"…I never cease to be appalled by the capacity of people to deny the basic dignity and worth of fellow human beings…. At the same time, I am inspired every day by people…who reach out to others (regardless of their apparent differences), respect their dignity, support their potential, and affirm the oneness and equality of all human beings…. The survival of our ever-shrinking world will eventually depend on the willingness of all people to respect, if not love, one another." Peter D. Bell

Ana Maria Brasileiro is Coordinator of the Women’s Leadership and Representation Program of the Inter American Development Bank. She previously served as Chief of UNIFEM’s Latin America and Caribbean Section and Chief of UNIFEM’s Women’s Political Empowerment Program. Dr. Brasileiro is well-versed in development and gender issues, having worked for UNICEF as a Senior Program Officer. She also served as Professor at the Brazilian School of Public Administration/Fundacao Getullo Vargas; Research Director of IBAM, a Brazilian organization devoted to local government and urban development; and Executive Director of Fundacao EDUCAR, a foundation involved in adult education in Brazil.

"Being a woman, a Black woman or a White woman, makes a big difference in how we experience racism and prejudice…. Racism perpetuates itself through the control of women’s minds and bodies." Ana Maria Brasileiro

Lynn Walker Huntley is Director of the Comparative Human Relations Initiative, a project of the Southern Education Foundation. She previously served as Director of the Ford Foundation’s Rights and Social Justice Program, among other capacities. She has served both as Deputy Assistant Attorney General and as Section Chief in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, staff counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., general counsel to the New York City Commission on Human Rights, and columnist for Essence Magazine. She is a member of the boards of the Center for Women Policy Studies, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Providence Missionary Baptist Church and the Interdenominational Theological Center.

"We must continue to struggle against racism, sexism and other linked forms of oppression, not only because it is the right thing to do, although it is. Nor do we struggle only when victory seems to be at hand, although we always hope to prevail. We continue to struggle because to give in and give up is to ensure that all is lost and to betray what we stand for. Ultimately, we struggle in order to affirm our values and who we are." Lynn Huntley
 
 

Wilmot James is a Professor and Dean of the Humanities Faculty at the University of Cape Town. He previously served as the Executive Director of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa. He has taught at the University of the Western Cape, Indiana University and Yale University. Professor James is a member of the Board of the Ford Foundation and a non-executive director of Independent Newspapers (Cape) and David Philip Publishers (PTY) Ltd. He chaired the Task Team on International Migration for the South African government.

Shaun Johnson is Managing Director of Independent Newspapers Cape in South Africa, and a member of the worldwide group’s International Advisory Board. He was Group Editorial Director of Independent Newspapers, founding editor of The Sunday Independent, and is the former editor of the Cape Argus and the Sunday Star. He was president of the South African Student Press Union. Mr. Johnson was a founding member of the Editors' Council of the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef).

Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro is a professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Violence, University of São Paulo. He has served as Rapporteur for the Brazilian National Human Rights Plan; United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burundi; and Visiting Faculty Member at the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame.

"The eternal discussions around the myth of racial democracy and about the benefits of the specificity of Brazilian racism must be overcome by urgent and concrete public policies to improve the condition of Afro descendants immediately…. It is time to endeavor, in civil society and in government, to promote dramatic social change. That is the best way to go beyond racism." Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro

  

Edna Roland is the Coordinator of Fala Preta, a Black women’s health institution in Brazil. She formerly served as the coordinator of the Health Program of Geledés, Institute of the Black Woman, and a member of its Executive Coordination. Ms. Roland has published numerous articles on issues such as sterilization, population policy, reproductive rights and AIDS. She formerly served as a member of the Director’s Council of the National Feminist Network on Health and Reproductive Rights and the National Commission on Citizenship and Reproduction.

"…The deepest diabolic damage caused by racism results in its victims’ dehumanization---in racism’s historical undermining of Black peoples’ capacity to resist co-optation and the degradation of their own good values. Racism’s vilest fruits are a lack of hope and a void of trust and faith in ourselves." Edna Roland

 

Khehla Shubane is a research officer at the Centre for Policy Studies. Mr. Shubane was tried, convicted and imprisoned on Robben Island (1976-1982) during South Africa’s apartheid era. He was active in the Soweto Civil Association and helped to coordinate the Anti-Community Council Campaign in Soweto. He served on the National Executive Committee of the Azanian Student’s Organization and worked for the Soweto Parents’ Crisis Committee to convene the conference at which the National Education Crisis Committee was formed. Mr. Shubane serves as a director of SANGONET, Open Society Foundation of South Africa and Rand Merchant Bank.

