Race Equality

Report Outline
World Organization and Race Equality
Superior Race Theory; Causes and Effects
Legal Discriminations on Basis of Race

World Organization and Race Equality

China's Demand for Recognition of Race Equality

Specific recognition by the western powers of the principle of race equality will be sought by China in the establishment of a world organization to guard the peace after the present war. A memorandum presented by the Chinese delegation at Dumbarton Oaks, Oct. 2, 1944, stressed “equality of all states and races” as one of the basic principles to be maintained by the United Nations and to be incorporated in the charter of the proposed world security organization. An identical demand by Japan that the principle of race equality be given a place in the Covenant of the League of Nations was rejected twenty-five years ago during the framing of the peace settlements after World War I.

At Dumbarton Oaks the Chinese delegation met separately with the delegations of the United States and Great Britain, after the departure of the Russian delegation, and no action was taken on the delicate issue of race equality. The question is certain to be revived, however, in any full conference of the United Nations during 1945 to perfect the world security arrangements begun at Dumbarton Oaks.

United Nations Positions on Race Equality

The stand to be taken by the United States and Great Britain is still a matter of doubt, but China expects strong support for her position from the Soviet Union and various other members of the United Nations. “Abolition of racial exclusiveness” was declared by Stalin, Nov. 6, 1942, to be a fundamental peace aim of the U. S. S. R., in accord with the racial equality provision of the Soviet constitution. The Netherlands government announced in January, 1942, that plans were underway to reconstruct the kingdom as a partnership in which there would be no discrimination between races. France, according to its Colonial Minister, Rene Pleven, plans to make all persons in its empire, whether Africans, Arabs, or Mongols, “Frenchmen,” with all the rights that white Frenchmen enjoy in Metropolitan France, and to oppose “with its full strength” any importation of racial prejudice. Italy, Greece, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Brazil, as well as France, went on record at Versailles in favor of accepting the principle of racial equality in the establishment of the League of Nations.