A war on racism has been waged all week in Durban, South Africa, and Colin Powell, the Bush administration's best-equipped general, has been missing in action. Actually, it is more like missing without action.

It's not like the retired four-star general wasn't eager for international combat. It's that his commander-in-chief ordered him to stay home rather than return to his ancestral homeland. The purported reason was that the United States, a country that prides itself on its First Amendment protection of free speech, was afraid that what might be said at the gathering would "isolate" its pal, Israel. Consequently, a low-profile diplomat led the U.S. delegation to the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR).

But just because the U.S. attached low-level significance to the world conference, many other countries did not. There were more than 15 heads of states representing their respective nations. Not only did this country's head of state decline to attend, but he wouldn't even let the head of the State Department participate.

Despite being Bushwhacked, the show went on in Durban.

"Each conference helps to reveal the global dimension of a problem, and thereby creates new networks-bringing new participants from many countries into a common debate, and sometimes leading to a worldwide campaign," explained U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. "I believe that is happening here."

And what is happening on the world stage stands in sharp contrast to what is happening in the U.S. Increasingly, other nations are willing to face up to past sins by offering reparations-making amends for a past wrong or injury inflicted-and public apologies.

Germany has agreed to pay $60 billion to victims of the Holocaust. Japan is compensating its "comfort women" and Austria has set up a $380 million fund to compensate Nazi-era slave laborers. Even the U.S. has paid $1.2 billion to Japanese-Americans placed in concentration camps during World War II. But it wanted no part in seriously discussing reparations at the international conference.

On the eve of WCAR, Pope John Paul II said that at the very least there should be an "apology or expression of regret to the victim state by the state responsible for the wrong." The official statement from the Vatican added, "It is not the church's task to propose a technical solution to so complex a problem. But the Holy See wishes to emphasize that the need for reparation reinforces the obligation of giving substantial help to developing countries, an obligation weighing chiefly on the more developed countries."

It was not the first time John Paul felt the need to speak out on the issue. In 1992, while visiting Goree Island, near Senegal, the Pope asked forgiveness for the role Christians played in the trafficking of African slaves.

Contrast such forthrightness with Bush's insensitivity on the issue. Bush is in a state of denial. Or, to put it in the vernacular, "'de Nile isn't just a river in Egypt." But most Whites are in denial, according to a Gallup Poll issued this summer. "Large differences between the views of White and Black Americans persist on key measures of the state of race relations in the U.S.," a summary of the findings noted. "One in four White Americans-and one in 10 Black Americans-believes that Blacks are treated the same as Whites in the United States." Moreover, the survey found, nearly half of all Whites and two-thirds of all African-Americans think race relations will always be a problem in this country.

Since the New Deal, dealing forthrightly with the issue of race has been a major problem for the Republican Party. That's why it would have been a smart move to dispatch Powell to Durban, a move that would have helped Bush's anemic standing among African-Americans and would have signaled to the rest of the world that although not perfect, the U.S. is willing to place a high priority on dealing with the legacy of slavery and colonialism.

In a one-on-one interview I conducted with Powell in 1996 on BET's "Lead Story," the general acknowledged that many African-Americans were suspicious of him because he rose through the ranks with the help of conservative benefactors.

"I was elevated to the highest positions within the national security structure of America by Republican presidents," Powell said in the interview. "It was Ronald Reagan who made me the first Black deputy national security advisor. It was Ronald Reagan who made me the first Black national security advisor. It was George Bush who made me the first Black chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff."

But Powell was quick to specifically thank civil rights stalwarts Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson and Joseph Lowery for opening doors that allowed him to advance in the U.S. Army before coming to the attention of Republican presidents.

Under George W. Bush, Powell became the first African-American secretary of state. But instead of leading a diplomatic entourage to an international conference on racism, the retired general is being treated like a buck private.