Racism in the U.S.: darkness under “beacon of human rights”

From Rodney King, who was beaten by a group of police officers and hit with 56 consecutive batons for speeding and non-cooperation in 1991, to Amadou Diallo, an innocent black man who was killed by a white police officer in 1999 with 41 shots, and to George Floyd, a black man who was mercilessly kneed and killed by police in 2020......Police brutality has become common in the United States, and there is even more selective violence against people of color, including blacks. According to a study on police violence in the U.S. (U.S. Police Violence Map), the number of people killed due to police violence in the U.S. reached 1,127 in 2020, with as many as 305, or 27%, of those deaths being blacks, who make up only 13% of the total U.S. population. In addition, the percentage of unarmed people killed by police violence is even higher for blacks at 36%.......

The disproportionately high rate of police brutality deaths among blacks highlights the systematic racial discrimination in the United States. Although the term “the black” has disappeared from government documents and media reports due to “political correctness”, it has been replaced by a new term, “African Americans”. However, the change in wording has not promoted a systematic change in the system, and behind the hypocritical wordplay there still lurks a growing systematic racial discrimination. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and other institutions, have noted the alarming racism in the United States, including white racists, neo-Nazis, and Klansmen openly chanting racist slogans and inciting racist discrimination and hatred. “Systemic and structural discrimination have permeated government institutions for centuries, stripping African Americans of their rights to equal treatment before the tribunals, threatening their personal security, and depriving them of their civil, economic, social and cultural rights embodied in the Convention……” Even President Joe Biden reluctantly admitted that systematic racism is America’s “a stain on the soul”.

It is ironic, however, that while domestic racial discrimination has been accumulating, the U.S. has been arbitrarily interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and attacking other countries on the high-sounding pretexts such as “human rights” and “equality”. In reality, the United States, who claims to be a “beacon of human rights” and hopes to illuminate the world with universal human rights, has never shone a light on itself. At the foot of the radiant “City upon a Hill”, there are countless people of color who are crying “I can’t breathe”, and whose voices are never seriously heard.

Notorious Records in the History

Genocide of Native Americans

As we all know, the United States is a nation of immigrants. In 1607, the first European colonists landed on the North of American continent, and then established the first permanent colony. In November 1620, the Mayflower brought a group of persecuted Puritans to Plymouth, and the famous Mayflower Convention was signed. They hoped to establish a self-governed society different from that of Europe—and the society may have been established, but the autonomy was more among these white people from Europe, while Indian aborigines were excluded, and even unfortunately became the target of persecution. The first time Europeans established colony in the North of America continent, the brutal persecution of Native Americans has also kicked off. William Bradford, who landed on the North American continent with the Mayflower, the elected governor of the Plymouth colony, recorded in detail the genocide of Indian aborigines in his book, Of Plymouth Plantation:

“Those that escaped from the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run threw with their rapiers [swords]....It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire, and the streams of blood quenching the same.......”

This slaughter was even more gruesome in the later westward movement. The whites even developed a system of bounties for Indian scalps, taking pride in killing Indians. Some people have commented that the history of the United States is also a history of Indian blood and tears. According to statistics, when Columbus first arrived in America in 1492, there were about 55 million Indians, and about 4 million of them lived in the North. By the end of the 19th century, there were only 380,000 Indians in the United States. These remaining Indians, however, were not free to move around and were strictly confined to Indian reservations, like animals in captivity.

Enslavement and discrimination against blacks

The first African American to enter American continent was, in fact, as black slave. In 1619, 20 blacks were brought into Virginia, initially as servants, but by the mid-17th century, the status of blacks as slaves was fixed by law. By 1661, Virginia enacted a law stating that blacks would remain slaves for life, and similar decrees were passed in the southern colonies as well. As the slave trade became rampant, the number of blacks in North America gradually increased. According to statistics, in 1714, there were only 59,000 black slaves in the North American colonies, which increased to 298,000 by 1754, and had reached 500,000 by the outbreak of American Revolutionary War. The demand for black slaves mainly came from the southern plantation, which had been the basis of the economy of the southern colonies. American Revolutionary War in 1776 did not free the black slaves, and the 1787 Constitution even permitted the slave trade for next 20 years. At the same time, the Constitution adopted the so-called “Three-Fifths Compromise”, which converted black slaves to 3/5 of the population for calculating taxes and allocating seats in the House of Representatives. After the founding of the United States, the conflict between the North and the South over the slavery and other issues became increasingly intensified and eventually led to the Civil War. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and led the Union army to victory over the Confederate Army in 1865. At the same year, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution formally declared the abolishment of slavery, and the black slaves were eventually legally freed.

