This Week in Human Rights News

In the United States, black people have lived through a long history of racial injustice, discrimination and institutionalised violence. The first enslaved Africans were brought by the Spanish in 1526. In 1619, the first enslaved Africans arrived in the English colonies of North America.

They were exploited to work as indentured servants and labour in the production of crops such as cotton. Slavery in the United States was outlawed in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Despite this, racism did not disappear. The same year, the white supremacist organisation, the Klu Klux Klan, was created. The Jim Crow era followed, institutionalising racial segregation and the 'separate but equal' legal doctrine. Racial segregation was deemed unconstitutional in 1954 in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka.

However, the legacies of slavery and segregation have remained, its fundamental ideals manifesting in complex webs of economic, political, institutional, cultural and legal oppression. For over 400 years, black people in America have been fighting against racism and white supremacy.

Black people should not, and cannot, fight this battle alone.

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The 19th century also saw the birth of modern, organised and institutionalised policing. Modern policing did not evolve into an organised institution until the 1830s and '40s when northern cities decided they needed better control over quickly growing populations.

The first American police department was established in Boston in 1838. The communities most targeted by harsh tactics were recent European immigrants. As African-Americans fled the horrors of the South, they became the victims of brutal and punitive policing in the northern cities where they sought safety. While less brutal than the South, the experiences of racism in the North were pervasive and transcendent across all levels of society.

In the 20th century, incidents of police brutality were present in peaceful protests of the Civil Rights Movement - a movement that directly addressed slavery’s legacy on education, human rights, and political participation.

With changes in modern technology, video footage such as the beating of taxi driver Rodney King in 1991 was able to show the story of police brutality to a wider audience. The police officers acquitted of the crime had hit King over 50 times with their batons.

With the increasing use of the internet in the 21st century - live streaming, videos, Facebook lives, and tweets have blasted incidents of police brutality beyond the black community into the mainstream. In 2013, #BlackLivesMatter was created to address the systemic racism that black people still face by police officers.

Are black people disproportionately affected by police violence? Absolutely.

Police killings affect all Americans - but the statistics show that black Americans are most likely to be killed by police officers — that they are nearly twice as likely to be killed as a Latinx person and nearly three times more likely to be killed than a white person.

This is despite black people accounting for less than 13% of America's population.

A recent analysis by Mapping Police Violence found that 99% of police killings from 2014 to 2019 did not result in officers even being charged with, let alone convicted of a crime.

Moreover, the NAACP has revealed that black Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of white people, highlighting the racial disparities in incarceration.

Ultimately, the continuous and violent policing of black communities (which has fostered distrust at a local, everyday level), the lack of accountability, justice and prosecution of police officers has roots in how white power has controlled and abused black bodies in the past.

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On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was killed after being arrested by police outside a store in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A convenience store owner reported someone trying to use a counterfeit $20 bill. Video footage showed white police officer Derek Chauvin pinning Loyd to the floor and kneeling on his neck for approximately 8 minutes.

His last words, “I can’t breathe”, echoed those of Eric Garner, who was killed in 2014 in New York after police placed him in a chokehold face down on the sidewalk. The Houston Chronicle has reported that Floyd leaves behind a six-year-old daughter who still lives in Houston with her mother.

Since then, protests have erupted throughout America and have spread to other cities such as London and Berlin. They are demanding justice for the black lives lost at the hands of police and are denouncing the pervasive racial profiling, stark inequalities, and brutal violence at the hands of those who are supposed to enforce the law and keep society safe.

This situation is occurring with Covid-19 as the backdrop, where black and brown people are disproportionately dying of the virus, and are suffering from higher rates of job loss. This data reflects institutionalised racism and deep-rooted social and economic inequalities.

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We highly encourage you to learn more in your spare time, and we’ve got some resources to get you started.

Please think before sharing on social media. Images and videos of black bodies being brutalised and murdered can be triggering and traumatising for many.

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This is not just an issue in America.

Britain has an often-ignored colonial history during which, among other things, they profited extensively from the slave economy. Institutionalised racism and police violence against black people continues to be a fact of everyday life.

According to the Guardian, black people in England and Wales are disproportionately more likely to have force used against them by police officers. Black people experienced 12% of use-of-force incidents in 2017-18, despite accounting for just 3.3% of the population.

There are not as many statistics in comparison to the United States, which is an issue in and of itself.

REFLECT

How has power been used and weaponised against black communities?

How are protests led by white people and black people being covered differently in the news? 

More than that, how are they being perceived differently by the government? 

What kind of privilege (race, economic status, gender, sexual orientation, access to resources) do you possess that others around you may not?