It can be argued that the absence of the US from the conference would cast a deep shadow over it. The US, after all, is the world's only superpower, military or economic; it also has a long history of racial problems even though it has sometimes been a leader in the global struggle for freedom of religion. But whether the US is in attendance or not, the conference faces an impossible, uphill battle because of the very way that racism (and other forms of discrimination) are construed in the context of a UN conference.

To begin with, racism is not really a controversial subject: Nobody ever defends it or argues that there should be more of it. And yet its victims can be found, along with the victims of ethnic, religious, social, sexual and other forms of discrimination, within the boundaries of every UN member state. Frequently these forms of discrimination are codified and enshrined, as apartheid once was in South Africa, in the laws and official policies of governments. More often, though, they exist only in more subtle forms, based on people's attitudes and prejudices. In every case, though, the victims of such discrimination are among the poorest and most disadvantaged people within any society.

Think about this: Wherever railroad tracks run through a town there is a perceived "right side" and "wrong side" of those tracks. And if there are no railroad tracks to serve as a dividing line between the "in-group" and "out-group," that function can be served just as well by a highway, a river or a political boundary. Seen this way, discrimination is nothing more than the reverse side of group loyalty, the perfectly understandable desire of people to be among "their own kind."

But the problem of discrimination is more insidious than that. Among its most widespread forms is that based on language. Wherever one travels, the poorest people one meets speak a "non-standard" dialect or even a language completely different from that spoken by the dominant group. These people are effectively barred from full participation in the local economy. They are unable to take advantage of the local schools or other educational opportunities. And they are stigmatized as "outsiders" every time they open their mouths. But most of them adamantly refuse to do anything to remedy the situation. They argue that preserving their own language, the root of their distinctive culture, is central to their survival as a people. Indeed, they may see any attempt to teach them another language as a violation of their human rights.

And then there is the even more insidious kind of discrimination based on orientation toward modernism. There is much talk, at least in certain circles, about the importance of "bridging the digital divide" (between people who have or don't have access to computers and the Internet). But there are many millions of people in the world--again, including some of the poorest--who are, for all practical purposes, still living in the Stone Age. Because they rely for their livelihood on pre-industrial technologies such as hunting/gathering or subsistence farming, it is impossible for them to become integrated, economically or otherwise, into the larger society around them. On the other hand, such integration, whatever its possible benefits, may be the last thing they want. They may prefer their isolation since it helps them resist modern-day innovations that they also see as threatening their cultural "purity," their identity and survival as a group. Are these people victims of discrimination? They most certainly are--and they pay a terrible price as a result. But will a UN conference be able to help them? Not very likely. Not, at least, without infringing on their own preferences and, very possibly, their human rights as well.

I recall the last UN conference on human rights, held in Vienna in 1993. The area set aside for displays by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) was filled with bloody-looking posters decrying the atrocities committed by various human-rights violators. Every group, it seemed, had some sort of "bloody shirt" to wave as a memento of a human wrong it had suffered at the hands of one UN member state or another.