However, abolishing slavery legally did not end discriminations against blacks. Those freed blacks found that they did not truly obtain equal status, and still faced discriminations deep-rooted in the society. Since December 1865, the southern states enacted a series of Black Codes, known as Jim Crow Laws, in the name of maintaining political and social order. The main contents of these laws included depriving blacks of their political rights and prohibiting them from assembling; blacks had no right to occupy land and had to work under the conditions set by planters; intermarriage between blacks and whites was prohibited; blacks who committed riots, fights, inflammatory speeches, and insulting gestures were subject to fines or imprisonment; vagrant blacks should be arrested etc. This series of discriminatory laws led to frequent injustice and physical threats against blacks. According to statistics, from 1865 when the Civil War ended, to 1950 when the Civil Rights Movement was at its height, about 6,500 blacks, including women and children, were lynched by whites. Thus, slavery was transformed into segregation and perpetuated in American society.

Blacks have fought for equal rights for nearly a century in the civil rights struggle. Only in 1870 did blacks gain the right to vote, and only in 1954 did the United States overturn the racial discrimination principle of “segregate but equal” in education, and only in 1964 did it legally abolish racial discrimination in education, transportation, lodging, and dining, and guarantee blacks equal access to public facilities. It was only in 1965 that restrictions on the right to vote were lifted, and it was only in 1968 that Congress passed a law providing blacks with equal rights to buy and rent public and private housing. It was only in the 1970s that blacks in the United States had legal equality with whites, which was only 50 years earlier from now, but that was more than 350 years after the first blacks entered the North American continent.

Exclusionary discrimination against Asians and Latinos

In addition to the inferior vices against Native Indians and blacks, the United States is also hostile to minorities such as Asians and Latinos. Racial discrimination against Asians can be traced back to the 19th century. It was then that the first Asian immigrants entered and settled in the United States. The early Asian immigrants filled the labor gap in the western cities of the United States. However, in the late 19th century, under the propaganda of politicians and the media, Asians were regarded as a fearful “yellow peril” by mainstream society, and thus Chinese and Japanese exclusion became an important part of American political life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Chinese Exclusion Act, the only discriminatory act against a specific ethnic group in the history of the United States, stipulated that Chinese could not be naturalized as American citizens, and the law was effective for 10 years. Since then, 14 other bills have been passed to reinforce Chinese exclusion and discrimination against Chinese people. Taking the Chinese Exclusion Act as a precedent, the U.S. Congress also passed the Japanese Exclusion Act in 1924, excluding Japanese immigrants. The Pearl Harbor attack during World War II set off anti-Japanese sentiment, resulting in more than 100,000 Japanese Americans being sent to internment camps. Their property confiscated by the federal government, as well as reparations, was not returned until 1988.

Latino Americans also suffered from discrimination. In 1848, when the United States won the Mexican-American War, it acquired 55% of Mexico’s territory, and this land brought in new citizens. These Mexicans were granted citizenship and many Americans of Mexican descent emerged. Then as immigration increased, anti-Latino sentiment grew in the United States. Many Latinos were barred from white institutions and segregated in urban neighborhoods in poor areas. In the 1920s and 1930s, as concerns about jobs and the economy spread, the U.S. government even deported people of Mexican descent by executive order, forcibly deporting as many as 2 million people of Mexican descent—and up to 60% of them were U.S. citizens. Other hate crimes against Latinos have also proliferated. Violence against Latinos still prevails, for example, a 21-year-old white killer once shot dead 22 people in the name of “stopping the Latino invasion” at one of Texas’ Walmart in 2019.

Ingrained Systematic Racism

In spite of the unforgiving history, systematic racism against minority groups in the United States still continues. Some scholars have even asserted that “racism has become a part of American culture”. Against this backdrop, minority communities are facing a very difficult situation.

