Editor's note: Derek Chauvin, a white former police officer, was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison on June 25 for murder and manslaughter. He pinned his knee on the neck of Black man George Floyd for over 9 minutes in 2020. Is this guilty verdict "a giant step" toward justice in the country? What are the messages we can take from Floyd's case?

Derek Chauvin finally got his sentence.

This former Minneapolis police officer was convicted for murdering George Floyd last year on May 25. Some right-wing racists want to picture Floyd as a bad guy so they can justify Chauvin's actions. But the truth is that Black people are systematically discriminated and suppressed in the U.S., and it is almost impossible for them to make a good life.

Floyd was born in 1973, and his childhood was almost a perfect example of Black people's struggle. After the Civil War, Black people became free citizens, but Southern states kept treating them harshly.

From 1870s to 1965, Southern states passed Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation. Black people could not receive equal social service and public education and they could never start equally with the white people. Even today, some Southern states, such as North Carolina, are still trying to install strict voter ID law to abuse minorities' voting right.

Floyd's parents separated when he was a kid. According to data of the Institute for Family Studies in 2019, only 44 percent of Black children have a father in the home, and today, Black out-of-wedlock birth rate is 70 percent. Some like to label the Black people with irresponsibility. But as a matter of fact, from 1890s to 1950s, Black women had a higher marriage rate than white women.

However, later on, some poorly designed social welfare programs broke down Black families. This does not mean to attack social welfare as a whole, but those poorly designed ones. Black community has been suppressed and living in poverty for centuries. Many people worked so hard just trying to reach an outcome which white people can easily get. This inequality makes social welfare programs have different effects on different racial groups.

Paul Peterson, Harvard University professor of government study, once wrote in his article: Welfare assistance went to mothers so long as no male was boarding in the household. Welfare workers would randomly appear in homes to check and see if the mother was actually single. Marriage to an employed male, even one earning the minimum wage, placed at risk a mother's economic well-being.

The logic behind it is that if you and your husband or wife, together, cannot even make more than the cash welfare, then it is economically reasonable to separate for a better income. White community as a whole does great, so these programs can support some unfortunate families.

But for Black community, the welfare system should not focus on giving people fish, but teaching people how to fish. Statistically, the average child does best with married parents and, more specifically, with their biological father residing in their home. But these poorly designed systems made Black children lose their fathers.

Finally, the social segregation. Floyd moved to the Cuney Homes public housing in Houston with his mother. Cuney Homes is a historically African-American neighborhood. This public housing project opened in 1938. It was the dawn of the Second Great Migration. For the next 30 years, about 5 million Black people left the South for industrial jobs in cities of the North and West. It was a time of hope, but things didn't go well.

In 1930s, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) intentionally designed the so-called "redlining" housing maps. These maps were critical to decisions of where and what type of infrastructure, lending and housing each neighborhood of each American city would be able to receive.

Antero Pietila, the author of "Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City," wrote: The FHA promoted home ownership in new – and primarily suburban – neighborhoods so long as they were white and not ethnically or economically diverse.

In the 1950s, car ownership increased because of suburbanization, so the federal government started the ambitious interstate system. These roads connect millions of Americans, but they've also destroyed many Black communities.

City planners saw it as an opportunity to use federal money to clear out colored communities. They took the land and destroyed some of the communities. For the rest, when the freeways opened up routes from the suburbs to the city centers, there were often lack of entrances to Black communities. They got segregated from white people, from prosperity, and from future.

Decades later, the gap between white and Black becomes bigger and deeper. The median wealth of white households is 42 times of that of African Americans. African Americans were about three times more likely than white people to be killed by police. What's more, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the infection rate, hospitalization rate and death rate of African Americans are three times, five times and twice that of white people, respectively.

Jim Crow laws fades away, but Jim Crow stays in people's mind. Floyd's life was doomed to be difficult, and the American system is to be blamed.

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