I am a UC Davis undergraduate, pursuing a bachelors of science in Psychology and a minor in Sociocultural Anthropology. She became interested in learning about and protecting human rights while taking a human rights course at UC Davis. Beyond academia, I enjoy singing, competitive running, and traveling. I chose to write on this specific topic because despite its claims otherwise, the United States does a poor job protecting human rights. Minorities in the United States are subjected to racist treatment at the hands of the public and the government. Women struggle to attain social equality with their male counterparts, and are denied health care and security. The United States government also violates human rights conventions in its treatment of prisoners in its prisons abroad. This paper examines these issues and the hypocrisy of the United States’ stance on human rights.
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THE UNITED STATES’ LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH HUMAN RIGHTS
Abstract
Despite its claims otherwise, the United States does a poor job protecting human rights. Minorities in the United States are subjected to racist treatment at the hands of the public and the government. Women struggle to attain social equality with their male counterparts, and are denied health care and security. The United States government also violates human rights conventions in its treatment of prisoners in its prisons abroad. This paper examines these issues and the hypocrisy of the United States’ stance on human rights.
The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 by the UN marked the beginning of an era, in which the ideas of global responsibility, accountability, and respect were codified. The United States played a large role in the drafting of this and subsequent human rights documents, and cast itself as a proponent of these ideals. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a tireless defender and promoter of human rights, engaged the public and raised awareness of the need for human rights by holding press conferences, speaking at the UN, and becoming a respected diplomat herself. Her support for the UDHR exposed Americans to its ideals. Later in the 20th century, President Jimmy Carter was also a staunch supporter of human rights, basing his campaign for presidency on a call for morality. By signing multiple human rights conventions, Carter pushed repeatedly for the promotion of these rights (Watenpaugh 2/18/15). However, despite citing human rights as a major goal, both domestically and abroad, the United States has repeatedly failed to protect them. The United States falls short when it comes to vulnerable groups such as minorities, women, and foreign prisoners, and has made a habit of exploiting the fear of terrorism in its own citizens. By so doing, the United States fails to live up to its legacy of human rights promotion and its potential as a guardian of humanity.
Minorities in the United States have faced social and economic discrimination and racism for generations. More recently, in February of 2012, the shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin catalyzed national tension over racial inequality. The subsequent tragic deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray are not isolated incidents, but rather symptomatic of a disturbing and longstanding status quo in the United States. Coinciding with an increased awareness of these violent manifestations of racism is the growing recognition of ingrained racism. In more than seventy police departments across the United States, detention of black Americans occurs ten times more often than detention of white Americans, according to USA Today. Furthermore, Pew Research has found that the average white American household’s wealth is thirteen times greater than that of the average black American household. These inequalities give evidence of the subversive prejudice inherent in the social and economic fabric of the United States. Publicly, the United States firmly endorses racial equality; in 1994, the United States government ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a United Nations document affirming the “necessity of speedily eliminating racial discrimination throughout the world in all its forms and manifestations and of securing understanding of and respect for the dignity of the human person” (UNHCR). Additionally, articles 3, 5, and 9 of the UDHR guarantee, respectively: life, liberty, and security of person; prohibition of inhuman or degrading punishment; and prohibition of arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile. The United States’s repeated violation of these articles in regards to black Americans evidences a lack of adherence to these policies.
African Americans are not alone in this inequity. Arab-Americans have found themselves victims of discrimination and racial violence for decades, specifically since September 11th, 2001. The public has been primed to classify all Arab and Muslim citizens as the enemy, and, as Elaine Hagopian remarks in her book Civil Rights in Peril, “terrorist acts by small groups of Arabs and Muslims have often been followed by generalized hostility toward entire communities of Arabs and Muslims in the United States.” Hagopian continues, “the US Department of Defense has cooperated with Hollywood in making more than a dozen films showing US soldiers killing Arabs and Muslims.” The United States government is also guilty of more explicit state-sponsored prejudice against Arabs and Muslims. During the Nixon administration, only a few years after the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was written in 1965, the White House “authorized the FBI to investigate people of ‘Arabic origin’ to determine their potential relationship with ‘terrorist’ activities related to the Arab-Israeli conflict” (Hagopian, UN). Following the Reagan administration’s decision to bomb Libya, Middle Eastern Americans, their homes, and their community centers became targets for racial violence (Hagopian). After 9/11, distrust of Arab and Muslim citizens spiked, with the Bush administration arresting aliens with irregular statuses, pursuing “people of Arab origin and others who were Muslims. Their numbers were not confirmed, their status undisclosed, and their cases’ outcomes have not been revealed” (Hagopian). The United States violated these people’s rights by investigating them based solely on their ethnicity and beliefs. The lack of disclosure regarding their imprisonment also breached their basic rights.
