On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an African-American man, was crushed to death by the white policeman Xiao Wan on his knees. Freud's plea of "I can't breathe" once again exposed the pain of racism in the United States to the world, and the resulting wave of protests swept across the United States. The US "Foreign Policy" magazine commented that the Freud incident once again revealed the long-standing racial trauma in the United States. African Americans have endured a disproportionate poverty rate, unemployment rate and police violence in the United States.
According to the "Report on the Economic Status of American Households in 2020" issued by the Federal Reserve, from the perspective of household income, about 41% of African-American households have an annual income of less than US$25,000, while the proportion of white households is 21%, and that of American society is 28%. %. Only 16% of African-American families have an annual income of more than $100,000, compared with 33% of white families and 29% of American society as a whole. The data shows that in the employment field, affected by the epidemic, the number of adults employed in the United States at the end of 2020 has decreased by 4% compared with 2019. Among the main employed population aged 25 to 54, the proportion of African Americans being fired is as high as 23%, which is much higher than the 14% of whites.
African Americans also face serious discrimination in the field of bank credit. About 40% of African-American adults do not have a bank account or cannot access adequate bank services. It is not uncommon for banks to refuse to provide mainstream financial services such as credit cards and lending to African Americans; the proportion of whites is 12%. When applying for a loan, about 41% of African Americans were rejected, compared with 19% of whites.
In the field of law enforcement, African Americans have also faced more discrimination and violence. A 2020 study by Stanford University in the United States analyzed 100 million traffic stops by police departments across the United States and found that African-American drivers are 20% more likely to be stopped by police than white drivers. Once stopped, African-American drivers are twice as likely to be searched as white drivers. According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice, African Americans accounted for about 13% of the U.S. population in 2019, but accounted for almost one-third of the country’s total prison inmates. This is equivalent to more than 1,000 incarcerated for every 100,000 African Americans, which is more than five times that of whites.
The US Police Foundation report points out that racial prejudice continues to affect the way law enforcement agencies treat African Americans. Since the founding of the United States, "racism has always been a systemic feature of American society and all institutions." In reality, the preconceived racial image definition of African Americans by law enforcement officials has deepened the distrust and friction of African Americans towards law enforcement officials. Acknowledging the implicit and explicit racial prejudice in the field of law enforcement in the United States is a top priority for US law enforcement agencies