President Biden and his "woke" Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, have invited the United Nations – yes, the United Nations – to investigate "systemic racism" in the United States. That's like inviting the fox to "investigate" the henhouse. Feathers will be flying in all directions.
The Geneva-based (Where else?) U.N. Human Rights Commission will issue a report after paragons of virtue like China, Russia and Cuba do the investigating. Can you guess what kind of a report they'll issue? Perhaps they should make quick work of it by asking Black Lives Matter to write the report.
The conservative Washington Examiner asserted that "the Biden administration's racial obsessions have turned into a shameful fetish for national self-flagellation" and opined that "Antony Blinken has joined the discordant chorus of those who seem to believe that the locus of evil in the modern world is the United States of America." This is absurd of course, and freedom-loving Americans should push back hard to block our authoritarian enemies from passing judgment on our constitutional democracy.
Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley, an African-American, wrote that "Biden and Blinken are asking China and Russia for a lecture on racism. .. We don't hide from our shortcomings, but we shouldn't further authoritarian propaganda." I couldn't agree more because the UNHRC is the last organization on earth we should turn to for advice on racism. Simply put, several UNHRC members, including China, Cuba and Russia, have horrible race relations records.
"Derogatory depictions of blacks that became taboo generations ago in the West remain commonplace in today's China," Riley continued, not to mention China's cruel treatment of the Uyghurs and Russia's treatment of the Chechens. Meanwhile, Cuba's communist government continues to persecute, and sometimes execute, political prisoners. "The Biden administration knows full well that the Chinas, Russias and Cubas of the world are primarily interested in exploiting racial incidents in America to detract from their own repressive activities at home," Riley added. Amen!
I experienced other countries' double standards on human rights and race relations during the 20 years I lived and worked in Latin America as a U.S. Foreign Service officer. My Mexican and Peruvian friends would talk about racism in the U.S. while their TV programs depicted black people as clowns and/or idiots, a throwback to a bygone era in America when Amos and Andy, and Stepin Fetchit, represented blacks on prime time TV shows. And I remember watching the Peruvian navy on parade. It was quite remarkable to note that most of the officers were white while most of the sailors were brown.
As you know, I don't have a very high opinion of the United Nations because in my experience, their overseas representatives worked much shorter hours and made more money than we American diplomats did. Nevertheless, we always enjoyed attending U.N. cocktail parties because they usually featured jumbo shrimp and steak "tapas."
Another troubling aspect of the U.N. story is that we pay a disproportionate portion – approximately 25 percent (China pays 12 percent and Russia pays 2.5 percent) – of a bloated budget that allows international bureaucrats to throw fancy cocktail parties and live the high life in New York and Geneva, two of the most expensive cities in the world.
And despite repeated promises to streamline the U.N. bureaucracy, the organization's budget continues to grow by more than 10 percent per year. So when Biden and Blinken tell us that the United Nations is going to investigate "systemic racism" in our great country, we should tell them to stop pandering to repressive regimes that hate America.
Guy W. Farmer is the Appeal's senior political columnist.
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