Human rights or white rights?

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American, was killed in the US city of Minneapolis by a white police officer, who knelt on his neck for over nine minutes while Floyd said he could not breathe.

In March 2021, Xiao Zhen Xie, a 75-year-old Chinese American grandma was unprovokedly attacked in San Francisco by a 39-year-old white man named Steven Jenkins, who had just attacked another 83-year-old Asian man minutes before.

On April 19, 2021, hours before the murder of George Floyd case went to the jury, Mario Gonzalez, an unarmed 26-year-old Latino American, was killed in the city of Alameda by white police officers, who pinned him face down on the ground and strained him on his stomach for five minutes.

Despite with different colors and living in different cities, George Floyd, Xiao Zhen Xie and Mario Gonzalez have one thing in common: their identity as ethnic minorities, in other words non-whites. They worked hard, created values, enriched the culture and loved the country. However, the country didn't reciprocate their love.

Almost every ethnic minority group in the US suffers from discrimination in different degrees, and it exists in every aspect of their life and work. According to recent reports, 56% of African Americans say they are experiencing discrimination when applying for jobs, and their median wage is 30% lower than that of the whites. About 80% of Asian Americans say violence against them is increasing, and in New York city alone, the number of hatred crimes against Asian Americans registered an increase of 361% year-on-year. More than 60% of Hispanic adults say that having a darker skin color hurts their ability to get ahead.

The issue of racial discrimination in the US has been amplified and made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. A study from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities revealed that during the pandemic, "members of minority groups were more likely to report situations in which other people treated them as though they might be carrying the disease". Compared with the whites, ethnic minorities face higher risk of infection and lower rate of inoculation. Hospitalization rates of African American children and Latino American children are 8 times and 5 times higher than their white peers respectively.

Nearly 250 years ago, the founding fathers of the US used to solemnly declare that "all men are created equal". But today American ethnic minorities are suffering from lingering inequality. Dr. Martin Luther King once dreamed of living in a nation where people "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character", but skin color still hinders American ethnic minorities from exhibiting their talents. The US "melting pot" has never integrated different ethnic groups into a united American nation.

Behind the distressing discrimination and inequality is the arrogant, outdated but still rampant white supremacy in the US. For a significant number of American whites, the mentality that the whites are born to be superior to other ethnicities and White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASP) are the true masters of the continent is bred-in-the-bone. It spreads ruthlessly like cancer, dividing the country and exacerbating hatred among different ethnic groups.

Unfortunately, the US government has barely touched upon and addressed the root cause of ethnic discrimination. Punishment alone is far from sufficient. Anti-discrimination legislation has not been strictly enforced, and more fundamentally, the structural flaw of unfair distribution of wealth between the whites and ethnic minorities hasn't changed a bit. To some extent, the government's inability to make strong and effective response has encouraged discrimination and affirmed white supremacy to some extent.

Is the US government really determined to remove the malignant tumor of ethnic discrimination afflicting every sinew of the US society? American ethnic minorities are still asking the fundamental question of how long they have to wait to realize Martin Luther King's dreams? To their disappointment, the US politicians define human rights as mere white rights.

The author is a commentator on international affairs, writing regularly for Global Times, China Daily etc.