"Racial discrimination assumed different forms in Brazil, South Africa and the United States, but the outcome was strikingly similar….Those who suffered racial oppression were not only robbed of their political rights to participate in the democratic processes of their own countries, but the disadvantage emanating from racial discrimination was all encompassing. It was political, social and economic." Khehla Shubane

  

Ratnamala Singh is a scholar with the National Research Foundation. Previously, she served as the Executive Director of the Centre for Science Development of the Human Sciences Research Council and Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Durban-Westville. She is a member of the Editorial Board of South African Journal of Philosophy, and she was the Founding President of the Union of Democratic University Staff Associations and Coordinator of the Task Group on Governance of the National Commission on Higher Education. Dr. Singh has been a visiting research fellow in the Southern African Research Program at Yale University and Visiting Professor at Rutgers University.

"…Anti-racist struggles do not end with the appropriate constitutional and legal victories. Anti-racist vigilance is a continual need. Anti-racist strategies have to be conceptualized anew in order to give substance to the form of a non-racial democracy and ensure that new forms of racism do not take root in more sophisticated and complex incarnations but which nevertheless have the same effect of exclusion or subordination." Ratnamala Singh

Gloria Steinem is a writer and consulting editor for Ms. Magazine, the international feminist bi-monthly that she founded in 1972. Her writing has appeared in numerous venues, including New York Magazine, a weekly Ms. Steinem helped to found in 1968 and for which she was political columnist. As an organizer, Ms. Steinem has helped to found the Women’s Action Alliance; The National Women’s Political Caucus; and the Coalition of Labor Union Women. She is President of Voters for Choice and Founding President of the Ms. Foundation for Women, a national multi-racial women’s fund that supports grassroots projects to empower women and girls.

"…Racism is an invention, an utter and total fabrication that grew up as a justification for the military and legalistic takeover of the land, labor, water and resources of one people by another people…. The shared justification for racism in all three of our countries and continents accounts for the similarities among us... Structures of inequality may be maintained in different ways. In South Africa, racism was maintained using a culturally masculine style: with clear rules, distance, military authority and the like. In Brazil, it was maintained by what might be called a feminine style: that is, by perpetuating the myth that we are one family, that everything is fine, and accusing those who point out racism of ‘dividing the family,’ just as women are accused when we point out injustice inside the patriarchal family. In the United States, it was done both ways: North and South, the clarity of southern racism versus the subtler diffusion of northern racism." Gloria Steinem

Franklin A. Thomas is a consultant with the TFF Study Group, a non-profit initiative focusing primarily on the development process in South Africa. Mr. Thomas has served as an attorney for the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Deputy Police Commissioner in Charge of Legal Matters for New York City. Mr. Thomas was also President of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, a community development organization, and President of the Ford Foundation from 1979 to 1996. He served as the Chair of the Study Commission on U.S. Policy Toward Southern Africa, whose report, Time Running Out, was published in 1981 and subsequently updated.

"Racism takes a toll on all of us, victims as well as others. Racially discriminatory attitudes and behavior are deeply embedded within our institutions and individual psyches. Often we are unaware of the existence of race-based assumptions and the subtle and powerful influences they exert upon us. As some have rightly observed, through our policies as nations, and most especially through our individual actions and attitudes, we end up making race every day." Franklin A. Thomas

 

Thomas M. Uhlman is President of the New Ventures Group of Lucent Technologies, where he previously   served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, Development and Public Affairs. In 1995, Uhlman joined AT&T as vice president of Corporate Development after 12 years with Hewlett-Packard Company. At HP, he led the company’s activities in worldwide equity investments, strategic alliances and strategic planning. Dr. Uhlman also managed the President’s Commission on Industrial Competitiveness from 1983-1984. He has taught law, public policy and government at the University of Missouri. Dr. Uhlman serves on the boards of McDATA Corporation and the American Electronics Association.