As part of our commitment to anti-racism and non-discrimination, HRE USA has created a Racial Justice Resource Collection to help educators engage their students on issues of racism through a human rights lens.
Although race is now generally understood to be a social construct without scientific significance among human beings, concepts of race continue to affect people’s lived experience through racism, the institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination based on differences of what is presumed to be race.
The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD, Race Convention, 1965) addresses all forms of distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race as a violation of fundamental human rights and defines “racial discrimination” to mean:
… any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms …
The collection was developed in partnership with contributing members of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Human Rights Education Community and Human Rights Educators USA (HRE USA)
hreusa.org 