On May 14, 11 black people in Buffalo were the victims of a major shooting by an 18-year-old white man who believed in white supremacy.
This incident has been characterized by the US government as a hate crime, racial violence, and indigenous terrorism, but it is only a microcosm of the vicious violation of the human rights of black Americans in the United States.
The United States calls itself a "human rights defender" all over the world, but its attitude towards human rights is like a flashlight, only focusing on others and not itself.
The systematic violation of black human rights is one of America's greatest original sins and stains.
Discrimination and oppression of black people are deeply rooted in the United States, seriously undermining black people's rights to life, development and political rights.
The U.S. government and both parties have long ignored or condoned violations of black human rights.
The human rights of black Americans have been systematically violated for a long time
Black Americans could be mortally threatened at any time.
In the era of slavery, the lives of black slaves were at the disposal of their owners; in the era of apartheid, blacks lived in fear of lynching by whites; today, blacks still face serious threats of homicide, shooting, hate crimes, and white supremacist violence .
According to the FBI, homicides occur primarily among black people.
Although they make up only 13% of the population, they account for more than half of homicide victims in 2020.
Gun violence is a chronic disease in American society, and blacks are the largest victim group.
Of the nearly 20,000 shootings in 2020, black victims accounted for 62 percent, and white victims only 21 percent.
Blacks are 12 times more likely to be shot than whites.
Gun violence has reduced life expectancy in the U.S. by nearly 2.5 years, including 4.14 years for blacks and 2.23 years for whites.
Since 2018, white supremacists have been the deadliest group of extremist violence in the United States, with blacks and Jews as their main targets of violence.
Surveys show that as many as 75 percent of blacks fear being physically attacked because of their racial identity.
Sadly, the threats of violence that blacks face often come from the American government that is supposed to protect them.
Racial discrimination by law enforcement in the United States is commonplace, resulting in frequent incidents of violent law enforcement against blacks.
Adult black men are instinctively viewed as a serious threat by white police officers.
Blacks are more likely than whites to be identified as criminals by the police and subjected to cruel treatment.
For example, in 2016, a black man in Cincinnati was shot dead by police for wearing a fake gun around his waist, while a white man in the city was left unscathed after pointing a fake gun at police.
Since 2014, there have been at least 12 incidents of police brutality against black people in the United States that have sparked nationwide protests, most notably including the 2014 strangulation of a black man Garner by a white police officer in New York City, and the 2014 death of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri, in the same year. Young Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer. In 2020, a black man Floyd was brutally killed by a white policeman on the street.
According to statistics, since 2015, there have been more than 5,000 fatal police shootings in the United States, resulting in the killing of 1,600 black people, and the rate of black people being shot by police is more than twice that of white Americans.
There are also widespread violations of black human rights in the U.S. courts and prison systems.
Blacks are more likely than whites to be wrongly convicted of crimes such as murder, sexual assault, illegal drug activity, and more.
For the same crime, black men received an average of 19 percent longer sentences than white men.
The incarceration rate of black men is 6 times higher than that of white men, and the incarceration rate of black women is 2 times higher than that of white women.
Blacks make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, but 36 percent of the prison population.
The economic and social rights of black Americans have always been unfairly treated.
Although the United States has implemented the so-called "affirmative action" for a long time since the 1960s, black people are discriminated against explicitly or implicitly in various aspects such as medical care, employment, income, education, housing, welfare, etc., and are in an all-round disadvantaged position .
Black infant mortality was 2.3 times higher than whites and life expectancy was five years lower than whites.
The impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic on blacks is much harder than that of whites. In 2020 alone, more than 100 people out of every 100,000 blacks will die of new coronary pneumonia, which is twice as high as whites.
The unemployment rate of blacks has been maintained at about twice that of whites for a long time, the poverty rate is 2.5 times that of whites, and the average family wealth is only one tenth of that of whites.
Employment discrimination solidifies the economic and welfare inequalities that black people experience.
Under the same working conditions, black men earn only 70% of white men's earnings and black women only 78% of white women's earnings.
A culture of racism, either overt or covert, is pervasive in the workplace.
Racial discrimination claims have an extremely low success rate, with only 15% receiving some form of relief.
Black students are three times more likely to drop out than white students.
Research has shown that whites associate black boys with "violence" and "danger" starting at age 5, increasing their likelihood of dropping out of school or engaging in criminal activity.
Forty-five percent of blacks say they have experienced discrimination when renting or buying a home, compared with just 5 percent of whites.
