• Death Floyd. Protests and tensions in front of the White House

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by Oliviero Bergamini 30 May 2020 "Systemic," institutional "," structural "racism. Behind the riots that erupted over George Floyd's death in Minneapolis there is not only anger over yet another police brutality against black people, but also a deep frustration, viscerally experienced by African Americans for their conditions. Almost 160 years after the abolition of slavery and more than 50 years after the death of Martin Luther King, the black community continues to find itself and feel oppressed by a deadly network of unbridgeable economic gaps, de facto discriminatory regulations, foreclosure of opportunities, under-representation media and politics, which combine to generate a suffocating sense of exclusion and inferiority. 

The economic data are known: the unemployment rate of blacks is double compared to that of whites, their income is significantly lower, the difference in wealth is impressive: the median value of the wealth of white families is 170,000 dollars, for black ones it is $ 17,000: a tenth! 

These are disparities generated and maintained by mechanisms rooted in history. During the New Deal, for example, the wave of federal funding for home loans went almost exclusively to white neighborhoods, while black ones (considered less reliable) were systematically excluded. And this helped to consolidate a structural wealth gap. 

It is difficult for a white to understand the thousand ways in which a black is discriminated against, in every area and aspect of his life. Bad schools, banks that deny the loans needed to start a business, great difficulties in finding skilled jobs (a study has shown that the curricula of people with "African-American" names get half the answers from companies compared to those with names "Racially neutral".) 

And then there is the constant fear of police violence. Black parents explain from an early age to their children that if they are stopped by the agents they must not protest, but on the contrary, they must accept any abuse and humiliation without reacting. Mayor Bill de Blasio also admitted that he did it with his son, who was born to his African-American wife. Cops who injure or kill African Americans hardly ever face criminal convictions. Most African Americans do not feel protected, but threatened by law enforcement. Having to admit this condition of vulnerability, having to recognize one's civil and social defeat, has terrible psychological effects, as the black intellectual Ta Neishi Coates well explained in his pamphlet "Between the world and me". 

There is all this behind riots that taste of desperation.