3. Racial Discrimination Being Intensified within the United States during the Pandemic
The systemic racial discrimination is a chronic illness of U.S. society. Since 2016, white supremacy has revived and racial discrimination has intensified in the United States. Social tensions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the unequal allocation of limited anti-pandemic resources, have further deepened mainstream society's discrimination against minorities, such as Asian, African, and Hispanic Americans.
Asian Americans Suffering from Stigmatization.The website of The Guardian, a British newspaper, pointed out on April 1, 2020 that stereotyping of Asian Americans still happens in the United States, and when reporting on the COVID-19 situation, some U.S. media always attach photos of Asian faces. The website of The New York Times observed on April 16 that the COVID-19 pandemic meant isolation for Asian Americans. Since the outbreak of the virus, Asian Americans have often been humiliated and even attacked in public places. Some U.S. politicians even deliberately misled the public. After the World Health Organization officially named the new coronavirus "COVID-19", senior U.S. leaders, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, still insisted on referring to the virus as the "Chinese virus" or "Wuhan virus". They also refused to correct that mistake even after being strongly criticized by the international community. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Tendayi Achiume, pointed out on March 23 and April 21 that politicians of relevant countries proactively expressed xenophobic opinions or made xenophobic implications by deliberately replacing COVID-19 with other names that linked this particular disease to a particular country or nation, which was an irresponsible and disturbing expression. The current pandemic-related discrimination has fully exposed the once-concealed racial prejudice. In the United States, which bills itself as the "beacon of freedom", government officials blatantly incite, guide, and condone racial discrimination, which is tantamount to humiliating the modern concept of human rights.
African and Hispanic Americans Falling Victims to Severe Racial Inequality.Racial discrimination is deeply rooted in the history and reality of the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic has put this issue underneath a magnifying glass and tragically exposed its negative consequences. African Americans across the country are infected with and die from COVID-19 at a disproportionately higher rate than any other group in the United States. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) released a racial breakdown of the state's confirmed COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths on April 2, 2020, which showed that African Americans, who make up only 12 percent of Michigan's population, accounted for 33 percent of Michigan's confirmed COVID-19 cases and 40 percent of the state's COVID-19 deaths. National statistics released by the CDC showed that as of May 13, African Americans accounted for 22.4 percent of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States. This percentage is significantly higher than the African Americans' 12.5 percent share of the total U.S. population. African Americans in Kansas, Illinois, and Missouri accounted for only 5.7 percent, 14.1 percent, and 11.6 percent of the total population of the states, respectively, but accounted for 29.7 percent, 30.3 percent, and 35.1 percent of these states' deaths from COVID-19. Hispanic Americans also have disproportionately higher infection and fatality rates during the pandemic. In early April, New York City released a racial breakdown of the city's deaths from COVID-19. According to it, Hispanic Americans accounted for 34 percent of the city's fatal cases of COVID-19. The website of The New York Times pointed out on April 14 that the fact the pandemic infected and killed African and Hispanic Americans at disproportionately higher rates was the result of a health gap directly created by the historical inequality of wealth and opportunities. The website of the Financial Times, a British newspaper, pointed out on May 15 that African Americans and Hispanic Americans were more likely than whites to perform the work that was necessary for the maintenance of social operations, making them more susceptible to poverty, diabetes, high blood pressure, and COVID-19. The report also pointed out that this pandemic exacerbated the racial differences in the United States, and that nothing could better display the difference in skin color in the United States than the life and death stories in the pandemic shutdown. On May 25, George Floyd, an African-American man from Minnesota, died after a white police officer pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for several minutes during his arrest. This led to large-scale protests and demonstrations across the United States, once again exposing the dissatisfaction and anger that the American people have for the worsening racial inequality.
Frequent Racist Violence.During the pandemic, racist violence has haunted the United States, and Asian Americans suffer from venomous personal attacks. From March 19 to April 1, 2020, alone, the U.S. nonprofit organization "Stop AAPI Hate" received more than 1,100 reports of hate incidents. In February 2020, a 16-year-old Asian boy in Los Angeles was accused of being a "virus carrier" and viciously beaten at school. On March 14, in a supermarket in Midland, Texas, a 19-year-old man deliberately stabbed an Asian man and his two young children with a knife on the ground that "they were Chinese and were spreading the novel coronavirus to others." On April 5, an Asian woman in Brooklyn, New York City, was attacked by a racist who spilled unidentified chemical liquid on her to severely burn her upper body, face, and hands when she was emptying rubbish at her door. Violent incidents have further exacerbated the social tension during the pandemic, and problems such as a divisive society, racial divide, and the proliferation of guns have worsened. On April 15, nearly 200 U.S. foreign policy scholars and former diplomats jointly issued a statement in USA Today, pointing out that hate crimes and violent attacks against Asian Americans sounded the alarm for the United States, and that leaders at all levels and in all sectors should take action to oppose racism against Asians and end hate crimes against Asian communities.
