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George Floyd Magnifies Conversation of Systematic Racism

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George Floyd Magnifies Conversation of Systematic Racism

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George Floyd has magnified the conversation that was being had but ignored, African-American people have been trying to have a conversation about racism but it hasn't been heard. George Floyd's murder was the drop that spilled the glass, people are tired of hearing the same excuses and not seeing any change, so right now people are shedding light for the people that are blind enough to deny that racism still happens in the US.

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MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. -- Tracey Williams-Dillard is the granddaughter of an influential journalist who gave a voice to black communities when they weren't being heard back in 1934.

"He was righting the wrong," Williams-Dillard said.

Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder is the oldest black-owned newspaper in the state of Minnesota. It was born from oppression -- lifting up voices and stories that might otherwise go unheard. But as publisher, Williams-Dillard is afraid not too much has changed in 86 years.

"You just want everybody to have equal rights. You want everybody to be okay. But it don't end," Williams-Dillard said. "We're talking 1939 youth stabbed, same thing we're talking today. Shocking video shows Minneapolis police caused man's death."

She's encouraged to see people in the community protesting in the streets.

"This is a peaceful protest," Williams-Dillard said. "This is because people want to see justice. They want to see something different from what we've been seeing for way too long."

It hasn't all been peaceful. Williams-Dillard was overcome with emotion when she saw her family's building boarded up for the first time in its history.

"When I walk up to the black press and we realize that we're boarded up too because the violence is out of hand," Williams-Dillard said.

They sit only a few blocks away from where George Floyd took his last breath.

"This anger, this goes back beyond Minneapolis around the nation. Some people don't know all this history, but they feel it in their bones because their parents have lived through it," the paper's community editor Mel Reeves said.

Reeves is also a human rights activist and says people of color are sick of seeing their brothers and sisters killed by law enforcement time and time again.

"If you kicked me and you said 'Oh sorry Mel,' and then you kicked me again and you said 'Oh sorry Mel,' and then you kicked me again.... I'd start to think 'maybe you're kicking me on purpose,'" Reeves said.

Even if people aren't inherently racist, he believes prejudice has been built into American society.

"We're taught to be racist," Reeves said. "We're taught to hate ourselves. White people are taught to feel superior, and black people are taught to be inferior. And we know it."

University of Minnesota professor studies issues of race, class and access to affordable housing.

"Systemic racism refers to racism and disparate outcomes that are built into our systems. That may have been built into our systems for reasons that have nothing to do with race, but that in fact work now to reinforce racial inequity and inequalities," Goetz said.

For example, in the 20 th century, Goetz says there were explicit forms of racial discrimination in housing. It was illegal for some people to occupy certain types of housing and it created great wealth imbalances.

Even though those overt acts of racism may not happen now, "What that has created over time is a huge disparity in wealth because there's been a generation or two of white people who have been able to generate a lot of wealth from their housing and have passed that wealth onto subsequent generations," Goetz said.

Many minority groups don't have that same privilege. Another element of systemic racism has to do with rules that are built into our systems like the way we fund our local schools - most are funded by property tax revenues and local funds.

"So you have very well-endowed schools in some neighborhoods providing tremendous opportunities and experiences for students, and you have schools in other neighborhoods that are underfunded that don't have the most recent textbooks or facilities, and this produces disparate outcomes in education which then goes on to have impact on subsequent earnings," Goetz said.

It's a cycle that's hard to break, but systemic racism goes beyond housing and school. According to Goetz, for the same crime, people of color are arrested, prosecuted and jailed more than white people.

"Systemic racism and white supremacy isn't just a white cop with his knee on the neck of a black man. It's the system that creates that cop, it's the system that tolerates that cop, and it's the system that allows officers like him to escape punishment," Goetz said.

has also spent time researching systemic racism. She's the Senior Vice President of Community Impact at the Greater Twin Cities United Way .

"There are so many people whose heart is literally to protect and serve, but too many... too many where that isn't the case, and that behavior goes unabated, and it spreads, and it becomes part of the culture," Ellis said.

Ellis says there are possible solutions like training officers differently, or getting them connected with the community.

"There's something about policing a person that could live around the corner from you, or go to school with someone that you love," Ellis said.

