One of the world’s largest real estate companies Blackstone Group, was called out by the United Nations Housing Advisor.
Blackstone was accused of taking advantage of its tenants, inflating housing prices, and charging expensive fees to do basic repairs.
According to the Guardian.com
“government officials in Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and the US, Farha and Deva accused private equity and asset management firms like Blackstone and its subsidiaries of undertaking “aggressive evictions” to protect its rental income streams, shrinking the pool of affordable housing in some areas, and effectively pushing low and middle-income tenants from their homes.”
In recent years Blackstone has grown massively, by buying hundreds of thousands of homes throughout the globe, in regions like North America, Latin America, Europe and parts of Asia.
The United Nations is calling for stronger efforts to close the gender gap in conflict resolution. During a debate at the Security Council on Monday, member states, the African Union and UN agencies agreed that women can help de-escalate the world’s conflicts, but not enough has been done to bring them on board.
The movement for reparations for slavery is gaining traction around the globe. Last month, a UN committee urged the US to pay up for its role in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade.
A United Nations panel of human rights activists asked the United States government to give reparations to the African-American community, who were the descendants of black slaves in America.
The reparations would be intended to repair some of the damage done to the African-American community, through various forms of oppression, which includes :
1. Slavery.
2. Black codes.
3. Jim crow.
4. Sundown Towns.
5. Lynchings .
6. Domestic white terrorism (KKK).
7. Mass incarceration and police brutality , which disproportionately affect the African-American community, at a much higher rate than the rest of the population.
8. The 13th amendment. (Which permitted prison inmates to be used as slave labor.
9. Miseducation by a broken school system.
Mireille Fanon Mendes-France, the chairwoman of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent committee, compared the police killings of unarmed black men today in the United States to racist lynchings that occurred in the South, during the height of segregation.
Mendes-France did not believe that individual checks should be given to the descendants of American slavery, but rather she recommended money be spent for the “full implementation of special programs based on education, socioeconomic, and environmental rights.”
There is a precedence for the United States giving reparations to American citizens, the first case is when the United States government gave reparations to Japanese Americans, for their harsh treatment during World War 2 and in 2015 the Obama administration earmarked $12 million dollars in reparations to be given to holocaust survivors.
If the question is the Oregon standoff proof of a racial double standard in America? Then the answer is undoubtedly yes!
Some people may call me a race baiter or a reverse racist for making such a statement, which in my opinion is the equivalent of calling a woman sexist for calling out sexism at the workplace or calling a homosexual person,
anti-heterosexual because they make a stand against homophobia, but the proof is in the pudding. We live in a system of white supremacy, which is not to say we live in Nazi Germany, Colonial Africa, Apartheid South Africa or even the 1960’s United States , but it is to say if you are black you are more likely to profiled by the police, Miseducated by the school system , not be properly represented by your politicans and be sentenced to harsher and longer times in the justice system than whites for the same crime, etc. The truth is we live in a straight white male dominated society , and even though things have improved, there still are many things that need to be improved to give Martin Luther King his dream.
HERE ARE THE 5 DOUBLE STANDARDS AMERICA HAS WHEN IT COMES TO RACE :
#1.
Despite electing its first African-American President, America has devolved so much when it comes to race relations that last year the United Nations had to call us out on our racial inequality.
Noureddine Amir the Vice Chairman of the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination , on the 85th session,
Amir stated :
“The excessive use of force by law enforcement officials against racial and ethnic minorities is an ongoing issue of concern and particularly in light of the shooting of Michael Brown. This is not an isolated event and illustrates a bigger problem in the United States, such as racial bias among law enforcement officials, the lack of proper implementation of rules and regulations governing the use of force, and the inadequacy of training and law enforcement officials.”
#2.
MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, AFRICAN-AMERICANS ARE GIVEN HARSHER SENTENCES FOR THE EXACT SAME CRIME THAN THEIR WHITE AMERICAN COUNTERPARTS.
In a Newsone.com article titled: “Blacks Receive 60% Longer Sentences For Same Crimes” written four years ago by Casey Gane-McCalla.
Casey Writes:
“According to M. Marit Rehavi of the University of British Columbia and Sonja B. Starr, who teaches criminal law at the University of Michigan Law School, the racial disparities can be explained “in a single prosecutorial decision: whether to file a charge carrying a mandatory minimum sentence….Black men were on average more than twice as likely to face a mandatory minimum charge as white men were, holding arrest offense as well as age and location constant.” Prosecutors are about twice as likely to impose mandatory minimums on black defendants as on white defendants.”
