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UN experts blast US officials for racial discrimination against blacks, minorities
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UN experts blast US officials for racial discrimination against blacks, minorities
A community activist tries to persuade a group of protesters demonstrating in Ferguson, Missouri over the death of Michael Brown to move back as police in riot gear watch.
UN experts have grilled US officials about what they said is persistent racial discrimination against African-Americans and other minorities, amid high racial tensions in the US after the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) argued on Wednesday that blacks and other racial minorities in the US face discrimination in jobs, housing, education and the criminal justice system, Reuters reported.
“Stand Your Ground” laws, a controversial self-defense law in about 23 US states, use of force by police against migrants, and racial profiling by the FBI were also raised by CERD, a UN treaty that commits its members to the elimination of racial discrimination and the promotion of understanding among all races.
CERD Committee Vice Chairman Noureddine Amir expressed concern at the large share of African-Americans among people who are “arrested, charged, convicted, incarcerated and sentenced to life without parole, especially for non-violent offences, as well as sentenced to death.”
African-Americans make up 13 percent of the US population, but 50 percent of homicide victims, Amir said. “African-American males are reportedly seven times more likely to die by firearm homicide than their white counterparts,” he said.
“I understand that these disparities arise from factors such as subconscious racial bias in shootings, the proliferation of Stand Your Ground laws and the existence of predominantly African American and economically depressed neighborhoods with escalated levels of violence,” he said.
Minorities and youth are especially treated unfairly by US law enforcement officials and the courts, Amir said.
Panel member Pastor Elias Murillo Martinez, told Reuters that “70 percent of people who claim Stand Your Ground get off (are not convicted) in Florida. Two people who confront each other have ‘no duty to retreat’, it’s like the Wild Wild West.”
Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager killed in Sanford, Florida by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in 2012, said in testimony to the panel on Tuesday that her son’s killer considered Trayvon a threat because of his skin color.
The first review of the US record since 2008 incidentally coincided with the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri on Saturday and subsequent violent protests.
The shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown has sparked outrage across the nation. Thousands of protesters in more than 100 cities attended rallies on Thursday for Brown and other victims of police shootings. The rally organizers say the murdered black teenager died as a result of police brutality.
Following days of intense public pressure, Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson on Friday named the white police officer who shot and killed Brown as Darren Wilson.
According to the most recent accounts of justifiable homicide reported to the FBI, nearly two times a week in the United States, a white police officer killed a black person during a seven-year period ending in 2012. While the racial analysis is striking, the database it’s based on information that has been long considered flawed and largely incomplete.
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