Ellis says she's optimistic change is coming soon. Williams-Dillard says Minnesota Spokesman Recorder will not stop its activism until that change is made.

"My hope for going forward is that we can just be real. Let's get real about what is happening, let's get real about our role to be a part of the change. And let's stop having nice conversations, and have honest ones," Ellis said.

"We gotta keep the news out there, we gotta remind people that these are real times, and we gotta talk about it," Williams-Dillard said.

"At some point, we gotta lay down our prejudices and our assumptions about folks, and we gotta see each other as human beings. Can't stress that enough," Reeves said.

"I cannot breathe. My heart is so heavy. It's just so heavy," Williams-Dillard said.

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George Floyd's death magnifies conversation about systemic racism

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MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. -- Tracey Williams-Dillard is the granddaughter of an influential journalist who gave a voice to black communities when they weren't being heard back in 1934. "He was righting the wrong," Williams-Dillard said. Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder is the oldest black-owned newspaper in the state of Minnesota.

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Independent rights experts urge US to address systemic racism and racial bias

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Independent rights experts urge US to address systemic racism and racial bias

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Independent rights experts are condemning the USA for not taking action against the racism that is going on in their country. In the wake of George Floyd's murder and the protesting that is going on is proof that the United States hasn't eliminated their racist policies that are integrated into their government for the sole purpose of oppressing minorities, no justice is made for crimes done to black people because their government doesn't care. This protests and riots are the outcries of oppressed people asking for justice and equality, something they've been fighting for and has yet to be given.

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In a statement issued on Friday, they urged the US authorities to address systemic racism and racial bias, and to conduct independent investigations into cases of excessive use of force by police officers.

Roots in slavery

"The origin story of policing in the United States of America starts with slave patrols and social control, where human property of enslavers was 'protected' with violence and impunity against people of African descent. In the US, this legacy of racial terror remains evident in modern-day policing", they said.

The experts, who investigate human rights violations - either concerning specific countries or thematic issues -- condemned the killings in February and March of Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and on 25 May, of George Floyd, whose death while in police custody ignited on-going protests across the USA and in many cities worldwide.

Mr. Arbery, 25, was fatally shot by three white men while jogging near his home, while Ms. Taylor, also 25, was shot in her bed when police raided the wrong house.

Mr. Floyd, 46, died after he was apprehended by police in Minneapolis on accusations of using a counterfeit bill. Video of an officer kneeling on his neck, while three others participated and observed, sparked outrage across the globe.

Killings evoke lynching

The UN human rights experts charged that these killings involved impunity, disregard or depravity toward human life, and the use of public spaces to assert racial control, with each characteristic of a modern-day lynching.

"The latest videos to surface showing white men chase, corner, and execute a young man who was out jogging, or showing an officer kneeling with his weight on a man's neck for eight minutes shock the conscience and evoke the very terror that the lynching regime in the United States was intended to inspire", they said.

"Given the track record of impunity for racial violence of this nature in the United States, Black people have good reason to fear for their lives."

With millions of Americans taking to the streets, the experts also expressed concern about police response to these protests.

They said demonstrations have been marked by violence, arbitrary arrest, militarisation and the detention of thousands of protesters. Journalists of colour have also been targeted and detained, some of whom have faced violence and harassment.

Double standards

"Statements from the US Government inciting and threatening violence against protesters stand in stark contrast to calls for leniency and understanding which the Government had issued in the wake of largely white protests against COVID-19 restrictions on services like barbershops, salons, and spas", they said.

Furthermore, the decision to deploy military force against protestors "involves legal instruments used primarily against people of African descent, but rarely in their defence in similar situations."

They added that these incidents are unfolding in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic which has disproportionately impacted people of African descent, who are at greater risk of the disease.

The 28 experts who signed the statement were appointed by the UN Human Rights Council: either as Special Rapporteurs or members of various Working Groups.

They are neither UN staff members nor are they paid by the Organization.

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Independent rights experts urge US to address systemic racism and racial basis

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Nearly 30 independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council are calling for the United States to reform its criminal justice system in the wake of a recent spate of killings of African Americans, including at the hands of the police.

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America was built at the time slavery was happening, that initial base that was set on their government was put in place to oppress African-Americans and no one has done anything to change that since then. There is a bias by the government and authority officials that gives more opportunities to white people and that bias can be lethal to black people by the hand of their own government. African-American people have been fighting for equality for centuries and no change has been made, they still suffer injustices based on their skin color.