Black tenants face twice the risk of eviction as whites during the pandemic.
The political rights of black Americans have also been deliberately suppressed.
The American Declaration of Independence proclaimed that "all men are created equal", but the original constitution did not recognize the citizenship rights of blacks and enacted the infamous "three-fifths clause" that divided the actual population of black slaves when allocating seats in the House of Representatives Multiply by three-fifths.
After the end of the American Civil War, blacks finally got the right to vote, but states still prevent blacks from voting by means of poll taxes, cultural tests, and violent intimidation.
It wasn't until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that black voters could truly exercise their political rights.
Any slight improvement in black rights in the United States would provoke a backlash from conservative whites.
Conservative white politicians have worked hard to suppress black political rights by changing electoral rules and unfairly dividing congressional districts.
In 2013, the Supreme Court, with a majority of conservative justices, struck down the core of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, severely weakening federal protections for black voting rights.
Republican-dominated states are passing more and more legislation to suppress the black vote.
In 2021 alone, Republicans have pushed state legislatures to pass more than 30 vote-suppression laws in 19 states aimed at restricting mail-in and early voting, reducing ballot boxes, using manual vote counting, and increasing voter identity verification.
A large number of black voters were disqualified from voting or had to pay more to vote.
GOP proposals for congressional districting often seek to eliminate black-dominated districts.
For example, Florida Gov. DeSantis, a Republican, has publicly insisted on eliminating the black-populated Fifth Congressional District.
From 2010 to 2020, black school-age voters grew from 16.5 million to 18.5 million, but the number of black-dominated congressional districts fell from 10 to five.
In Republican-dominated Alabama, where blacks make up 26 percent of the population, only one of the state's seven congressional districts is dominated by blacks.
Rooted in deep-rooted racial discrimination in the United States
Since the first black African slaves were sold to Virginia by whites in 1619, racist ideas and systems that discriminate against blacks have taken root in the United States, intertwined and indestructible.
The enslavement of blacks was deeply rooted in the early economic foundations of the United States, and racial discrimination against blacks was closely linked to the color of the skin.
According to Confederate President Davies during the Civil War, black skin is the "innate label" of the eternal inferiority of black Americans.
In order to justify the enslavement of blacks, white Americans established oppressive hierarchies between different races based on skin color.
This still harms and violates their human rights to this day.
After the rise of the black civil rights movement in the 1960s, old-fashioned racist words and deeds gradually became rare in the United States, but racial discrimination can still be detected anytime, anywhere.
According to the survey, 56% of American voters believe that the United States is still a racist society, 70% of black people believe that more than half of white people believe in white supremacy, and 40% of black respondents said they have been treated in a store or restaurant in the last month. Racism, black people generally see racism as the biggest threat to them.
Modern racism no longer asserts that blacks are "physically handicapped," but that blacks are "culturally handicapped."
Violence, laziness, drug abuse, underage mothers, etc., have characterized the black community, and many white people use it as an excuse to discriminate against black people.
Systemic racism theory holds that American society is a racist organism, full of racist oppression in its system, organization, ideology and other aspects.
Whites use this to dominate blacks and other minorities, maintaining their privileges and socioeconomic status.
In recent years, old-fashioned racism has clearly returned in the United States, with white supremacy on the rise.
Trump has promoted the development of right-wing populism and alt-right forces, and racism and violence against black people have soared.
This is largely because conservative whites have a deep fear of the growth of the black population and political power.
Less than half of all white babies are born in the United States each year.
The proportion of the white population is projected to fall to less than half by 2044.
This makes conservative whites extremely worried about their privilege and status, so they try to seize the last opportunity to change the rules of the political game and exclude minorities.
At present, the two parties in the United States ignore or even promote the violation of the human rights of black people.
The Republican Party has almost become an all-white party.
There are currently only two black members of the 210 Republican members of Congress and one black member of the 50 Republican senators.
The Republican Party is fully pandering to conservative white sentiment against blacks and pushing for legislation that suppresses blacks from voting and restricts blacks’ rights.
Although the Democratic Party has long received overwhelming support from blacks, it often takes the votes of blacks for granted, and does not have much motivation to improve the situation of blacks. Instead, it deliberately ignores the demands of blacks in order to gain the votes of white blue-collar workers.
Under the promotion of the Republican Party and the indifference of the Democratic Party, the physical, economic, social and political rights of black Americans are being threatened more and more, and their human rights situation is not advancing.
(Author: Fu Suixin is a special researcher at the Research Center of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and an assistant researcher at the American Institute)