A Conference Against Human Prejudice - 7 September 2001

I doubt there has ever been a conference called by the United Nations that was so well-meaning in intention as the one in Durban but also so ill-considered, so doomed in prospect, a conference more dominated, if not paralysed, by hate-mongering delegates and loony outdoor bigots whom the conference was supposed to pacify or reform.

To begin with the title of the meeting: The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, might just as well have been more succinctly called: A Conference Against Human Prejudice.

Of the 180 member nations name a dozen of us that don't in some way, legal or illegal, overtly or sub-rosa, discriminate in large or little ways against somebody who is not like us.

And, of course, the Durban Conference was well supplied with governments, with many actual or virtual dictators whose survival is based on their suppression, persecution, or related intolerance towards some nuisance of a huge minority.

The very words of the conference's title have become mere clots of clichés which take the place of thinking about any particular case or grievance. And we'd better leave it to the present-day Wittgensteins, Skinners and Chomskys to spend from now 'till Christmas trying to agree on definitions of racial discrimination, xenophobia etc. etc.

We all know that a racist remark is any disparaging remark about you made by somebody who is not of your colour or religion.

And considering that about two thirds of the 180 members of the United Nations are non-white the agenda had it in for the whites - most remarkably in demanding that the nations that had shipped African slaves to the Americas from the 17th Century on should now pay reparations to the living descendants of slaves.

The targets or victims here were mainly the United Kingdom, the United States and Portugal.

I don't believe anybody suggested that the considerable number of black slave masters here in North, South and Central America should be punished or the 40%, is it, of African black slavers who ran their own Shanghaiing, shipping and auctioning of their fellow men and women.

In any case the complexity and cost of tracing millions of families with a legitimate claim is beyond the wit or the treasury of any government on earth.

I don't suppose many people need to be told that the earliest enthusiast for the conference was the Arab League.

The Arabs guaranteed a ruckus months ago with their draft of a condemnation of "Zionist racism" and "the racist practices of the occupying power." Guess who?

Several countries, including the United States, France, Belgium, South Africa, managed to get Zionism thrown out but Israel's "racist practices" stayed in. And so the United States walked out of the conference alongside Israel.

To leave these indefinable and fuzzy abstractions of racism and discrimination etc., let's come down to earth and the simple case of a racial slur, committed here in New York city, which must have been seen and heard by several million tennis fans around the world.

The scene was Flushing Meadows, the site of the national tennis centre, where is held the last of the four major tennis championships.

The earlier Australian Open, the French Open and Wimbledon build up to the grand finale - and the one that many pros most want to win - the United States tennis championship, since New York city is the world capital of hard court tennis which along with clay is what every nation plays except England.

The time was Friday night August 31st. Yes night - the matches that promise the most exciting tussles between the top players are staged in the evening under the brilliant arc lights of the Arthur Ashe Stadium.

And the men's matches, because they can run to five sets, often go on until one or two in the morning.

I, who normally go off to the bed book by 11, at the latest, found myself, as the French say, transfixed at the tube by an incredible repeat performance by Goga, the lanky, ginger-haired, genial Brazilian, Gustavo Kuerten.

In the French Open he was two sets down and within an ace, literally, of losing the third set and so the match.

But he dragged and willed and flung himself about and won the third, fourth and fifth sets.

And last Sunday night he did the same again when his opponent was at match point and I was about to turn off the tube and out the light.

But wait, Goga had squeezed himself into a tiebreak, which is a fairly recent - well, 30-year-old invention I won't go into now for the laity except to say I'm delighted to mention it was invented by a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge.

So two hours later I staggered off to bed and slept the sleep of the deeply impressed.

But back to racism, I should be talking about the previous Friday night.

The centre court match was between the up and coming young Australian, Leyton Hewitt, and an American black man, James Blake.

You'll soon see why I have to do what the New York Times runs round corners and tiptoes over chasms to avoid having to do, which is to mention that a black man is a black man. He's either listed as an African American or not identified as to colour at all.

So then here we have a match in the second round of the Open between a black man we've scarcely heard of and Australia's most promising youngster, Leyton Hewitt, just 20 years old.

There came a moment when Hewitt was called for a foot fault by a linesman who - and this was the accident of fate - who also happened to be a black man.

Hewitt blazed into anger, as he unfortunately frequently does when the calls go against him, he shouted at the chair umpire: "Change him, change him! Look at him, look at him!"

He pointed at the linesman and, watch this, appeared to toss his head in the direction of his opponent Mr Blake.

Hewitt shouted: "Tell me what the similarity is."

The obvious similarity was that between Blake and the linesman, they were both black.

The response of the television commentators was immediate and sorrowful. John McEnroe - in his noisy heyday, not exactly an arbiter of good manners - called Hewitt's outcry "unforgivable".

When the match was over, which Hewitt won, he insisted mulishly, that he was having a private conversation with the umpire which was nobody's business but his own.

He probably has learned since that for an athlete subjected to a television camera and a microphone there is no such thing as a private conversation with an umpire or any other public person.

Next day we waited to see what sort of punishment awaited Hewitt, if there ever could be a fit punishment for one public remark that people of any colour would surely define as racist.

The officials of the tournament and of the International Tennis Federation met in conclave and the referee of the match spoke for them.

"I can only say," he said, "that I would have to draw conclusions from what I saw, and what I heard was that he was making racist remarks. I can't do that from what I have."

Now what he had and they had and we had to go on were, of course, the television tape and the questionable act was one worthy of a supreme court argument, or a medieval debate about how many angels can dance on the point of a pin.

What was in question was, did Hewitt point to his opponent Blake or indicate him in some other way - a toss of his head, a swivel of the eyeballs perhaps? It was impossible to be sure.

But there was no other similarity possible to infer - Leyton Hewitt was one mad young man and he made a sad, bad, racial remark.

Next day this item ballooned into a general controversy.

Martina Hingis, the world's number one player, was reminded of a remark she made way back in the winter in Florida implying that the Williams sisters - the two marvellous, black powerbrokers of women's tennis - tend to be indulged for bad behaviour.

Poor Hingis, as white a white girl as you'll find, had to apologise over again six months after a casual remark.

And no sooner had she moved on than the original Martina - Navratilova - came forth: "The Williams sisters," she said, "have been treated with velvet gloves. If they were white they would have been penalised many times for bad behaviour."

Meanwhile the father of the Williams sisters, after any small or fancied insult, rails on about racism.

Flushing Meadow 2001 did no better in pouring out the milk of human kindness than the woeful conference in Durban.

Finally, as if to explain every tactless or tasteless lapse of the tennis stars, a New York columnist reminded us that these young, upcoming players are treated like stars already.

They earn millions a year from playing but also for advertising endorsements. They are met everywhere at airports with vast, slinky limousines, they inhabit the glossiest suites in hotels, they're fawned upon by head waiters, suffocated by screaming groupies - in short these 18/19 year olds are spoiled from their mid-teens on.

They learn too soon, in spite of the usual patriotic slogan, that America is about life, liberty - and the pursuit of money.

I once dared to put this to a young athletic phenomenon. His glib but honest reply was: "Well, as the man said, 'I've been rich, I've been poor. Rich is better'."

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