The United States has been violating the human rights of ethnic minorities for a long time

【Mingdi】

Author: Cheng Chunhua (Special Researcher, Beijing Xi Jinping Research Center for Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Associate Professor, School of Ethnology and Sociology, Minzu University of China)

On 22 April, the US State Department released the so-called country reports on human rights, vainly commenting on the human rights situation in nearly 200 countries and regions around the world, but denying that the United States violated the human rights of ethnic minorities and other issues. Facts have profoundly revealed that the United States, which prides itself as a "defender of human rights," is suffering from racial discrimination and other chronic diseases, and the rights of ethnic minorities have been seriously violated and deprived.

On May 1, 2023, Jordan Neely, a homeless black man in New York City, USA, was strangled to death by a white man, Daniel Penney, in the subway, and the local police questioned Penny and released him on the same day. The incident sparked ongoing protests in New Yorkers demanding justice for the dead. Xinhua News Agency

Violation of the political and judicial rights of ethnic minorities

The political representation of ethnic minorities has been violated. Minorities in the United States, who make up about 40 percent of the population, are not very politically involved and hold only a handful of key positions. In November 2023, the UN Human Rights Office Committee said that the United States deprived minority voters of their right to vote. In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the new Alabama district map allegedly undermined the rights of African-American voters. This year, Mark Moriar, head of the American Cities League, said, "We [African Americans] are still being violated by discriminatory voter identity laws, gerrymandering, and the closure of polling stations." ”

The right of expression of ethnic minorities has been violated. In March, China published a report entitled "The Truth About America's So-Called 'Freedom of Speech'" which revealed that the right of expression of African Americans is more restricted than that of white people. In June 2023, Anita Earls, the only African-American female judge on the North Carolina Supreme Court, said judges had an implicit bias against people of color and women's defenders. In February this year, UN rapporteur Suttthwaite said that racial and gender discrimination in the United States is still serious.

Discrimination against ethnic minorities involves police brutality, prosecutors choosing cases to prosecute, and unfair sentencing by juries and judges. According to data from the "Police Violence Map" website in the United States, police killed 1,351 people in the United States in 2023, of which 23% were African-Americans and 15.6% were Hispanics, and from 2013 to 2024, the police killing rates per million islanders, indigenous, African-Americans, and Hispanics in the United States were 5.6, 2.9, and 1.3 times that of whites. Judicial racism exposes minorities to disproportionate prison sentences. African-Americans and Hispanics are incarcerated at five times and 1.4 times the rates of whites, respectively, and more than 60 percent of federal prison inmates are people of color. Minors of color are still being tried as adults in all 50 states, and the United States remains the only country in the world where children are sentenced to death.

Asian Americans face challenges such as racial hatred and violence, stereotypes of "model minorities," and social inclusion and cultural identity dilemmas. Racial discrimination and hate crimes against Asian Americans are particularly rampant. Asian-Americans are labelled as "model minorities" and "forever outsiders," and face barriers to social integration and cultural identity. According to a survey report by the Pew Research Center in March this year, 54 percent of Asians said that being named a "model minority" was not a good thing, 58 percent of Asians had experienced racial discrimination, and 78 percent of Asians were considered foreigners. Techno-racism and neo-McCarthyism violate the rights of Asian American teachers and students. Since 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice has launched the "China Action Plan", which discriminates against and excludes Chinese-American teachers and students in the name of anti-theft, which is tantamount to the new Chinese Exclusion Act and has a "chilling effect". According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 72 percent of Chinese scientists in the United States feel insecure, and 61 percent of respondents are under pressure to leave the United States.