COVID-19 pandemic has worsened racial discrimination

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic is a “demon mirror” to reflect systematic racism and inequalities between races in the United States. First and foremost is the inequity in vaccine distribution. According to the latest data released by the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), of Americans who have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, 61% are white, 11.5% are Hispanic, and 5.4% are African-American. While Hispanics and African-Americans make up 17.4% and 13.2% of the U.S. population, respectively, the vaccination rates for both are much lower than their population share. The second is a comparison of infection and mortality rates. According to CDC statistics, in terms of infection rates, Native, African American and Hispanics have 1.8, 1.4 and 1.7 times the number of COVID-19 cases than non-Hispanic white Americans; 4, 3.7 and 4.1 times the hospitalization rates than non-Hispanic white Americans; the mortality rates were 2.6, 2.8, and 2.8 times higher than those for non-Hispanic whites. In addition, the data also show that the percentage of deaths from COVID-19 pandemic among the African-American group has increased from 15% to nearly 19% in May 2021. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on May 16 that African American, Hispanic, Native American and other minority populations infected with the COVID-19 have higher rates of hospitalization and death, and that inequities in health status between ethnic groups highlight the “failures” of American society.

Moreover, minorities suffered more in terms of unemployment rates and other factors. According to the U.S. Economic Policy Institute, during the epidemic, the unemployment rates of African-Americans and Latinos were much higher than those of whites, with the unemployment rate of Latinos being nearly 60% higher than that of whites, while the unemployment rate of African-Americans rose from 60% higher than that of whites before the epidemic to 90% now. The CDC survey shows that as of last August, the second wave of the full-blown epidemic in the U.S., 43% of African-Americans and 53% of Latinos were unemployed or had their salaries reduced; 40% of African-Americans and 43% of Latinos were forced to use their savings or pensions to make ends meet; and 43% of African-Americans and 37% of Latinos were having trouble paying their bills in full. All of these rates are significantly higher than those of whites. An article published by the CDC commented, “racism is the root cause of health inequities and disparities, and the impact on the minorities is severe, profound, and unacceptable.”

Hate crimes remain high

Hate crimes against minorities have long been a common occurrence, and the epidemic has reinforced this trend. Reports released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) show that most hate crimes are motivated by racial, religious or ethnic bias. Since the 1960s, there have been a number of hate crimes in the United States: On April 4, 1969, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 39. In March 1981, Michael Donald, a 19-year-old black man, was kidnapped and killed by two members of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. In June 1998, James Byrd, a 49-year-old black man, was kidnapped by John King and other two killers in Texas and tied to a car and dragged alive to death. In September 2001, an Arizona gas station owner, Sodhi, a Sikh who was mistaken for a Muslim, was shot and killed. The killer later claimed that he was seeking revenge against Muslims for the September 11 terrorist attacks. In February 2011, James Craig Anderson, a 47-year-old black man, was run over by a truck in Mississippi after being beaten by a group of white teenagers......

During the epidemic, hate crimes against Asians also emerged. Recently, Yan Zhang, a professor at Sam Houston State University’s College of Criminal Justice, and others published a paper in American Journal of Criminal Justice: “Hate Crimes Against Asian Americans”. This paper shows that Asian-Americans are the only racial group that has seen an increase in victimization in recent years. Census Bureau shows that the Asian population increased from 3.5 million in 1980 to 11.9 million in 2000 and further increased to 19.4 million in 2013, representing 5.6% of the total U.S. population; as the Asian population has increased, crimes against Asian Americans have also increased each year. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the rate of violent crimes against Asians increased from 8.2 to 16.2 per 1,000 people aged 12 or older from 2015 to 2018. Data from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) show that Asians were the only racial group to experience an increase in victimization across all crime types between 2008 and 2019. In 2008, for example, Asian-American victims accounted for 4.0% of murder victims, 4.7% of rape victims, 11.6% of robbery victims, 5.2% of aggravated assault victims, and 10.3% of all grand larceny victims in New York City. These numbers increase to 6.9%, 8.0%, 15.6%, 7.7%, and 15.7%, respectively, in 2019. And according to FBI, the number of bias-induced hate crimes against Asians had an annual growth rate of about 12% from 2012 to 2014. Also, this paper shows that Asians are more likely to experience hate crimes in schools than in their residences. They were 17% more likely to be assaulted in school, compared to 8.9% for African-Americans and 11.2% for Hispanics.

Low social status of blacks

In 1989, United States National Research Council (NRC) organized more than 100 experts and scholars in various fields to conduct a four-year research study from historical, economic, social and legal perspectives, which was finally published as a full-length report, A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society. The report points out that the economic status of black Americans has declined since the 1970s, and that the root cause of the deterioration in the survival of blacks is the persistence of racial discrimination. “As a result of inequality, many African Americans remain excluded from the mainstream of American social life.”

