Created in 1948 by the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlines international human rights applicable to every country and person, including access to health resources, education, employment, food, and leisure. But 70 years after this document was drafted, the neighborhood where I grew up on Chicago’s South Side, the South Shore, is missing many of these things.

As a Black person in the United States, I cannot help but notice the constant campaigns featuring images of famished Black and Brown people across the oceans. These images are usually paired with a Caucasian voice-over asking me to give money to save poor people around the world. It’s important to advocate for people worldwide, but the willingness of white people in the U.S. to discuss the disenfranchisement of peoples outside the U.S. but not within this country is, in part, a substitute that alleviates them from recognizing implicit racial biases and the complicit oppression of Black and Brown people in the U.S.

In almost all places where Black and Brown people exist, there is or has been colonialism and its repercussions. These repercussions include the commoditization of Black people and the resources on lands where they live. That forms the foundation of the global Western-led economy, which includes the current prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration. Human rights violations against Black and Brown people inherently work to uphold structures that further oppress us for the benefit of the privileged. So, if folks really care about liberation and human rights for all, why do international conversations on human rights exclude Black and Brown people in U.S. ’hoods?

As the sole representative of the U.S. at the Human Rights Defenders World Summit in Paris in late October, I had the opportunity to challenge why human rights conversations exclude the people in my community. The summit, held since 1998 by international organizations, like Amnesty International, with funding from the European Union and others, brought together human rights defenders from around the world to share narratives, collaborate, and draft a direct-action plan to hold governments accountable in their support of human rights defenders. I was honored to be there as a queer Black girl, but even more humbled to bring the issues faced by my community to the attention of such an impressive delegation. I spoke on the “Americas” panel alongside human rights defenders from Latin America, most of whom are fighting for Indigenous sovereignty.

After our individual speeches, we participated in a group discussion on how to combat oppression in our own countries. My contributions, during my speech and after, surrounded the The I Project, an organization I founded on the South Side of Chicago, which is based on the premise that equality is not a solution, but equity is; and to solve Chicago’s gun violence problem, for example, we need equitable resources. My team, which is comprised of young femmes of color, created a community needs-and-assets assessment for the South Shore neighborhood and is working to turn qualitative information on the state of the community into quantifiable data. We prioritize working within the community to enact solutions because only those living with the problems truly know what will solve them.

During my session in Paris, there was unanimous support for the value in bringing attention to the disenfranchisement of people of color. So many expressed that they are fighting fights the rest of the world does not know exist. Societies around the world try to tell the oppressed that they are not oppressed; we are consistently gaslit to believe the state of our communities is our fault. This same gaslighting is evident in the U.S., where disenfranchised people are berated by content produced by their oppressors, asking them to empathize with people around the world who suffer the same plight that they endure at home. Furthermore, the empathy they are asked to exude does not work toward their liberation. The time has come for a conversation about human rights in the U.S., but this time, with those who have suffered human rights violations leading the discussion.

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