US President Donald Trump “openly advocates for discrimination not only against African Americans but all people of color,” an African American journalist and political analyst in Detroit says. RNA - Abayomi Azikiwe, editor at the Pan-African News Wire, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Friday while commenting on recent studies which indicate that racial discrimination has been on the rise in the United States, and the African Americans have experienced lots of unfair treatment in lives in many ways.
A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center was released on Thursday. It said wage inequality between different ethnic groups in the US have been rising over the past decades, saying that the gap has further expanded in some cases.
A separate research by the Center for American Progress suggested that African Americans in the US have gone through many unfair behaviors.
It said that racial discrimination is commonly seen in work places, and educational institutes. The study suggested that racial inequality in medical centers has led to a higher mortality rate among African American women and children.
Another report released earlier this year showed that in 2018 hate crimes increased by 10 percent in 30 cities across the US.
Race and racism have dominated news headlines and politics for much of Trump’s time in the White House.
“There are several reasons that why discrimination is objectively on the increase as far as African Americans are concerned in the United States,” Azikiwe said.
“One is the legal erosion of civil rights protection which has been taking place now for at least 30 years where you have to prove intent and this is difficult to prove that white institutions or individuals plotted and conspired to discriminate,” he stated.
“Secondly is the evisceration of the voting rights law, particularly the Voting Right Act of 1965. There was a case in 2013 before the US Supreme Court, Shelby v. Holder, which took away the enforcement provisions of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, meaning that the federal government has no obligation to intervene if there are allegations of voter suppression,” the analyst noted.
“We saw that in the recent midterm elections in 2018 where in Georgia and Florida gubernatorial elections were stolen outright from the African American candidate,” he said.
“Also the third reason has to be with the economic crisis in the United States. The Great Recession of 2007 – it began in 2007-2008 – eliminated really over half of the household wealth of African American families. Many African Americans lost their homes to bank foreclosures. And this would be the sole predominant basis for African Americans and their household wealth in the United States,” he stated.
“And what has happened since then is that the gains in employment have largely been in low grade sectors of the economy. Even though the Trump administration would say that African American unemployment has gone down, which is questionable as well because they don’t look at labor participation rate, but even if they have increased to whatever degree it is largely in a low wage category,” he noted.
“So these are very, very important aspects. And we have a federal government that openly advocates for discrimination not only against African Americans but all people of color whether they were born in the United States or whether they’re migrants,” he concluded.
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