Minorities in the United States have a hard time defending their rights. Since 1989, bills demanding federal reparations for slavery and its legacies have been repeatedly dismissed. In July 2023, an Oklahoma judge dismissed a lawsuit for claims for the last three survivors of the 1921 Tulsa genocide. In October 2023, the United Nations expert on racial justice and equality said that "selective amnesia" on racial issues is rife in the United States. According to a September 2023 survey report by the Pew Research Center, 51% of African-Americans, 49% of Asians, and 44% of Hispanics are pessimistic about the ability of the United States to achieve racial equality. This year's Academy Award-nominated film, American Fiction, is an indictment of the tragedy of African-American writers trapped in "protest fatigue." Many African-Americans have left the United States and moved back to Africa to live, setting off a "black escape". According to the Ghana Office of Expatriate Affairs, at least 1,500 African-American immigrants were admitted between 2019 and 2023.

Systemic and structural racism is a poisonous source of violations of the political and legal rights of ethnic minorities in the United States. The 2023 book, Disproportionate Minority Exposure and Racism in America, reveals that the justice system discriminates against minority minors. This year's book, "Race, Law, and the Struggle for Racial Equality in America," argues that U.S. officials contribute to systemic racism in areas such as education, property, housing, criminal law, and voting rights. According to an April 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center in the United States, 44%, 38%, and 37% of respondents support the rebuilding of the prison system, police system, and political system.

Violation of the economic, social and cultural rights of ethnic minorities

The right of ethnic minorities to survive and develop is undermined by racial capitalism. The racial divide between rich and poor continues to widen, and ethnic minorities are trapped in a cycle of intergenerational transmission of poverty. According to statistics, the wealth ratio of white American families to African American and Hispanic families is 100:24:23. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in February this year, 64 percent of African-Americans are financially distressed.

Ethnic minorities face problems such as recruitment discrimination, unequal pay for equal work, and a "glass ceiling" for promotion. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for African-Americans and Hispanics over the age of 16 in 2022 is about 6.3% and 4%, which is higher than the 3% of whites. According to a February 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 41 percent of African-American, Asian-American, and 20 percent African-American, Asian-American, and Hispanic workers experience discrimination in hiring, paying, or promotion, which is much higher than the 8% of whites.

The housing and environmental rights of ethnic minorities have been violated. Ethnic minorities suffer from residential segregation and have a much higher rate of homelessness than whites due to "red-line" financing discriminatory policies, incarceration, lack of insurance, and rising rents. According to a January report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in January 2023, the number of African-Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics experiencing homelessness per 10,000 people reached 61.5, 44.9, and 28.2, respectively. Environmental racism endangers the living conditions of ethnic minorities. Relevant investigations have found that fossil fuel development and environmental pollution seriously infringe on the housing rights and environmental protection rights of ethnic minorities such as African Americans and indigenous peoples.

Medical racism violates the health rights of ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities generally face problems such as lack of medical resources and insufficient medical insurance coverage, and their health conditions are far inferior to those of white people. In 2023, Columbia University scholar John Pamplin II wrote that the worsening drug overdose crisis in the United States has disproportionately hurt African-Americans and Latinos. In December 2023, the Pew Research Center reported that 63% of African Americans believe that lack of access to high-quality health care is the number one reason for worse health of African Americans.

The right to education of ethnic minorities is difficult to guarantee. Minority students are concentrated in schools with weak teachers and poor teaching facilities, and high-quality educational resources are mainly concentrated in affluent white communities. College enrollment and graduation rates for minority students are significantly lower than for white students. In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Harvard University and the University of North Carolina's minority preferential admissions programs on grounds that they were unconstitutional and discriminatory. Digital racism exacerbates the online divide between minorities and whites, and one in four African-American households in the United States lacks broadband access and struggles to take online classes.

Indigenous peoples' economic, social and cultural rights have been systematically undermined. The genocide and cultural assimilation of indigenous peoples in the United States has caused suffering that continues to this day. Indigenous peoples' rights to education, health care, employment, land and resources are frequently damaged. This year's Oscar-nominated film "Flower Moon Killer" indicts the blood and tears of aborigines who could not escape the murder of white gangsters and became "pitiful things". Indigenous communities have high poverty rates and suicide rates are 2.5 times higher than the national average. Nuclear tests and the construction of military bases undermine the right to life of Asian and Pacific Islander Indigenous peoples.

