America's Struggle to Overcome Racial Inequities

In the spring of 2020, as the novel coronavirus pandemic swept into the United States from Europe and Asia, a disturbing pattern emerged: African Americans were twice as likely to become infected with the virus, and die from COVID-19, than whites -- evidence, experts say, of longstanding racial, economic and health disparities, hidden in plain sight.

Months later, as the pandemic death count spiraled, George Floyd died face-down on a Minneapolis street, a white police officer pressing his knee on the Black man's neck. A bystander's video of the killing ignited fierce protests nationwide, demanding justice for Floyd and spurring an overdue reckoning on race.

Yet in January, a mob of far-right extremists, white supremacists and backers of former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington in a deadly riot, bent on overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election, by violence if necessary. Some in the mob sported MAGA gear; others wore neo-Nazi paraphernalia and waved Confederate flags.

If the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama was to have ushered in a unified, "post-racial America," then events of the past 13 months confirm that, when it comes to race, the U.S. is still a house divided against itself. Some 156 years after the Confederate Army surrendered to Union forces at Appomattox to end the Civil War, a nation that stands as a global beacon of freedom and liberty is unable to atone for its "original sin" of slavery.

Views about racial inequities are shown in the 2021 Best Countries report and rankings, an annual survey on global perceptions of countries. Of the 78 countries evaluated, the U.S. is seen as among the 10 worst countries for racial equality.

Additionally, while the vast majority of U.S. survey respondents say diversity is important for society, less than 48% of Americans agreed with the statement, "My country treats everyone equally," a lower proportion than the 54% of the 17,000 global respondents who agreed with the statement.

Since March 1877, when Congress approved The Great Compromise -- a political deal to resolve a disputed election that awarded Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency, removed federal troops from the South and gave rise to the Ku Klux Klan -- the United States has been locked in a near-perpetual cycle of racial advancement and white backlash, experts say.

The African American civil rights movement in the South, for example, was often met with violence, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Pushing back on Supreme Court rulings banning segregation in housing, education and public facilities, whites in some communities closed pools, shut down schools and fled to the suburbs. After Black voters in Georgia and elsewhere turned out in large numbers to help defeat Trump in the 2020 election, more than a dozen Republican-controlled state legislatures drafted laws stiffening voting requirements.

A central reason for the backlash, experts say, lies in the country's unwillingness to fully confront its enslavement of Black Americans, acknowledge that the "peculiar institution" helped build its wealth or dismantle white supremacy, a cornerstone of its social order.

"America is a fundamentally racist society and it is an indelible part of this country," says Kyle T. Mays, assistant professor in African American Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of California-Los Angeles. "From prison rates to segregation to wealth disparities to educational inequality, the numbers show that (people of color) continue to suffer disproportionately across most social metrics," with racism at the root.

Jamila Taylor, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a left-leaning Washington think tank, agrees that "racial bias both in overt and covert forms, is so pervasive in this country" and has helped retard the growth of communities of color. Despite recent attention to the problem, she says, "We are continuously met with opportunities to dismantle it, yet continue to fall short."

Others, however, insist the current moment of crises -- a pandemic revealing vast inequality, ongoing demands for racial justice and the Trump-fueled rise of white nationalism -- has overshadowed more than a century of drastic cultural changes when it comes to race. They say combatants on either side of the Civil War could not have imagined a Black man in the White House, let alone doctors, lawyers or movie stars of color.

"Moments for change are always present in the U.S. when it comes to racism and the need for racial justice," says Taylor, who specializes in health care policy at TCF. "Have we ever had a period of time that didn't glaringly call on us to address our racial problems once and for all? I think not."

Pippa Norris, a comparative political scientist and professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, says there is "considerable evidence that America is becoming far more tolerant today than it was, say, in the 1950s." Segregated schools and bans on interracial marriage have vanished, she says, and an emerging generation of young white people are locking arms with African Americans, standing against racial injustice.

"The younger generation are far more liberal, partly because, of course, they live in diversity," says Norris, an adviser on election integrity and co-author of the book, "Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian-Populism." Having grown up with gay marriage and a black president, she says, "The under-20-year-olds, themselves, are almost in minority, in terms of the distribution of population. Over time, as one generation dies out and another generation expands, you can see a rise of racial tolerance."