Disparities in the United States also extend to another group: women. Women have long struggled with inequality in the United States. The women of the National Woman Suffrage Association noted this in 1876 during their presentation of the Declaration of the Rights of Women at the centennial of the Declaration of Independence:
Our faith is firm and unwavering in the broad principles of human rights, proclaimed in 1776 … as the cornerstones of a republic. Yet, we cannot forget … that while all men of every race, and clime, and condition, have been invested with the full rights of citizenship, under our hospitable flag, all women still suffer the degradation of disfranchisement (Dyer 98).
These women recognized the double standard the United States employed in its treatment of both slaves and women, and demanded better. While conditions for women in the United States have improved, equality has not yet been achieved. The Center for American Progress’s 2013 report “The State of Women in America” found that on average, American women earn 77% of what men earn for the same jobs, violating the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and article 23 in the UDHR, which states that “Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work” (UDHR). Moreover, as racial injustice manifests itself in more potent ways, so does gender inequality. Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network reports that 1 in 6 women in the US has been a victim of attempted or completed rape. This directly violates article 3 of the UDHR: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Politics obstruct women’s basic rights, with politicians making offensive comments about rape, and states such as Texas and North Carolina blocking access to reproductive services. The United States has not ratified the 1981 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and as such, fails to empower and protect this neglected half of its citizenry.
While American minorities are victims of injustice, in a broader sense, the United States has also violated the rights of its entire citizenry by exploiting the fear instilled in them by terrorism. In 1955, John Lord O’Brian of Harvard noted, “one of the principal influences which threaten the very existence of democracy is the all-pervasive craving for security at any price.” In the early 2000’s, the Bush Administration decided “America’s traditional values of civil liberties and the protection of human rights must yield to the dangerous realities wrought by the evildoers” (Apodaca). Under this approach, the administration introduced new legislation, including the Patriot Act, which “permits non-citizens to be deported for the kind of wholly nonviolent associational activity protected by the First Amendment or to be locked up indefinitely on mere suspicion, without charges or trial,” violating articles 9, 10, and 11 of the UDHR, prohibiting “arbitrary arrest, detention or exile,” guaranteeing a “fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal” and assuring “the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence” (Hagopian; UDHR). So great was the fear of terrorism after 9/11 that Americans allowed vast concessions of their rights to privacy, including allowing the FBI, in 2002, to invade private spaces in both their communities and online without evidence of crimes, and without oversight (Hagopian). The administration’s decision to forsake citizen’s rights in the name of security displayed the Bush administration’s prioritization of security before liberty, which foreshadowed far darker violations of rights for non-citizens.
Beyond these domestic abuses of rights in the name of national safety, the United States has participated in egregious violations of human rights globally, as described in the 2004 report on conditions in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and in the CIA’s torture report, released in 2014. In 1994, the United States signed and ratified the UN’s Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Despite this, the United States government utilized its citizens’ fear and need for security to justify horrific behavior domestically and abroad. Ten years after ratifying the convention, in 2004 at the Abu Ghraib prison, multiple United States military personnel degraded and tortured detainees by forcing them to participate in non consensual, sexually explicit acts, intimidating them with police dogs, and cruelly punishing them through violence and humiliation (CNN). A decade later, the 2014 report disclosed medically unnecessary rectal feeding, threatening of family members, long-term sleep deprivation, and waterboarding. Through these reports, it appears that the US has made a habit of violating not only this convention, but standards for basic human decency. Physicians for Human Rights argues that the doctors involved in the ‘interrogations’ committed war crimes. Further, the CIA lied about the number of detainees held, the effectiveness of the ‘interrogation techniques,’ the brutality of the torture, and the program’s overall success. This is perhaps the most deeply disturbing of all the human rights violations herein discussed, because it demanded active participation.
With its massive reach and international influence, the United States has enormous potential to become an international champion for the cause of human rights. At certain points in its history, the United States has substantially furthered the cause of human rights. However, hypocrisy at home and abroad must be reformed before the United States will be able to truly honor the commitments it has made by signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.