Creating a Trans-Atlantic Agenda on Race
By Ronald Roach
WASHINGTON
Academic officials and policy-makers from the United States and the European Commission convened the first two of three planned conferences last month aimed at solving problems of racial discrimination and xenophobia in Europe and the United States. Although organizers say the conferences grew largely out of a desire to help European policy-makers peacefully manage the immigration of non-Whites into European countries, they expressed hopes that Black Americans and other American minorities would seek experiences in European societies that could inform efforts to address racism and discrimination in the United States.
Entitled the “Trans-Atlantic Conference on Race and Xenophobia,” the weeklong, dual conference got under way in Chicago and reconvened in Washington, D.C., at Howard University. Organizations responsible for convening the conferences included the Howard University Department of African Studies, the University of Illinois-Urbana and the European Commission. A third trans-Atlantic conference will be held in Brussels, the seat of the European Union parliament, in 2003, according to organizers. The European Commission is the European Union’s executive organization.