In terms of education, according to recent statistics, the percentage of high school dropouts of blacks over the age of 25 is 11.9%, twice that of whites; the percentage of four-year bachelor’s degrees is 15.3%, 7.4 percentage points lower than that of whites; the percentage of master’s degrees is 7.8%, 5 percentage points lower than that of whites, and the percentage of doctoral degrees is 1.1%, half that of whites. The majority of black teenagers are confined to poorer quality public schools. According to The Atlantic, The New York Times and other reports, the percentage of black students in more than 100 of the nation’s top research universities has steadily decreased over the past 20 years to only about 6% today, while black college students make up 15% of all college-age students in the United States.

In terms of employment, most blacks are confined to bulky unskilled labor, with lower earnings and poor working conditions. Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor in 2019 show that in the management industry, whites account for 82.4% and African Americans account for 8.2%; in the lawyer industry, whites account for 88% and African Americans account for 5%; in the nursing and home care industry, whites account for 55.8% and African Americans account for 35.8%; in the postal industry, whites account for 46.5% and African Americans account for 40.5%. According to statistics, in the lowest income quintile, the proportion of African Americans accounted for 51%, while whites accounted for 23%; while in the highest income quintile, African Americans accounted for only 3%, whites accounted for 16%. Researchers at the Center for American Progress noted that African Americans were the first to be hit when they entered the recession, and the last to recover when they began to recover.

In terms of living, blacks mostly congregated in dilapidated urban neighborhoods, while whites fled to the suburbs as blacks moved in, creating a de facto segregated area. American scholars have called this residential segregation “a white rope around black neck”, or “chocolate-colored city, vanilla-colored suburbs”. In the inner-city black neighborhoods, the surroundings are dilapidated, the buildings are abandoned, and crimes such as theft, robbery, murder, and drug trafficking occur repeatedly, with crime rates much higher than in other neighborhoods. In addition, blacks are more likely to suffer from school failure, unemployment, poverty, crime, drug abuse, single-parent families, and other social problems, which have a negative impact on the healthy development of black children. In addition, according to a survey conducted by the National Alliance to End Homelessness in the United States, a large percentage of African Americans do not have stable housing, and more than 40% of the homeless population in the United States is African American.

Serious discrimination in the field of law enforcement and justice

In the U.S., minorities also face discrimination and injustice from the coercive state apparatus in many cases. The death of George Floyd that occurred in 2020 is just a microcosm of this phenomenon. According to several media outlets, including The Washington Post, African Americans are three times more likely than whites to be shot and killed by police in the U.S., and for youth, African American youth are 21 times more likely than white youth to be shot and killed. The aforementioned U.S. Police Violence Map also shows that African Americans are more likely to be treated unfairly by police, even though many of them do not carry any weapons. At the same time, African Americans are also subject to more questioning, searches and arrests by police. According to statistics, in major U.S. cities, more than one million pedestrians are stopped and questioned by police on the street each year, and nearly 90% are minority men, 5% of whom are African American and 3% are Latino, compared to 10% of whites who are questioned. The Courier reported that in one area where African Americans only make up 20% of the population, the percentage of them being searched by police, however, accounted for 57%. In addition, the arrest rate for African Americans is much higher than for other ethnic groups in the United States. Statistics show that the average arrest rate for African Americans is three times higher than for other ethnic groups, and the highest is even 26 times. According to Sentencing Project, a non-governmental organization, minorities are more likely to be arrested and convicted in court, and receive heavier sentences for the same crime. Moreover, minorities are also more likely to be wrongly convicted, as 47% of the 1,900 defendants who were convicted but later acquitted were African Americans.

The cancer that has penetrated to the bone of American society

In the United States, racism is systemic and comprehensive, with deep and complex roots. U.S. President Barack Obama has also pointed out that “being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’”. Although the United States has ostensibly desegregated the racial segregation, white supremacist racism has long been embedded in the bones and permeates every aspect of American social life. According to Pew Research Center, more than 40% of Americans believe that the United States has not made enough progress on racial equality, 58% believe that race relations in the United States are very poor, and 65% say that racist rhetoric has become more prevalent in American society in recent years. Accordingly, the report reluctantly concludes that minorities will never achieve the same rights as whites in the United States, and American society is unlikely to address the chronic problem of racial inequality.

The United States claims to be a beacon of human rights, and interferes in the affairs of other countries on the pretext of human rights, while never dares to face the deep-rooted racial problems at home. While criticizing other countries for not respecting human rights, the U.S. has condoned protracted violations of human rights at home, which reveals its unique “double standard” and hypocritical nature of “American-style human rights”, and has made international society in great astonishment. If the United States really wants to become a beacon of human rights in the world, it can only set an example for the world by first solving the domestic racial problem. Otherwise, this beacon will never be bright.