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The epidermis is a very thin outer layer of our skin. It is only 1 millimeter in thickness, but it contains one of the few things that seems to justify millennia of oppression between humans: pigmentation. Were it not for this tiny layer of our skin, we would all appear very similar. Thus, at its core, racism is bigotry against the epidermis, and yet this minute human difference was enough for many of our nation's historical leaders to enable beliefs in racial superiority.

Many of these leaders, including enslavers, have streets, cities, monuments, buildings and universities bearing their names. The justification for racism in America is thin indeed, but it originates from our origin as a Nation, and continues even now to restrain us from moving forward as a society.

African-Americans have been recipients of racial prejudice since first arriving on the shores of this continent in 1619. Racial prejudice has been manifested by cruelty throughout the era of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and is still perpetuated on black people 400 years later. Astonishingly, this cruelty against blacks has been played out in plain sight: slave whippings, lynching and murders throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century, and now the execution of George Floyd.

Curing America of racist behaviors requires a change in our collective views of racism as unfashionable, as anathema to society - as un-American. We have done this before largely overcoming nativism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Semitism and homophobia, and as such, our challenge to combatting racial prejudice must be continuous and relentless.

Racism deprives us of talented contributions to our economy, promotes excessive health care expenses, promotes sociopathic behaviors; and it too often justifies violence and cruelty against other humans. We must develop a collective mindset that rejects racism in all its overt and subliminal forms. This requires a look into the heart and mirror by all Americans, and for each of us to say, "I am not inherently superior to another" "my prejudicial attitudes are flawed;" and, "I commit myself to rectifying this attitude for my benefit and for human kind and a civilized society."

Yet, even as we commit ourselves to these virtuous attitudes, history tells us that many will refuse to listen to appeals for justice. I recall Isaac Woodard, a decorated Army veteran who was blinded at the hands of police in South Carolina upon returning from War World II -- while in uniform, for daring to ask a bus driver to wait for him to use a restroom. I have memories of the vitriolic reaction of the black medal winners who raised their fists in protest on the podium at the 1968 Olympics against racial and social injustices. And let's not forget about Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who knelt during the playing of the National Anthem as a protest against racial injustice and police brutality at the cost of his career. Even now, some Americans attempt to turn Kaepernick's silent protest into a statement of disrespect against veterans, even though every war in our history has included black soldiers and sailors, starting with Crispus Attucks who was one of the first to die early in the American Revolution. The dichotomy in our public views is stunning: Americans rightfully objected last week to rioters saying, "why can't you protest peacefully?" And yet, there is hardly a more peaceful protest than Colin Kaepernick taking a knee.

When prejudicial attitudes degenerate to hatred based on race, religious or sexual identity, it leads those with sociopathic instincts to embrace hatred, brutality and violence. This sort of sociopathic behavior led to the tragic murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi and the lynching of nearly 5,000 other black men and women in America. It led to violence against the peaceful protectors in Selma, the water hosing of protestors in Alabama, the murder in 1964 of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, members of the Congress of Racial Equity in Mississippi, and recent killings of blacks, Ahmoud Arbery, Eric Garner and George Floyd.

For me, the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, the Civil Rights Activist ring the loudest: "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." Even now, America still has a chance to rid itself of the blight of racism. But to do so, everyone in our society must become "sick and tired of being sick and tired" of the hatred and the sociopathic behaviors that hatred begets. We must all get "sick and tired" of injustice and violence triggered by differences in skin pigmentation, and start to hold each other accountable to important and useful qualities, such as respect, wisdom and compassion. We must see beyond our epidermis and reach into our hearts to be cleansed of the plague of racism and bigotry.
Dr. Haywood Brown is the University of South Florida's vice president for institutional equity. He is also the associate dean for diversity at the Morsani College of Medicine, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and USF Health's interim chair for dermatology.

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I'm sick and tired of systemic racism | Column

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The epidermis is a very thin outer layer of our skin. It is only 1 millimeter in thickness, but it contains one of the few things that seems to justify millennia of oppression between humans: pigmentation. Were it not for this tiny layer of our skin, we would all appear very similar.