Shenali D Waduge

When Japan proposed the world’s first racial equality clause to be included into the Charter of the League of Nations in 1919, Anglo Saxon countries immediately opposed it. America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the British Empire were against including a clause against racial discrimination. Why would these nations not wish to include a very noble proposal? Is it not that same racism that is clearly evident in how the UN runs today? If the League of Nations failed because of the omission of racial equality, it is now time that the UN either address these discrepancies and honor equality for all races or Asia and Africa must lead the way by Quitting the UN altogether.

It was 13 February 1919 when the 1^st draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations was placed before the Members of the Peace Conference. The head of the Japanese delegation put forward an amendment to be included into Article 21 of the Covenant to address a matter that was a worrying factor and concern of most nations – Racial discrimination. The Japanese were concerned of British & American attempts to secure hegemony over the rest of the world.

These were the words spoken by Baron Makino head of the Japanese delegation.

The best part comes next. This was how the nations that claim to stand for equality and justice responded.

Australia’s & New Zealand’s response

• Billy Hughes the Prime Minister of Australia objected to the Racial Equality no government would live a day if it tampered with a White Australia’… he went on to say ninety-five out of one hundred Australians rejected the very idea of equality”
• Australia had become a federation in 1901 and had implemented a ‘White Australia Policy’ – Australia imposed a strict set of immigration rules to gain Australian citizenship. The language dictation test required a person to write out in English a 50-word passage and read it aloud to the Immigration officer.
• Prime Minister of New Zealand, William Massey, agreed with Hughes.

Britain’s response

• Lord Robert Cecil who spoke on behalf of the Brits also objected
• British Foreign Secretary who declared that while he sympathized with the Japanese he could not accept the ‘principle of racial equality’….”You could scarcely say that a man in Central Africa was equal to a European.”

America’s response

• In March 1919 after hearing the proposal for the Racial Equality Clause, the California Senator James Duval Phelan launched a propaganda campaign against the proposal (just like the powerful lobbying that takes place within the UN) and a stream of telegrams were sent to the US delegation in Paris. One of these telegrams read Believe Western senators and others will oppose any loop hole by which Oriental people will possess equally with white race in United States. It is vital question of self-preservation.” (white domination at its best against Oriental people…. Have things really changed apart from the rhetoric to fool us)
• In 1924, for example, the US Congress passed the Exclusion Act that prohibited further immigration from Japan

Japan’s grievance

• Japan’s signing of unequal treaties with America, France, Holland, and Russia in 1858 placed restrictions on Japan’s national sovereignty, such as extraterritoriality, which meant that foreigners in Japan had immunity from the jurisdiction of the Japanese legal system.
• In 1905, California passed anti-Japanese legislation.
• In 1906 the school board in San Francisco ordered Japanese and other Asian children to attend segregated schools.

This was how the Japanese newspaper Asahi responded:

Racial discrimination occupied precisely the position in the contemporary world that slavery did one hundred years before.  Being the leading coloured power, Japan had the responsibility to fight for the cause of two-thirds of the world’s population and the country could not fight for a ‘nobler cause”

It is a pity that these noble words are not valid in today’s context as Japan has chosen to join South Korea and India functioning as henchmen for the very nations that promote discrimination.

President Wilson before the Racial Equality Act went for vote

Here’s President Wilson’s speech on 2 April 1917

“Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance. The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded, if it is to last, must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right must be based upon the common strength, not upon the individual strength, of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of territory or of resources there, of course, cannot be; nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate development of the peoples themselves. But no one asks or expects anything more than an equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of life, not for equipoises of power.”

Note all he noble words. However, we seriously have to take these speeches with a pinch of salt – do they actually mean what they read out?

The Vote – 11 April 1919

The Japanese delegation however insisted on a vote. President Wilson no different to how the upper echelons of the UN powerful states function quickly added the need for an unanimous positive vote registration (knowing that the Clause could not pass using this method)

Thus with the United States, the British Empire, Portugal, Poland, and Romania not registering their vote, Japan’s proposal for equality to all nations fell apart.

In spite of 11 states supporting and 6 states rejecting President Wilson, Chairman of the Committee declared defeat of the amendment claiming there was no unanimous approval. Ironically, other amendments were passed without unanimity.

Special mention must be made to the delegates from Greece, Italy, China, France and Czechoslovakia who spoke in favor of the Japanese amendment to the League Covenant.

The sentiments were strong but were Asians and Africans misled by words. Was the Japanese delegation naïve to think that America meant what the speech so eloquently delivered? It was then that the Japanese realized that the West speaks with a forked tongue. President Wilson thundered ‘equality of rights’ ‘freedom of life’ ‘Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality’ how silly of us to actually believe that these words meant anything! It was just another white man’s burden. Post-World War 2 morals and justice was divided into one for the white race and one for all others. This has not changed. There are cosmetic changes but the white supremacist attitude still prevails. Blacks, Browns and Yellows are just not good enough….

The mentality of colonial rule that the West could do anything and get away still prevails. Not losing hope Japan set the pace to use the podium it was given at the Peace Congress to test the water. The equality for races proposal shot down without reason proved in no uncertain terms that the white nations resolved to continue the double standards of justice but veil them in speeches to fool the masses.

Asia and Africa are wanting in leaders to challenge white racism. There is little point in Asian and African leaders serving as lackeys of the West. It is precisely because of Asians and Africans desiring to serve as West’s henchman that the West continues to rule over the rest of the world through the UN and all of its sub-systems.

India has failed Asia in failing to provide leadership. Indians are happy to continue to serve the white masters as can be seen by the rising numbers of Indians given western portfolios.

Machiavelli did say it is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.”

In other words you can’t develop a country or continent if the people who have the potential to be leaders are raise to be ‘good subalterns’. Essentially, nations with leaders with a vision are doomed to fail just as nations happy to copy visions of other nations

Shenali D Waduge

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Conference,_1919
• http://erenow.com/modern/paris1919/26.html