Last week I attended the NGO Forum of the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. I left the week-long forum feeling like one of the luckiest people on earth for the opportunity.The opening ceremony of the forum included some of the most inspiring and motivational speeches and performances I have ever witnessed. Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa, gave a speech in which he called for the need to give a voice to the voiceless. He noted that in today’s current race relations, the enemy is now difficult to identify. “As long as the lions do not have a voice,” he said, “the hunters will remain heroic and victorious.”

Mary Robinson, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, said much the same thing. “The future of race relationships comes down to one thing – listening,” she said. She was followed by traditional Zulu dancers, who performed a dance typical to their culture.

The rest of the conference was divided into panel discussions, which covered topics like self-determination, colonialism, and globalization. There were also roundtable discussions held in the afternoon, where attendees of the conference would converse about less encompassing topics, such as environmental racism, AIDS victims, and the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

The effects of racism and discrimination are much deeper than separate drinking fountains and zoning residences. “The policy of whitening remains firm in an overt way,” claimed Dr. Abdiss dos Nascimento, member of the National Afro-Brazilian Congress in Africa. “The links between racism and globalization are as strong as the links to cultural domination,” he said in a panel concerning colonialization.

In the same panel, Gay McDougall, a U.S. human rights activist, emphasized the fact that racism is entrenched in our lives today. “Racism is an urgent, global issue that is a threat to the survival of humanity,” she said. She also criticized the U.S. government for its failure to send its head of state to the governmental conference.

I attended an American press conference, whose main objective was to discuss the reasons the U.S. was not planning to send delegates to the conference. A Native American, a Hispanic immigrant, and an African American youth from Harlem all spoke on their embarrassment for Bush’s decision. A common theme throughout the forum was that without the global superpower present, progress was impossible.

Two issues that transcended the theme of U.S. imperialism and globalization were heavily debated at the forum. The Dalits, the lowest class in India’s ancient caste-based society, sent many delegates to the forum, yet were unable to get their struggle on the list for discussion at the governmental conference. Ruth Manorama, leader of the National Federation of Dalit Women, called castism “more horrendous than racism itself.”

The Palestinian/Israeli issue was also heavily present at the forum. Pamphlets and t-shirts circulating Durban proclaimed the Israeli government was practicing a new form of apartheid. People walked around holding signs saying “Zionism = Racism,” “End Israeli Oppression,” but also “Hate Racism, Not Jews.” I went to a roundtable discussion on the issue, and at least 15 security guards surrounded the entrance to the tent.

It was nearly impossible for me, as a neutral observer, to walk around without witnessing many heated and passionate arguments arising between two sides. I was standing near the food stands, talking to a Hare Krishna who was drinking orange soda, eating potato chips, and wearing a backpack that read “100% Attitude,” as a near-brawl broke out between a Dalit member and a UN official.

It was at that moment that I realized the actual effects this conference would have on the future of race relations. The UN Declaration that began in the NGO Forum might provide a headstart into global movements for change. But it will take so much more than that. Like Angela Davis, former member of the Black Panther Party, said of racism at a self-determination panel, “it cannot be described as a fixed set of discriminatory practices that can be willed out of our existence.” Racism is a problem that cannot be solved by a weeklong conference, or even two or three. It cannot be solved by a conference anymore than the effects of apartheid can be solved by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Instead, the conference was the first time for thousands of people, from all corners of the world, to come together and share their own view of what it means to live in a global society where racism is entrenched in every aspect of our existence. I learned more about intolerance, xenophobia, and discrimination by walking around the conference for a week than I could ever learn in a semester’s worth of classes.

The last event I attended was a plenary with Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations. He asked the question, “What will you do when you get back home?” The people who attended both the forum and the conference must continue in an everyday struggle for racial equality if change will ever occur.