When Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in mid-June, his comments opened the door to a broader discussion about human rights in America.

Panelists from the “Racial Injustice from a Human Rights Perspective” webinar (clockwise from top left): Russell McClain, Neijma Celestine-Donnor, Jackie Smith, Roger Ward, and Peter Danchin.

“I am asking you to help us — Black people in America,” Floyd implored the international body less than a month after his brother was killed by police in Minneapolis.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) added its voice to the global conversation about racial justice during a panel that was part of a virtual Graduate School convocation ceremony Sept. 17 organized by the Center for Global Engagement (CGE).

Moderated by Roger J. Ward, EdD, JD, MSL, MPA, interim provost, executive vice president, and dean of the Graduate School, and propelled by panelists from varied backgrounds, “Racial Injustice in the US from a Human Rights Perspective” added a learning component to the convocation program.

Virginia Rowthorn, JD, LLM, assistant vice president for global engagement, said the public event, the first of a three-part “Human Rights at Home” series, served as a way for CGE to bring the concepts of international human rights into current discussions of racial justice in the United States. The series will discuss why the United States has taken a divergent route on human rights and how embracing the international human rights system could make a critical impact in addressing systemic racism and differential access to education and health care.

Panelists included Russell McClain, JD, associate dean for diversity and inclusion, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law; Peter Danchin, JD, director, International and Comparative Law Program, Maryland Carey Law; Neijma Celestine-Donnor MSW, LCSW-C, dean of diversity and inclusion, University of Maryland School of Social Work; and Jackie Smith, PhD, professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, coordinator of the Pittsburgh Human Rights City Alliance (PHRCA), and steering committee member, US Human Rights Cities Alliance.

Smith said her work involves demonstrating how human rights advocacy can advance racial justice. Quoting Malcolm X, Smith explained the difference between civil rights and human rights, “Civil rights means you are asking Uncle Sam to treat you right. Human rights are something you were born with. … Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth.”

Smith reminded attendees it wasn’t just Malcolm X who took Black America's fight for racial justice to the global stage. “Struggles in the United States over racial justice were always looking outside of the United States,” she noted, citing the early NAACP’s involvement in the 1951 “We Charge Genocide” United Nations resolution that accused the U.S. government of genocide.

PHRCA’s mission includes education as well as connecting grassroots networks to the United Nations and its resources. Smith has witnessed the identity change that occurs when organizers begin to connect to a global movement. “It’s pretty interesting to see how they think about themselves as their identity shifts from being a Black person in the United States, for instance, to part of this very powerful movement that has authority and legitimacy in the United Nations.”

For Celestine-Donnor, identity plays a key role in the discussion of human rights in the United States. As a self-described “non-American Black person in America,” Celestine-Donnor says the conversation about civil rights — grounded in citizenship — excludes issues that affect Black non-Americans. While Black immigrants face similar challenges in terms of race, they have the additional burden of xenophobia. “For me, when we use the language of human rights, it feels more inclusive,” she noted.

Ward, who came to the United States from Trinidad and Tobago to attend college, said he experienced a similar disconnect when he found himself at odds with African American classmates on the issue of racial justice and civil rights. “Even though we were talking essentially about the same thing, I’m looking at it through a human rights lens, I’m having a different understanding,” he said.

According to McClain, it’s clear to any outsider looking at America’s long history of slavery, Jim Crow, and police brutality that the United States is suffering from a serious human rights crisis. He suggested American exceptionalism is the reason the United States views itself outside the notion of human rights.

“I might even go so far as to say the United States is hostile toward any notion of an external foreign standard of conduct,” he said, noting calls in recent years for the impeachment of judges who might rely on international law in their decision-making.

As an international human rights lawyer who grew up in South Africa during the apartheid years, Danchin offered a clear-eyed perspective on human rights for Black people in America. He outlined the paradox that occurred post-World War II when the United States played a pivotal role in the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights while enforcing Jim Crow back at home.

“On the one hand, there is a remarkable movement on the international level that occurs after the Second World War,” he said. “Simultaneously there is this remarkable effort to make sure that none of that architecture, whether normative or institutional, has any effects in the United States itself.”

He also examined U.S. attempts to thwart a complaint brought to the United Nations charging South Africa with systematic racial discrimination and human rights violations. American officials feared that if the U.N. could launch an investigation in South Africa, it would start investigating “the condition of Negroes in Alabama,” Danchin said, using the language of the day.

“The kind of disconnect we had, it’s not an accident,” he said. “It was a matter of conscious policy.”

The “Human Rights at Home” series continues this fall with the following webinars:

• Experiences of Black UMB Students, Scholars, and Alumni from a Global and Local Perspective

           Tuesday, Oct. 13, noon-1 p.m. Register here

           Conversations on race  and human rights with Black  UMB students, scholars, and alumni.   

• Health as a Human Right in the United States: What COVID-19 Has Exposed 

          Tuesday, Nov. 17, 10 a.m.-11 a.m. Register here

          The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the perilous state of access to health care in the United States and the danger that inadequate access poses to every citizen. Are we at a turning point on how we think about health as a human right?