hemisphere, and my friends at transafrica were talking about engaged in celebrating peoples of african descent toward of walking into a prison in colombia is much like walking into a prison in united states in that you will find black people most predominantly in the prison population. it is definitely a minority population but we're still seeing criminalization happened at a high level. i also wanted to see the difference between this hemisphere and the african continent, and there is very little difference -- we see depiction of people in africa and of dissent as farmers and an obol house blunders, and we see the minimum size and -- of african descent as farmers and animal husbanders, and received

transafrica is like my family. i have so many -- no one should say that the free south africa movement here and the anti- apartheid act of 1986 freed south africa. south africans free themselves. but what u.s. policy did in 1986 with the free south africa movement was to remove and support from the apartheid government where it had been until then, until law was passed. you look at different u.s. administrations. all of them found excuses to do little or nothing above why it had this horrible system in place. if you want to give a little bit credit, you could say that jimmy carter was a little bit less supportive of the apartheid regime than the other u.s. administrations. going beyond the government, you could give robert kennedy some credit. but the point is that washington was pretty supportive of the authority of the regime until when things got really bad and the free south africa movement said it was wrong for this government to be on the wrong side of this issue. so this is very much an issue that was domina

is also a member of the scholar council at transafrica and was the founding executive director of the open society institute for west africa. let us begin with professor richardson. [inaudible] >> yes. i'm just honored to be here on this distinguished panel. i'm particularly as it addresses international issues of african-americans, which have a long and contentious history, although it is thought that they have such issues have a short and apologetic history, nothing could be further from the truth. african-american interest in international law and international affairs have their origins in the atlantic slave trade, and in new world and american slavery. and as a nation. so, therefore, collision of afghan american international interests and american public policy has a very long history, especially when we consider american public policy in that regard as prescribed by the white majority. the black american tradition, what i like to call it, encompasses this collision between african-american claims, what i call claims outside law, and american public policy on north american terr