Post-racial my Rican culo. It’s disturbing enough that the only time we have heard the Obama administration speak of immigration reform it has been in the Spanish language media, where it is perceived that English speaking eyes aren’t watching or in reaction to an ICE raid. Then the Obama administration announces that it is boycotting the second World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

The Administration will boycott the conference to protest what it deems the unfair equation of Zionism with racism in the outcome documents of the first conference held in Durban, South Africa, and now the second conference, also known as “Durban II, as well .” Other concerns cited by Administration officials, some of whom recently attended preparatory meetings in Geneva,in their justification of the boycott include a proposal to place restrictions on the defamation of religions and any language calling for reparations for slavery.

Looking at it from the perspective of a Latina whose community has seen an increase of hate crimes, I want to ask Obama, where is the change? As more and more communities of color live in dire economic conditions, not just because of the current economic crisis but because of pre-existing conditions of inequality built into the economic system, where the hell is the change? While the Department of Homeland Security is all too willing to send more militarized police to the U.S. Mexico border to help fight a drug war that the U.S. helped to create and whose enforcement is racist (not to mention imperialist) the U.S. is not going to talk about race?

Roberto Lovato:

Rather than join the rest of the world in Durban and in condemning the killing and discrimination on the part of the Israeli and other governments-including our own-, Obama’s boycott reflects his choice to pursue the more dangerous path to dealing with race, racism and discrimination: symbolism at the expense of real changes to very devastating policies. Such are the perils of our increasingly post-racial presidency in a racially-troubled world.

Political choices like the Durban decision or the blind eye turned to the indiscriminate killing of and discrimination against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank make one wonder if the Obama Administration has also chosen to become the black face of empire.

Check please and keep the change.