Editor's note: The China Society for Human Rights Studies released a report titled "The Deep-Rooted Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Highlights Its Hypocrisy on Human Rights" on July 26, which reveals the chronic racial discrimination existing in the United States and the hypocrisy of the U.S.-style of human rights. The report also points out that it is difficult for the U.S. to solve this problem. The following article is part one of the edited version of this report. The article does not necessarily reflect the views of CGTN.

The United States is a multiracial country. Its present racial structure and race relations have their historical roots in European colonial expansion, the African slave trade and the influx of immigrants in modern times.

Race is an important marker of U.S. social division. U.S. scholar Thomas Sowell writes in his book "Ethnic America: A History," "Color has obviously played a major role in determining the fate of many Americans." It is such differences that give rise to a hierarchy of status and power among different groups. The fundamental control of state power by the European whites and their systematic discrimination against all other races are conspicuous features of the American racial hierarchy. Racial discrimination in the U.S. is, in essence, the discrimination of the European whites against all other racial minorities. Racial discrimination is the root cause and supporting mechanism of the American racial hierarchy.

The UN "International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination" requires all state parties to take active measures to prohibit and eliminate racial discrimination in all forms. It calls for guaranteeing everyone's right to equality before the law, civil rights, political rights, and economic, social and cultural rights without distinction as to race, color, or national or ethnic origin. The United States, a signatory to the convention, has failed miserably in meeting these requirements. Racial discrimination in the U.S. is found in every aspect of people's lives, particularly in law enforcement, the judiciary, the economy and society.

Equality before the law for everyone is a basic principle in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; it is also recognized in America's political philosophy and legal system. In reality, however, many practices of U.S. law enforcement and the judiciary run counter to this principle, with racial discrimination worsening in certain areas and the basic human rights of racial minorities willfully violated.

One of the most visible of these is the frequent shooting and killing of African Americans by the police in acts of abuse of power. U.S. federal government statistics show that young African American males are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than young white males. The number of African Americans deaths at the hand of the police is also staggering. Below is a more detailed breakdown:

A June 7, 2018 report on The New York Times website found that by 2017, only one police officer had been sentenced to jail in 15 cases involving the killing of African Americans that had attracted wide public attention.

The double standard of U.S. police is very much reflected in the ways that law enforcement handles different ethnic groups. On February 17, 2016, Paul Gaston, an African American who had just crashed his car and was confused about his surroundings, was shot and killed by three police officers in Cincinnati. The police said that Gaston was reaching for a gun that was later proven to be fake. Just a day earlier, the Cincinnati police chose not to open fire at a white male who had pointed the same kind of fake gun at the police; they arrested him without a scratch and charged him with threatening the police. 

A New York Daily News article later commented that the different results of two similar incidents provide clear evidence of the great disparity in police treatment of African Americans and white people and that a double standard based on ethnicity does exist in the U.S.

Law enforcement in the U.S. is rife with racial discrimination. First, African Americans are much more likely to be arrested by police than any other ethnic group. Statistics from 1,581 police stations showed that African Americans were three times more likely to be arrested than people from other ethnic groups. Meanwhile, data from at least 70 police stations showed that African Americans were also ten times more likely to be arrested than people from other ethnic groups, and some of these stations had arrested 26 times more African Americans.

Second, the police favor white people when enforcing the law. Data from police departments across the country show that in areas that practice "zero tolerance" in street-level law enforcement, police mainly arrested African Americans from poor neighborhoods while turning a blind eye to similar acts in affluent white neighborhoods.

Third, police use entrapment strategies against minority groups. Of all the anti-narcotics operations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 91 percent of the suspects detained using entrapment strategies are racial minorities. An American Civil Liberties Union report notes that marijuana use is roughly equal among blacks and whites, yet blacks are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.

Systemic racial discrimination plagues the judiciary of the U.S. African Americans only constitute about 13 percent of the U.S. population, but they account for 36 percent of federal and state prisoners. And as the following graph shows, the discrimination is not just directed towards African Americans nor is it limited by gender. 

The United States Sentencing Commission found that on average the terms for African American males were 19.1 percent longer than those for white males. The National Registry of Exonerations, analyzing cases from 1989 to October 2016, concluded that African Americans are more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder, sexual assault, and drug-related crimes than white people. Of the 1,900 defendants in known exoneration cases, 47 percent are African Americans.

Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of American Legal History at Harvard University, once said that African Americans are not yet full citizens. Blacks, especially young African Americans, are presumed criminals and in practice they are denied full citizenship.

The UN is gravely concerned about racial discrimination in law enforcement and the judiciary of the U.S. In its 2016 report, the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent of the UN Human Rights Council pointed out that the American government has failed to fulfill its duty of protecting the rights of African Americans and that continued institutional and structural racism adversely affects African Americans' civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. 

The report criticized police violence and racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, pointing out that most of such acts go unpunished. According to the report, "Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching. Impunity for state violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.” The report also found that the killing of unarmed African Americans by the police is only the tip of the iceberg in what is a pervasive racial bias in the judiciary system. 

Editor: Huang Jiyuan

Graphic designer: Li Yueyun

Read other parts of the report "The Deep-Rooted Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Highlights Its Hypocrisy on Human Rights":

Part Two: Racial discrimination widespread and deep-rooted in the U.S.

Part Three: Racial discrimination – a flashpoint for social conflict in the U.S.

Part Four: Racial problems in the U.S. – a structural obstacle hard to overcome

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