#3.
THERE ARE TWO JUSTICE SYSTEMS IN AMERICA, ONE FOR WHITES AND ANOTHER FOR BLACKS :
You can stand your ground in America, but not if you’re black. Case in point : George Zimmerman, who is a crazed sociopath who has built an unimpressive resume, which includes stalking and killing high school kid Trayvon Martin like a wild animal on February 26, 2012.
He has also been arrested about six times for assault and various other violent crimes, Yet Zimmerman was treated as the victim by the local Florida D.A and police Department , who were reluctant to even charge Zimmerman with a crime and only did so after national outrage. And when the case did go the trial, the prosecutor and Zimmerman’ s defense attorney seemed to be working in tandem to get Zimmerman a not guilty verdict, rather than the state attorney high lighting Zimmerman’s criminal background or the fact the he disobeyed the orders of the police dispatcher to stop following Trayvon Martin, which in itself would of prevented the murder from happening. To no one’s surprised George Zimmerman was not convicted of the murder of Trayvon Martin.
On the other hand the African-American woman Marissa Alexander was found guilty of aggravated assault in Florida, on May 2012 in less than twelve minutes, because on August 1, 2010 she fired a warning shot at her abusive husband ,after he attacked her and threatened to kill her. Rico Gray the estranged husband of Alexander even comfirmed Alexander accounts in a sworn deposition.
She was sentenced to 20 years in prison, even though she was a law abiding citizen with no criminal record.
#4.
POLICE OVERREACT TO BLACK PEOPLE ACCUSED OF CRIMES FAR MORE THAN THEY DO WHITE PEOPLE ACCUSED OF THE SAME CRIMES:
For example: the black people protesting the police killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in late 2014 or the young African-Americans protesting the killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, in early 2015 were greeted by tanks and police officers armed like special forces troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite no one being killed by the protesters.
That same year in Waco Texas texas on May 17, 2015, a deadly gang war broke out between mostly white biker gangs, the Bandidos and Cossacks. 9 people were murdered and 18 people were injured, but no tanks were called in, like Ferguson and Baltimore and no one was called a “thug”, a word some mainstream media network used to describe the Baltimore and Ferguson protestors.
#5. OREGON STANDOFF VS. THE M.O.V.E BOMBING :
The truth is if the Ammon Bundy led anti-government militia people in Oregon , who have associates charged with terrorism, were Muslim or African-American , they would be dead by now. There would be no standoff for Blacks or Arabs who took over a federal building and federal land, using armed force.
In fact the last time I can remember a black separatist group having a standoff, it was the MOVE organization in 1985, which is a Philadelphia based, self-proclaimed black Liberation group, and they were fire bombed when the Philadelphia police Department dropped a bomb they received from the FBI on the MOVE building, 11 African-American children, women and men died from the bombing, plus several dozens buildings would catch fire from the bombing, leaving several dozen other disenfranchised minorities and other poor people homeless.
WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU SEEN A WHITE MAN GET MISTREATED LIKE THIS?
YOU’VE SEEN AN UNARMED BLACK MAN GET CHOKED OUT AND MURDERED IN THE STREETS AND GET NOT JUSTICE
THEY JUST BLAMED US!
-LEON KWASI KUNTUO-ASARE
AMERICA :DIVIDED WE STAND? !
VOLUME #2 : POETRY OF WE THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE!
BOOKS AVAILABLE ON AMAZON KINDLE AND SCRIBD : http://leonkwasikuntuoasareblog.com/my-books/
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON POLICE BRUTALITY AND RACISM, USE LINK:
On September 26, 2015 the United Nations brought national and business leaders throughout the world to celebrate and encourage black and brown self-reliance and development .
The idea is to empower countries and people of the southern hemisphere, which consists of countries from Africa, Asia, South America, Latin America and Caribbean nations.
Countries who for hundreds of years have been dominated and oppressed economically and politically by western and northern nations.
The United Nations’ Human rights council , recently called the United States of America, out on racial profiling, use of the death penalty and police brutality, during a peer review of 117 United Nations member states.
According to a report by Al Jezeera America, 343 recommendations were given by the United Nations Human rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, of which the U.S accepted 44 of the recommendations for eliminating racial discrimination and addressing excessive use of force by police.
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