How racism continues decades after South Africa galvanised world against it

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's contention that a "selective and ambivalent attitude towards one race" may have undermined the chances of a ceasefire in Gaza, goes beyond the usual sound bites in the ceaseless and often noisy global racial debate.

PM Ibrahim's March 11 statement targeting Germany's support of Israel seems to resonate even more since it was made at a press conference in Berlin, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz standing beside him.

As the world commemorates International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21, the Malaysian PM's words may just be one of the home truths for a polarised world to meditate on.

This is an occasion that has been part of the United Nations calendar every year, since the General Assembly adopted a resolution to this effect on October 26, 1966.

So, has the conglomerate of nations been able to walk the talk in these five decades?

"In the modern world today, racial discrimination appears in many subtle ways, such as policies that limit opportunities," Abubakar Muhammad, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States, tells TRT Afrika.

"You also see it in the latent bias of people in places of authority. Frequent flyers are used to seeing good and clean aircraft reserved for European routes, while they grapple with old and outdated planes for African routes."

Massacre as a genesis

The infamous Sharpeville Massacre on March 21, 1960, was a violent turning point in the history of apartheid in South Africa.

The site was a black township of the white minority-ruled country, and the victims were a group of people holding a peaceful demonstration, only to be felled by police bullets.

The protest had been organised against "pass laws", the oppressive legislation that forced non-white people to carry unique identification. The police authorities could check these at any time.

The apartheid government used passes to restrict where black South Africans could work, live, and travel.

In defiance of the pass system, a group called the Pan African Congress planned to march to the local police station without their passes and ask to be arrested as part of an act of civil disobedience.

The UN-instituted International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is thus a commemoration of that horrid event in South Africa, over six decades ago that still invokes jitters.

While the world has moved on, the spectre of the past haunts young, conscientious black people everywhere, like Muhammad, whose research interests include "global black experience in mobility and migration".

"Apartheid may have long gone, but its legacies still bear down on society. You notice it in how labour and housing are organised. There are also issues like social capital, money, power, and education access," he explains.

Abubakar Muhammad advises that the world needs to acknowledge that "racial discrimination changes with time".

"It may not manifest in the same way we read in history books about events before major reforms – during civil rights movements in the US, for instance, or during slavery and colonialism," he tells TRT Afrika.

Defining discrimination

In recognising the anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre, the UN aims to draw attention to the universal struggle to curb all forms of racial discrimination around the world and to inspire resistance and resilience in the fight against discrimination.

Contemporarily, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was a UN resolution adopted on December 21, 1965. It came into force on January 4, 1969.

Article One of the UN convention defines racial discrimination as "any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin."

But as Muhammad points out, racial discrimination could be experienced daily at both interpersonal and official levels, even in so-called cosmopolitan cities.

"In public trains and buses, people gaze around to find someone of the same colour as them. They then go and sit with them," he says.

The young researcher also argues that race is a common motivation for such discriminatory behaviour, as people tend to congregate around their own kind or around people who look closest to them.

Something familiar to the African diaspora is when they call for a public service, and the recipient says they can't hear them. Sometimes, the respondent recognises the accent and makes a judgment call against providing the service they are supposed to.

Passport politics

There are layers to racial relations, good or bad. Another prominent form of racial discrimination occurs in the context of international travel or in how travellers of different nationalities are profiled and treated.

The concept of "passport power", denoting ease of mobility across international borders, is primarily based on politics. This visa discrimination system is closely associated with the demographic distribution of countries worldwide.

At airports, coloured passengers often report being subjected to discretional stops and checks beyond standard security protocols.

The premise of the UN convention is that "all human beings are equal before the law and are entitled to equal protection of the law against any discrimination and incitement to discrimination".

In theory, racial discriminations happen in real-time. Some biases occur behind closed doors, such as in boardrooms or in the jury selection system, where one may not have the chance to know what is happening.

Racial justice

According to Muhammad, racial injustice can be judged by how society operates. Notably, how the justice system works at national and international levels should be racially neutral.

The global system of politics, economics, labour, climate, etc, should never have any racial hierarchy. Yet, there is tremendous evidence of racial bias in how crises are tackled in different regions of the world.

"The ongoing conflicts in Haiti, Sudan, Ukraine, and the Middle East, where hundreds of people die daily, have a lot to do with race playing out on the global stage, even if people may not like to make this connection," Muhammad points out.

The current global economic order promotes an arrangement that enables nations dominated by certain races to occupy vantage positions. In contrast, other races are made to remain in subordinated positions and conditions.

To be sure, if the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is to facilitate equality, human rights and fundamental freedom — irrespective of the colour of people's skin — there's no alternative to walking the extra mile to achieve this.