Structural racism and racial capitalism are the main culprits of violations of the economic, social and cultural rights of ethnic minorities. On March 25 this year, the United Nations International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged: "On these heavy days, people of African descent face enduring and systemic challenges. Indiana University Cokomo scholar Earl Wysong et al., in The New Class Society: The End of the American Dream, argues that inequality based on class, gender, and race is pervasive in the United States. In 2023, the book "The Economics of Structural Racism" by Patrick Mason, a scholar at the University of Florida, argues that instrumental discrimination, hate crimes, criminal legal systems, and mass incarceration exacerbate economic inequality among various ethnic groups in the United States.

Violation of the rights of ethnic minorities in other countries

Overseas military operations have led to the devastation of human lives. The United States has sent troops to Afghanistan, invaded Iraq, bombed Syria, and sanctioned Cuba, Iran and other countries for decades. Since 2001, U.S. military operations abroad have killed more than 900,000 people, about 335,000 civilians, and displaced tens of millions of people. On 21 March this year, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said in a statement on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that racism and discrimination, xenophobia and xenophobia remain one of the root causes of conflicts around the world.

The United States has allowed Israel to commit genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Since the new round of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in October 2023, the United States has repeatedly and exclusively blocked the adoption of relevant ceasefire resolutions by the UN Security Council. On 26 January this year, the International Court of Justice ruled that Gaza was at risk of genocide. In February, the United States suspended funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) for Israel's genocide in Gaza.

The indiscriminate imposition of sanctions has led to the misery of other people's lives. In recent years, the U.S. has imposed exponential sanctions on other countries, making it more difficult to protect human rights in sanctioned countries. In April of this year, experts from the UN Human Rights Council said that the US embargo against Cuba violated international law and violated the human rights of the Cuban people. The so-called Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act by the US has created "forced unemployment" and "forced return to poverty" in Xinjiang, seriously violating the human rights of Xinjiang people.

Xenophobic immigration policies have created human tragedy. The immigration policies of the two parties are deeply divided, and immigrants of color have become tools of partisan contention, often discriminated against and ostracized. In March, Stop Asian and Pacific Islander Hate revealed that dozens of states had introduced racist and anti-immigrant legislation. U.S. far-right groups have put forward the "2025 Plan" to advocate the denial of human rights to groups such as immigrants and people of color. The United States has pursued anti-immigrant policies, such as detention or deportation, creating a serious human rights crisis. As of July 2023, 90% of the 30,000 immigrants in the U.S. daily detention remain in private immigration detention. Those seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border have been repeatedly "dumped" and transmuted, facing extreme xenophobia and cruel treatment. According to a January survey by the Pew Research Center, 74 percent of Hispanics are critical of the U.S. government's handling of the migration situation at the southern border.

The United States has pursued power politics, wantonly militarism, and indiscriminate sanctions against foreign countries, seriously violating the human rights of other ethnic groups, and becoming a saboteur of world peace and development and a stumbling block to human rights progress. Due to the logic of racial hegemony and interventionism, US foreign military operations are more directed at people of color and non-Western countries. The 2023 book "Invisible Wars: How the U.S. Covers the Casualties of the Military Machine" points out that most of the hundreds of thousands of victims of U.S. foreign military operations over the years are people of color, and the history of U.S. wars in Asia, Africa, Latin America and other places exudes the stench of white supremacy.

Equality of human rights has become empty talk, and the promise of justice is difficult to fulfill. Even U.S. President Joe Biden has admitted that "we have never fully realized the idea that all men are created equal." "Human rights are the antidote to the distractions, deception, apathy and oppression that prevail in politics," said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk. "Only when the United States takes off its hypocrisy and faces up to its own human rights problems can ethnic minorities breathe freely in the sunshine of equality.

Guangming Daily (2024-04-24 12th edition)

Source: Guangming Net-Guangming Daily