Talk:United to End Racism

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"Front organisation" reference inaccurate

Surely a "front organisation" is one which is set up by another organisation to covertly spread the latter's ideas, philosophies or agendas. (Otherwise, isn't the NHS a front organisation of the British Government, and the USAF a front organisation of the US government?). UER states quite clearly on it's website and other publications that it is "an ongoing program of the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities" so I have removed the following section:

United to End Racism is one of a number of "Front organizations" for RC. Harvey Jackins, founder of the RC movement, encouraged members of RC to create front organisations to spread RC ideas and objectives along lines pre-planned by the RC leadership - previous well known examples of this tactic include Nuclear Freeze campaigns in the 1980s and the US-based National Coalition Building Institute ^[1], founded by RC'er Cherie Brown. His son Tim Jackins, the current world leader of RC is also the de-facto leader of UER.

I included the second two sentences in what I removed, as general information about Re-evaluation Counseling is probably best left on the Re-evaluation Counseling page, which is clearly linked to at the top of this page - and the general comment about creating front organisations would only be relevant if there was some evidence that UER was one.

re-removed "front organisation" section

MarkThomas reinstated section removed for reasons given above, stating reason for reinstatement as "(Useful for general visitors to Wikipedia to have this information; RC does not mention it's history of creating front bodies to casual enquirers of UER and also misrepresents UER to organisations)"

I undid this change, as the reason for it does not address the innacuracy (or at least PoV) in describing UER as a "front organisation". Is there any source which evidences the statement that RC "misrepresents UER to organisations"?

The background to this is that there is a history, and indeed a long-running deliberate policy, within RC of setting out to create front organisations that would carry forward the policies of RC with people not invited into RC, at least initially, and not aware, at least initially, of the RC background.

Clearly not being practised in this case, as all UER materials that I have seen have clear reference to RC as parent organisation. UER is not a front organisation of RC, so the first sentence is factually wrong. Clear evidence for this is, for example, that the second paragraph of the UER website (linked to at the bottom of the article) begins "The main work of UER is to illuminate the damage done to individuals by racism and to undo this damage on an individual basis, using the resources and process of Re-evaluation Counseling"

A front organisation must be covertly linked to its parent organisation - if not, then the National Health Service is a front organisation of the UK government,and perhaps the USAF of the US government - which would make the phrase "front organisation of" equivalent to "organisation of".

The material being deleted is not just the front organisation sentence but the historical background that gives this perspective. I am therefore re-inserting it.

Whether relevant or not on the main RC page, it's not here, given that UER fails the "covertness" test for being a front organisation of RC.

By the way, if you want to engage in this in a constructive way, can I suggest you register and sign into Wikipedia so that we can all see your contribution history and discuss things direct with you on your talk page please? Anonymous edits are not usually treated with the seriousness that signed-in edits are. That way we could also discuss where you as an editor are coming from, eg, as an RC'er, etc. Thanks. MarkThomas 15:49, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Done! BillTweedy 17:07, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

OK, hi BillTweedy and welcome to Wikipedia!

A totally unsourced view (for the moment) is that this is a case of RC actually having adapted to what is displayed on Wikipedia. It certainly was not the case to my personal knowledge that RC displayed this link until fairly recently - I think the change happened around 6 months ago. Part of the RC strategy discussed in their allegedly copyright mailing lists show that the intention was not to inform at least some of those "recruited" by "UER" about "RC". This is an old strategy replayed in many other bodies. At the original race conference in Durban for which RC created the "organization" it did not publicly display such a link. I do see the historical stuff as very relevant because RC has a long history of doing this and it will be easy to provide references from Harvey Jackins writings and those of others to support this - in fact, I was thinking of extending the various articles' information on this aspect, for example, organizations like NCBI could do with a Wikipedia article, plus it would be useful to show lists of well-known people's association with the organization. I believe there are materials that show the original lack of clarity on the UER/RC link and will reference these when I can locate them. The term "front" may not be exactly right but it is a good close analogue - is there a better phrase you can think of? Thanks. MarkThomas 17:15, 5 August 2007 (UTC)