NourNews – No Justice No Peace, the same slogan that sounded in Los Angeles in 1992 has been replicated in at least 140 cities in 21 states of the United States since last weekend after the murder of George Floyd.
In April 1992, a series of popular protests broke out due to the acquittal of four white police officers who beat up Afro-Colombian taxi driver Rodney King, despite the fact that a video had been released showing clearly what was happening.
This generated that young Afro-descendants and also Latinos were enraged against that attitude, which was the one that lit the wick of what was really going on inside, the enormous social inequality, the segregation to Afro-descendants and Latinos generated the satiety of society.
This was known as the Rodney King riots and left 54 and more than 2000 injured, in addition to demonstrating the economic crisis in which the country was immersed, as well as having been the fact that allowed Bill Clinton to win the elections in November of the same year.
28 years later George Floyd
On May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, there was a report of an attempted payment with a counterfeit bill, the police arrived and brought down George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American citizen who ended up on the ground and white police knee who had reduced ended up killing him by suffocation.
Like the Rodney King case, everything was recorded and when the police report was presented, none of this appeared, so that people took to the streets enraged against police racism, but in addition to that, the economic crisis that was going through was evident. the country, which in 2018 the IMF had listed as one of the five most indebted countries in the world with almost 20 trillion dollars in debt in addition to owning a third of the world’s debt.
In 1992 there was also a crisis similar to the current one but with the difference that at that time there was no pandemic and despite this, the country’s total unemployment was 7.8 percent and was considered the highest unemployment rate in history after the Great Depression, which was overtaken by this year’s unemployment rate, which reached 14.7 percent.
American racism
Although the Afro-descendant community for more than 300 years fought for their rights and demanded the same treatment as the white community with very important actors such as Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, African Americans continue to be victims of racism and segregation in different sectors of society.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Afro-descendant community is the second minority after Hispanics and like these the most affected by unemployment, in fact 100 percent of the unemployed, 16.7 percent are Afro-descendant against the 14, 2 percent of the white unemployed.
Of course, not counting Hispanic women and unemployed who also comprise a large part of the total percentage. For their part, the labor participation of Afro-descendants for 2016 was 13 percent against 78 percent of white employed people.
The inequalities within the labor market are also notable, since according to the report published by the same Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2018, a white man earned an average of $ 971 while an Afro-descendant doing the same job earned $ 710.
Regarding health, there are also great differences with the white American population, in fact according to the National Committee of Social Security, Afro-descendants are more likely than whites to have serious illnesses such as diabetes, coronary heart disease and kidney conditions.
After the appearance of Covid-19, some states declared that the Afro-descendant community is the most affected, although there is no compilation of official data, so there are no accurate statistics to prove it.
On the other hand, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 41 percent of women who die from complications during pregnancy are people of African descent. In turn, homicides are also a leading cause of death for African Americans. In fact, 11 percent of children who die from gun violence are Afro-descendant.
According to a study published in 2019 by the Fatal Encounters Journalists Consortium, people of African descent are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by the United States Police than the white population.
In fact, it is estimated that the police kill between 1,000 and 1,200 people each year, of the total number of deaths carried out by the police, at least 25 percent of the victims are Afro-descendants, considering that they occupy just over 13 percent of the population. total of American society.
These are just some of the inequalities suffered by people of African descent, the brutal murder of Floyd is just the latest in a long list of episodes of racist violence committed by the security forces in the United States. A similar event occurred in 2014, when Eric Garner died in New York after an officer used a strangling technique prohibited by that state police and maintained it despite the 43-year-old man repeatedly telling him that he couldn’t breathe.
Despite having an Afro-descendant president and strong campaigns against racism, it continues to be one of the deepest problems in American society and is far from being resolved by people like the current President Donald Trump.
Who, far from seeking negotiated solutions, continues with the old repressive policy, even leaked an audio in which it is listened to Asks the governors to “dominate” the protesters so as not to look like idiots. And on Monday night he announced that he will implement an insurrection law that dates back to 1807 and allows the deployment of military forces.
by Valeria Rodriguez
