20 - An Appeal to the World: A Statement of Denial of Human Rights to Minorities

Summary

Du Bois edited and wrote the introductory chapter to the NAACP document An Appeal to the World: A Statement of Denial of Rights to Minorities, submitted to the United Nations in October 1947. In his introduction, he argued that the “color caste system” had been disastrous for American democracy. After the North’s victory in the Civil War, Northern capitalism’s financial stake in cheap slave labor led it to participate in enforcing a racial caste system keeping African Americans in economic and political subjugation. The domination of the American economy by big business and monopolies on land and natural resources explain why democracy has been crippled throughout the country, with mass disenfranchisement of African Americans and many whites, especially in the South. The denial of African Americans’ right to vote means a failure of democracy in the world’s leading democracy and in the world. The disproportionate power granted the most anti-democratic elements in American society perverted American foreign policy in favor of imperialism, against the League of Nations, and against weaker nations. With the UN based in New York, American racial discrimination infringes the rights of all peoples and has become a matter of international concern.