In a statement, the president highlighted how, although the aspiration is that all people should receive the same treatment throughout their lives, it is “an idea that the United States has never fully fulfilled.”
Biden stressed that the monthly celebration is to highlight the legacy of African Americans, who had to fight for freedom, the right to vote, equal justice and opportunities in education, housing, employment and political representation.
According to The Hill newspaper, black Americans continue to experience discrimination in almost all institutions, and in schools, for example, they are more likely to have fewer resources.
Those students are also more likely to suffer disciplinary action than their white counterparts.
According to the Treasury Department, white households also have home ownership rates at least 10 percentage points higher than those of blacks and Hispanics, affecting their economic security and leading to lower generational wealth in families .
In turn, African-Americans face disparities in employment, the newspaper noted.
In a 2019 report from the Economic Policy Institute, the typical white worker earns over 24 percent per hour more than his black counterpart.
Against that backdrop, Biden said, his administration is working to address these “long-standing disparities that are holding back those communities” and confront racial discrimination in housing and mortgage lending.
These days, members of American civil society took to the streets to condemn police brutality and demand justice after the death of the young African-American Tire Nichols, victim of a beating by officers of the city of Memphis.
More than 10,000 people reported they were the target of a crime in 2021 because of their race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion or disability, revealed a report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Meanwhile, specialized centers warned that hate speech on Twitter increased “dramatically” after businessman Elon Musk took over the management of the platform last October.
The daily use on the social network of the “word with n” (in English “n-word”, an expression offensive to black people) under the leadership of the tycoon is triple the average of 2022, the source added.
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