Racial Equality and Justice in America: Summer 2020

Introduction

The United States is a country full of dichotomies when it comes to racial equality and justice. These dichotomies should come as no surprise given that the country was built on the idea of freedom but also through the labor of slaves. Ever since the country's origins, there has been a tension between its treatment of the white majority and its treatment of minorities. While being the land of opportunity for many, the United States has a history of denying those same opportunities to different minority groups, with Native Americans and African Americans being the most frequently targeted.

The mistreatment of African Americans can be traced to the United States' dependence on slave labor to build its economic prosperity. As the world began to turn away from legalized slavery, a very rigid race-based caste system developed in the United States to support its continued use of slavery. Though slavery would become illegal throughout most of the world in the late 1800s and was formally abolished in the entire United States with the passage of the 13th Amendment on January 13, 1865 (Senate, n.d.), the vestiges of slavery and the institutionalized racism it helped create continue to plague the United States in many ways, including significant racial disparities in the treatment of African Americans by law enforcement and other aspects of the criminal justice system.

These racial disparities do not mean that every law enforcement officer or other actor in the criminal justice system displays a conscious or intentional bias toward African Americans, though some certainly do. Instead, they often reflect unconscious bias that leads people to view African Americans — especially African American males — as more dangerous than an objective review of circumstances would suggest. Together with conscious bias, the result is that at every point in the criminal justice system where an official has discretionary power, African Americans are more likely to receive harsher treatment than any other racial group (The Sentencing Project, 2018). This means that if an African American and a white American commit the same crime, the African American is more likely to be arrested, more likely to be charged, likely to face a higher-level offense, more likely to be convicted, and more likely to receive a greater sentence. The cumulative effect of these differences often results in an African American defendant receiving a lengthy felony prison sentence for the exact same conduct that results in no charges for a white defendant. It also contributes to other injustices, such as wrongful convictions and an increased risk of police brutality.

George Floyd and Police Brutality

Statistics on police brutality and race are difficult to compile because there are no national reporting requirements for police brutality or for race in officer-involved violence incidents. This means that most evidence is incomplete, and it seems reasonable to assume that the same type of bias that leads to discrimination would also lead to underreporting of violence by officers in the worst areas. However, available data supports the idea that African American males are more than 2.5 times as likely to be killed by police officers than white males, and that the race of the officer also matters — white officers are five times as likely to discharge their weapons in African American neighborhoods as Black officers (Peeples, 2020). The effect of this bias can seem difficult to understand until it is personalized.

On May 25, 2020, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin detained George Floyd because Floyd was accused of attempting to pass a counterfeit bill. Floyd was unarmed and was not accused of a violent or dangerous crime. Nevertheless, Chauvin knelt with his knee on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, despite Floyd's repeated pleas that he could not breathe and despite several bystanders urging Chauvin to stop. Chauvin continued his assault even as it became clear he was killing Floyd, while three other officers — Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao — made no effort to assist the victim and, in fact, provided assistance to Chauvin in the killing. Initially, the officers and the Minneapolis Police Department alleged that Floyd was resisting arrest, but video evidence from multiple cameras shows Floyd being mostly compliant with the arrest, not being violent with officers, and certainly not resisting at the time Chauvin was kneeling on his neck. The four officers involved in his death were eventually terminated from their jobs and charged with murder.

Protests, Riots, and the Role of Antifa

Despite video evidence of Chauvin killing a man in his custody, he was neither immediately terminated from his job nor immediately arrested and charged with murder. People began to protest in Minneapolis on May 26, the day after Floyd's murder. While those protests have been characterized as violent — and some did turn into violent clashes with police that included arson, looting, and violence — the Minneapolis riots were the most violent racial unrest since the Los Angeles riots in 1992. However, the reality is that in Minneapolis and elsewhere around the nation, the protests that arose against police brutality were mainly peaceful. While Chauvin was fired on May 26, it took four days for him to be charged with murder. In the meantime, the community of Minneapolis made some positive changes in response to the protests. "The [University], the city school board and the parks department have cut ties with the police" (Barker and Furber, 2020). In addition, the city decided to completely dismantle its police department because of what was seen as entrenched racism, and to rebuild local law enforcement from the ground up.

In the days following Floyd's murder, protests against police brutality and other forms of institutionalized racism spread throughout the United States. Police response to the protests varied dramatically by city, with some local departments responding to peaceful protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets, and additional acts of police brutality, while in other cities, officers marched with protesters in solidarity against police violence. Many protesters were described as members of Antifa, with members of President Trump's administration characterizing them as members of a terrorist organization targeting the United States. Rumors spread that Antifa was entering suburbs and targeting white people for murder and violent crime. This fear-mongering was completely unfounded.

Antifa simply stands for anti-fascist, and many people — including a number of small groups, some anarchist and some not — give themselves that label. Antifa has no centralized leadership or organizational structure, though local groups may adopt the name. Most importantly, though there was violence at some protests, none of it has been linked to any anti-fascist group (Kenney and Clarke, 2020).

Conclusion

It would be optimistic to suggest that racism in the United States is going to be conquered in the near future, even given the public outrage over the murders of Floyd and Taylor. However, it is becoming very clear that the majority of people in the U.S. find systemic racism — and its impact on African Americans, especially within the criminal justice system — deeply problematic. The resulting push for change may create a wave of social reform to rival what was seen during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

References

Barker, Kim, and Furber, Matt. "Bail Is at Least $1 Million for Ex-Officer Accused of Killing George Floyd." The New York Times. 8 June 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/us/derek-chauvin-court.html. Accessed 14 July 2020.

Black Lives Matter. "What We Believe." Black Lives Matter. 2020. https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/. Accessed 14 July 2020.

Kenney, Michael, and Clarke, Colin. "What Antifa Is, What It Isn't, and Why It Matters." War on the Rocks. 23 June 2020. https://warontherocks.com/2020/06/what-antifa-is-what-it-isnt-and-why-it-matters/. Accessed 14 July 2020.

Peeples, Lynne. "What the Data Say About Police Brutality and Racial Violence — and Which Reforms Might Work." Nature. 19 June 2020. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z. Accessed 14 July 2020.

The Sentencing Project. "Report of The Sentencing Project to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance: Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States Criminal Justice System." The Sentencing Project. March 2018. https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/un-report-on-racial-disparities/. Accessed 14 July 2020.

United States Senate. "Senate Passes the 13th Amendment." Senate Historical Office. N.d. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senate_Passes_the_Thirteenth_Amendment.htm. Accessed 14 July 2020.