WHY CARE?
It's an interesting question, but an inevitable one asked by people who don't understand the scourge of racism. The answer: hundreds of racist websites reach out to youth, racist records are sold in the thousands, racial youth recruitment at schools by hate groups, the every day subversive racism which thousands of people endure daily, and lastly, in North America, because of yhe racism taught by family and peers, plus the racism that still rings back to the old South, incredibly not yet extinct from our 20th century society.
On a global scale, according to the United Nations, racism is the cause of more than 90% of the wars and crisis worldwide, such as in the former Yugoslavia, and in Ireland, destroying humanity, culture and history in its wake.
Some people don't understand racism because they haven't experienced it...some can transcend their realm of experience and, though they never directly experience racism against their own colour or religion, can empathize with others.
As Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust concentration camp survivor, recently said to a graduating class of university students: "We can always make a difference, if not to the whole world, then to one person. And who is that person? Someone who needs you.
As racism is as difficult to eliminate as fear in the human race, prevention is ever necessary. Continued education of youths is forever primary, though since WWII, these declarations and conventions have been created to combat racism...
* Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide - 1948 Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
* Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination - 1963
* International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination - 1965
* 21 March designated International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination - 1966
* International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid - 1973 Apartheid.
* First Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination 1973-1982
* First World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, Geneva 1978
* Second World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination, also in Geneva 1983
* Second Decade for Action to Combat Racial Discrimination l983-l992
* Third Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination 1994-2003
* World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance 2001
Artists Against Racism was founded not just because it was a 'cool way' to reach out to youth; it exists because the problem is not diminishing in our society, but becoming more hideous in different forms. To remain silent is to remain part of the problem, not part of the solution. We aim to be part of the solution, worldwide. We are all one people. Let's start to care.
-Lisa Cherniak, Founder/Executive Director of AAR
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