Obama Faces the Challenge of Stopping One of the Great Disgraces of the US: Racism

Without a doubt, racial outbursts stand out among the national issues for which the final stretch of Obama’s mandate as U.S. president will be remembered. The arrival of the first African-American at the White House was a historic milestone in the fight for equality for blacks. However, and paradoxically, civil rights organizations agree that Obama has done little to reduce racism.

The grave incidents in Baltimore after the death of the young black man, Freddy Gray, while being transported by an officer to a police station, increase the surge of tension experienced without interruption in a good part of the U.S. since the incidents in Ferguson last August. The state attorney for Baltimore announced yesterday that charges would be filed against six agents because she believes that we are dealing with a homicide and that the arrest was illegal. In addition to economic factors, police brutality is a reason why the African-American population is fed up. So, it’s unacceptable that federal authorities continue not to compel, in cooperation with state authorities, immediate and profound law enforcement reform in order to eliminate aberrant discriminatory practices in the treatment of minority groups.

The facts are telling. Even though African-Americans make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they are involved in nearly 30 percent of arrests and make up 36 percent of prisoners. The cold statistics show that a young black man is 21 times more likely than a white man to die having been shot down by the police. Additionally, three of every four people sentenced to life imprisonment are black. The reports from the U.S. Attorney’s office reflect a xenophobic bias in officers, which translates into arbitrary arrests, abuse, and even death. Attorney General Eric Holder admitted that his office is contemplating dismantling the Ferguson police force after an investigation revealed unacceptable attitudes.

The racism that continues to prevail in the United States is one of the great disgraces of the nation. Last month, Obama made it very clear, on the emblematic Edmund Pettus Bridge from which the great marches for civil rights in the 1960s departed, that the fight against inequality experienced by ethnic minorities “is not yet finished.” Furthermore, in Baltimore, just as in many other places, there are the makings of the perfect storm, as the black population majority suffers inequality, poverty, and marginality provoked by the economic depression that has hit a city that was once an economic motor. Obama must act now faced with this pressing issue.