4. Vulnerable Groups in the United States Struggling to Survive during the Pandemic
The care for the survival of socially disadvantaged and marginalized groups represents the virtue of a society. It is also a touchstone for the human rights situation in a country. During the pandemic, the features of the United States' cruel capitalism have been fully exposed, which have forced the elderly, homeless people, and children into a tragic situation.
The Elderly, the "Victims" of the Government's Ineffectiveness in Fighting the Pandemic.UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly stressed that the elderly, like young people, have the same rights to life and health amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and no person is expendable. Unfortunately, during the epidemic in the United States, the elderly group, which is naturally at greater risk, has been further weakened and marginalized due to age discrimination, and the elderly's right to life has not been ensured. On March 23 and April 22, 2020, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick expressed in interviews withFox Newsthat he would rather die than see public health measures damage the U.S. economy and take the risk of restarting the U.S. economy at the cost of elderly people's lives. Ben Shapiro, the editor-in-chief ofThe Daily Wire, which is a right-wing U.S. media outlet, declared coldly on an interview show on April 29, "If somebody who is 81 dies of COVID-19, that is not the same thing as somebody who is 30 dying of COVID-19." He also said, "If grandma dies in a nursing home at age 81, and that's tragic and that's terrible, also the life expectancy in the United States is 80." The website ofThe New YorkTimesreported on May 11 that at least 28,100 occupants and staff members of long-term care institutions such as nursing homes in the United States have died of COVID-19, accounting for about one-third of COVID-19 deaths in the United States. In these care institutions, many elderly people live in a relatively closed environment, so their risk of death from COVID-19 infection is very high. The website ofThe Atlanticpublished two articles respectively on March 28 and April 29, titledAgeismIs Making the Pandemic WorseandWe're Literally Killing Elders Now. They pointed out that long-existing defects in the old-age care system, such as insufficient capital investment and staffing, caused the United States to fall behind in ensuring the rights and interests of the elderly, and that such a situation was due to many political reasons. The website of theWashington Postobserved on May 9 that the U.S. anti-pandemic action had become a state-approved massacre that deliberately sacrificed the lives of the elderly, the working class, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans.
The Homeless Having Nowhere to Go during the Pandemic.The website ofUSA Todayreported on April 22, 2020, that more than 550,000 people were homeless every night in the United States. The report also pointed out that according to the statistics released by the Homeless Alliance, about 17 out of every 10,000 Americans have experienced homelessness and about 33 percent of them are families with children. Many of the homeless Americans are elderly people and disabled people. Given their originally poor physical health and bad living and hygienic conditions, they are susceptible to the virus. During the epidemic, the homeless who are living on the streets are deported and forced to live in temporary shelters for isolation. The website ofReutersreported on April 23 that the crowded shelters made it impossible for the homeless who lived there to maintain social distance, which made it easier for the virus to spread. As of April 20, 43 homeless people living in New York City's shelters had died from infection of COVID-19, and 617 tested positive for COVID-19. The website ofThe New York Timesreported on April 13 that the shelters for the homeless had become a delayed-action bomb of a virus outbreak in New York City, where more than 17,000 people lived and slept almost side by side in centralized shelters. The website of Nature journal reported on May 7 that when researchers began conducting virus testing on homeless people in the United States, they found that the situation there had gotten out of control. The website of theBoston Globereported on May 4 that 596 homeless people in Boston had been diagnosed with COVID-19, accounting for one-third of the confirmed cases in the region. The website of theLos Angeles Timesreported on May 14 that research showed that due to the impact of the pandemic, the number of homeless people in the United States might surge by as much as 45 percent within a year, further exacerbating the public health crisis.
Worrisome Situation of Poor Children and Immigrant Children.The United States has not yet ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is one of the core international human rights conventions. In recent years, child poverty and abuse has remained a grave problem in the United States. This problem has been exacerbated by the pandemic.Forbes Newsreported on May 7, 2020 that a survey showed a large number of American children were facing hunger during the pandemic. As of the end of April, more than one-fifth of American households had been facing food crises, and two-fifths of American households with children under 12 years of age have been facing such crises.Forbes Newsreported on May 9 that the number of child exploitation reports in the United States surged during the pandemic. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received 4.2 million reports in April, an increase of 2 million from March 2020 and an increase of nearly 3 million from April 2019. Apart from that, a more worrisome fact is that a large number of unaccompanied immigrant children are still being held in detention centers in the United States. They are currently in an extremely dangerous situation during the pandemic. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights of migrants Felipe Gonzalez Morales and other UN human rights experts issued a joint statement on April 27, requesting the U.S. government to transfer immigrants from overcrowded and insanitary detention centers. On May 29, 15 experts of the Special Procedures of United Nations Human Rights Council issued a joint statement urging the United States to take more measures to prevent virus outbreaks in the detention centers. The website of the United Nations reported on May 21 that since March, the U.S. government had repatriated at least 1,000 unaccompanied immigrant children to Central and South America regardless of the risk of the pandemic. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) criticized this move, for it would expose the children to greater danger.
