When the parents of the slain Ferguson, MO teenager Michael Brown along with their advisors went before the United Nations Human Rights Conference in Switzerland they were walking in the foot steps of some of the greatest freedom fighters America has produced.

The corporate media gave absolutely no context as to why the parents traveled to the conference, and it was derisively dismissed by many in the corporate media as being an outlandish stunt bordering on the preposterous. However it follows a long line of tactical maneuvers by blacks in the United States to expand their struggle for justice at home into an international struggle for human rights against tyranny and oppression.

The tactical maneuver had its origins in slavery, where enslaved blacks in the US sought to make alliances with the Haitians after they gained their freedom by defeating France.  Obviously this type of linkage sent chills up the spines of US slave holders and they redoubled their efforts to erase any international consciousness from the minds and imaginations of their slaves.

To no avail for each subsequent generations would have those far-seeing individuals who were prescient enough to repeat this tactic with the most famous being Paul Robeson.  Paul Robeson who was at the height of his career and at the time  and the highest earning celebrity in the country decided he was going to use his platform to put the plight of the American Negro before the international community.  What made this a dangerous move for him, yet a great tactical move to advance the human rights demands of blacks in the US was that he did this at the height of the Cold War.

Both Russia and the United States were competing for adherents to Communism and Capitalism throughout the world and what Paul Robeson was exposing about Americas dirty little secret made Third World nations suspicious of the US. This infuriated the State Department and a decision was made to destroy Paul Robeson.  However before he could be destroyed; America had to address or at least pretend to address this issues that Robeson so eloquently presented to the world about the terrorist, racist apartheid system that denied blacks any semblance of human rights in the US.

Simply put the United States couldn’t be seen as a country after World War II of having the same mentality as the Nazi’s who the allied forces  just defeated if they had any chance of building business ties with countries of color. Hence the decision was made that legal segregation was bad for Americas image  and her business opportunities abroad and needed to be taken down or modified so as not to be so obvious.

There were those in the Civil Rights community that now had an invitation to sit down with the President at the table to begin to discuss what could be done to address the grievances of blacks; however before any concessions would be made their was a series of conditions these leaders had to meet.  They had to stay away from human rights and focus on civil rights; they had to stay out of international politics and deal with domestic (US) politics, and lastly they had to give up Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Dubois and begin to denounce them as being radical communist who did not represent nor speak for black people.

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Malcolm insisted that the struggle for black rights in the US had to be linked to the struggle for self-determination of all oppressed people all over Africa and Asia against what he identified as an International Western Power Structure.  Malcolm stressed that if blacks in America only focus on civil rights they are approaching their plight as a minority; with a minority attitude that can be easily intimidated and shutdown by the majority. Conversely he reasoned that when blacks in America struggled for human rights and put it in the international community; they are no longer a minority but are in fact a dramatic majority  when you add up Africans on the continent, in Europe, in the Caribbean and South America you are dealing with a majority and that alone will change their attitude and confidence in pressing their demands.

Malcolm prepared to take the case of the 20 million blacks in America (at that time) to the United Nations and had worked feverishly with African leaders behind the scenes to bring a charge of genocide against the Untied States at the UN for their treatment of blacks. Malcolm would be assassinated before he could accomplish this; however just the idea of this gave Dr. King and other Civil Rights leaders allot more leverage with the  White House in getting President Lyndon Johnson to advance Civil Rights legislation.

And so history repeats itself. America again finds itself on one side with here Western European Allies and Russia on the other with China and her Eurasian allies trying to convince everyone in the middle why they should move in their direction. All things considered; it is not in America’s best interest to be seen  as a racist Police State.

The Black Lives Matter Movement must see itself as a human rights movement and use the international platforms available in addition to Social Media to make linkages with other struggles for human rights.

Submitted by Christopher A. Clarke on 12/24/14. 

Christopher A. Clarke is managing editor of Black2020.Com and can be reached through the sites contact page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiNOMnLbQuk