Racism on a Global Level (or at a minimum level FEAR of Strangers)

On a call with global leaders from Oakland, Calif. to New York City and from Australia, the Netherlands, the U.S and Ecuador, one of the participants mentioned the site globalissues.org.
On the website is an entire section devoted to racism in different countries and contexts. One is globalization. Lest you think this site is for Obama lovers or some kind of promotion of him, I wanted to bring in some larger issues. Now, don't get me wrong, I did vote for Obama and I am a supporter to be frank. But this blog is about coming face to face with issues of difference and in the U.S. race is one of our primary concerns about difference along with wealth, power and prestige (cf. Max Weber's sociological paradigm). Some may argue this or that aspect of culture is more important, but I've simply chosen to use RACE as a means to tackling it all. All forms of difference are interpreted the same way in essence (us vs. them).

For more on UN World Conference Against Racism visit http://www.un.org/WCAR/

I found a fascinating quote under globalization and racism on the globalissues.org site at :

Tackling the problem of cultural inequality, however, does not by itself redress the problem of economic inequality. Racism is conditioned by economic imperatives, but negotiated through culture: religion, literature, art, science and the media.

... Once, they demonised the blacks to justify slavery. Then they demonised the “coloureds” to justify colonialism. Today, they demonise asylum seekers to justify the ways of globalism. And, in the age of the media, of spin, demonisation sets out the parameters of popular culture within which such exclusion finds its own rationale — usually under the guise of xenophobia, the fear of strangers.

— A. Sivanandan, Poverty is the new black, The Guardian, August 17, 2001

How might we make the conversation about race more of a global conversation at Baruch? Sometimes we enter these conversations and all we do assume the people we disagree are small because we don't like what they may have or may not have said (people are funny they never said what you want them to say, do they?) Instead of thinking they are small, what if we consider the conversation itself is too small. For instance, dwelling on what we call ourselves vs. dealing with the impact of racial social constructs on global debt conversations, immigration, global health inequities, global poverty, etc.