Historic racial tensions deepen cracks in society

The killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American, by a white police officer in May in Minneapolis sparked protests across the United States and stoked antiracism rallies across the world. It was more than a moment. For eight minutes, police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the neck of Floyd, ignoring pleas for mercy until Floyd’s life slipped away.

Observer Darnella Frazier, then 17, held up a phone camera so a video record of Floyd’s death was preserved. The images led to massive protests, engaging many people who considered the issue of police misconduct in mostly abstract terms.

Since then, with cases of African Americans violently treated by white police officers continuously being exposed, the protests against racism has escalated.

“Black Lives Matter” has now become one of the most well-known slogans in 2020.

The movement ignited a debate about race and the toppling of statues of figures linked to slavery or colonization. Protesters decrying racism have targeted monuments to Confederate generals in multiple cities, and many have been taken down.

US President Donald Trump also became increasingly at odds with the racial justice movement in the wake of Floyd’s death.

In June, US police officers and National Guard troops, clad in riot gear, used pepper spray to clear a park outside the White House of protesters so Trump could walk to a historic church and pose for a photo holding a Bible.

Opinion polls showed the US public largely supported peaceful protests for racial justice.

The United Nations Human Rights Council in June adopted a resolution strongly condemning the continuing racial discrimination and violent practices perpetrated by US law enforcement against Africans and people of African descent.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said on June 17 that Floyd’s death had become emblematic of the excessive use of disproportionate force by law enforcement against people of African descent, against people of color, against indigenous people, and racial and ethnic minorities in countries across the globe.

“Since the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, a wave of massive protests has surged forward, not only across every state in the United States but also in dozens of countries in Europe and all around the world,” Bachelet said.

With that as a backdrop, Democrat Joe Biden’s decision to make Senator Kamala Harris — a black and AsianAmerican woman — his running mate, was particularly resonant.

Root of the problem

Yet, it takes far more than chanting slogans, or even defunding the police, to end the injustice inflicted upon African Americans. Measures need to be carried out to get to the real root of the problem — economic and social inequality.

The COVID-19 pandemic now raging in the US has laid bare that racial economic divide.

Minority communities including African Americans and Latinos, many with low-paying yet essential jobs, have been disproportionately affected by the virus and killed at a higher rate than white people.

African Americans, who make up about 13 percent of the US population, account for 22.4 percent of related deaths from COVID-19, data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed.

The gap between the rich and the poor has continued to widen, and closing it has become increasingly unlikely.

US Federal Reserve data in the second quarter of 2020 showed the top 1 percent of the US population held 30.5 percent of the country’s total wealth, while the bottom 50 percent had only a 1.9 percent share.

At JPMorgan Chase, the biggest US bank in terms of assets, black staff account for 13 percent of head count but just 4 percent of managers.

The US government’s failure to contain the pandemic has widened the cracks in society.

With the world’s highest coronavirus caseload and death toll, the US has found itself knee-deep in an economic recession. Millions of people do not have a job, or even a place to live. The number of US people struggling in poverty has grown by 8 million since May, a recent study showed.

Lucrecia Hernandez, a lecturer, attorney and director of the social organization SURES, said that racism as a state and a structural policy has long roots dating to the founding of the US some 400 years ago.

“Unless people can bridge these divisions and forge a new path forward, it will be impossible to work together,” Brookings Institution senior fellow Darrell West said.