in a statement. "By boycotting Durban, the U.S. is making it more difficult for it to play a leadership role on the U.N. Human Rights Council as it states it plans to do. This is a missed opportunity, plain and simple."

[KingofZion]

Interesting double-standard. Once again Barbara Lee off the deep end.