State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016 - United States

Events of 2015

The metaphor of the 'melting pot' is commonly used to describe the US and its diverse religious, ethnic and indigenous communities. But while this accurately reflects the rich demographic variety of a country that by 2044 will be 'majority minority', with no single ethnic group making up more than 50 per cent of the population, it fails to capture a variety of entrenched social and economic disparities between different groups. From education to health care, employment to politics, inequality and division continue to characterize ethnic and religious relations within the US. In the criminal justice system, for example, African Americans are arrested nearly six times as often as their white counterparts and constitute 1 million of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the US. Consequently, one in every thirteen African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, a rate four times greater than the rest of the US population.

However, a major shift in nationwide consciousness of the role ethnicity plays in the justice system began after the shooting death of an unarmed African American teenager, Michael Brown, by a white police officer on 9 August 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. On 4 March 2015, the Department of Justice released a report on their investigation into the Ferguson Police Department, identifying widespread practices of ethnic discrimination by law enforcement. The report supported what demonstrators and community members had been claiming all along: that Ferguson police were unfairly targeting African American residents, violating their civil rights and engaging in a pattern of unconstitutional arrests that turned residents into a form of revenue generation.

Since Brown's death, incidents of police brutality against ethnic minorities, as well as debates surrounding institutionalized racial bias within the US law-enforcement system, have continued. While data related to police shootings is not transparently or uniformly collected by the government, independent datasets developed by various media outlets have tracked the high numbers of African Americans and other ethnic minorities killed by police. During 2015, according to figures collated by the UK's Guardian newspaper, young African American men between the ages of 15 and 34 faced the highest risk of being killed by police, with a death rate five times higher than for white men of the same age. Another survey by the Washington Post uncovered similar findings: despite accounting for a little over 6 per cent of the population, African American men accounted for almost 40 per cent of those killed by police while unarmed.

These numbers have helped identify the scale of deadly force used against African Americans by US law enforcement. Furthermore, videos of many of these incidents, some recorded by the police themselves through dashboard and body cameras, have highlighted how officers have frequently failed to de-escalate situations before using deadly force. At times, the footage contradicted the official narrative from police and also depicted excessive force. This included a dashboard camera video of Chicago police shooting 17-year-old African American Laquan McDonald 16 times on 20 October 2014, which was not made public until 24 November 2015. While the city claimed that the footage could not be released during the FBI and US Attorney's investigations, others interpreted the delay as a cover-up intended to quell public outrage.

Bystander videos also shed light on apparent cases of police brutality inflicted on African Americans. Gaining particular attention was a video that appeared to show 50-year-old African American Walter L. Scott fleeing while being shot eight times by a white police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina on 4 April. The officer who shot Scott was subsequently charged with murder and awaits trial, while the family of Scott reached a US$ 6.5 million settlement with the city that bars them from bringing civil claims over his death. Less than three weeks later another bystander video emerged of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old unarmed African American man, being dragged to a police van in Baltimore on 12 April. A week after his arrest, Gray died. The events surrounding his arrest and death are still disputed. Six officers involved in Gray's arrest have had charges filed against them; however, at the beginning of 2016, the trials were delayed after the jury in the first case could not reach a verdict.

Demonstrations against police brutality have expanded throughout the country in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown and other lethal police shootings. A movement had started coalescing around the slogan and hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which had initially been formulated in 2013 on social media by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the 2012 killing of Trayvon Williams. From the beginning, activists used the internet to challenge the dominant narrative of the protests as 'riots'. During demonstrations in Baltimore following the death of Gray, for example, while some media outlets presented an image of the city being looted and burned, activists took to Twitter to organize street cleaning crews and share first-hand accounts.

Throughout 2015, 26 individual Black Lives Matter chapters were opened across the United States. Frequently, this movement was compared and contrasted with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, not only by the media and politicians but also former leaders of that era and Black Lives Matter activists themselves. However, while the heritage of the movement's protests has strongly informed Black Lives Matter, activists have also emphasized the distinctive aspects of their activities, extending beyond anti-racism to encompass African American women's rights; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights; and cultural rights.

Black Lives Matter is especially notable for the high proportion of women leaders and its conscious attempts to move away from the more hierarchical male-dominated model associated with earlier racial equality movements. The movement is actively working to end the marginalization of African American women and the silence surrounding violence inflicted against them, including by police.

One high-profile case in 2015 involved 28-year-old African American Sandra Bland, who was found dead in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, three days after she was arrested during a traffic stop. The events leading to Bland's death are unclear: while the official account is that she was found unresponsive due to 'self-inflicted asphyxiation', her family refuted claims that Bland would commit suicide. In December, a grand jury decided not to bring any charges in the case; however, the police officer who pulled Bland over was subsequently indicted for perjury. The uncertainties surrounding her death received significant media coverage and drew attention to the invisibility of African American women in mainstream reporting on police brutality.

Amid the demonstrations against police violence perpetrated against African Americans, the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina came under fire by a gunman on 17 June. Nine people were killed, including US State Senator, Rev. Clementa Pinckney. The suspect was arrested the following day and later pleaded not guilty to 33 federal charges, including a number of hate crime charges, for which he awaits trial. The shooting, which was quickly identified as being racially motivated based on an online manifesto from the suspect, raised further concerns about a culture of racism against African Americans in the former Confederacy of the country's south-east. Predominantly, debates focused on the continued use of the Confederate flag at the South Carolina State House and other state capitols in the region. Members of Black Lives Matter and other civil rights groups, along with a number of politicians from both the Republican and Democratic parties, demanded its removal on the grounds that it was a symbol of racial hatred, celebrating the Confederacy's role in fighting to uphold slavery during the Civil War.

Ten days after the shooting, Black Lives Matter member Bree Newsome climbed the flagpole at the South Carolina State House and removed the Confederate flag. Newsome was subsequently arrested and the flag was raised again. However, an online movement began using the hashtag #KeepItDown, demanding the permanent removal of the flag. On 10 July the flag was taken down for good at the South Carolina State House grounds, after being flown there for 54 years. Other states have followed suit and ended the use of the Confederate flag at their capitols and other government buildings. The US Supreme Court also ruled in favour of Confederate flag opponents with its decision in June that Texas did not violate the First Amendment when it refused to allow specialty licence plates bearing the Confederate flag.

Beyond debates surrounding the representation of the Confederate battle flag, the chosen location for the shooting also led to discussions around the important cultural and historical role of the church in the African American community. While forced conversions to Christianity happened during the time of slavery, churches eventually became a place for African Americans to congregate and later organize during the Civil Rights Movement. Thus the attack was seen not only as an assault targeting African Americans themselves, but also on their faith and heritage. In the weeks that followed, fears of a wider attack on the African American community were realized in a spate of arson attacks on predominantly black churches. At least eight African American churches across the South were damaged by fire in the ten days following the Charleston shooting.

Though state investigators deemed the fires unconnected to one another, the attacks echoed the long history of violence against African American churches, starting in the time of slavery, and continuing through Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and into the 1990s. It was this legacy of intimidation against African American churches that spurred a group of Muslim non-profit organizations, not unfamiliar with similar ethnic- and religious-based discrimination themselves, to lend their support towards the reconstruction of the damaged churches. Together they raised over US$100,000 on a crowd funding site through their call to 'unite to help our sisters and brothers in faith'.

Their gesture of solidarity came at a time when discrimination against Muslims reached new heights in the US. While anti-Muslim sentiments have been present for decades in the country, the level of vitriol directed towards them in 2015 intensified to unprecedented levels. At the beginning of the year, it was reported that anti-Muslim hate crimes continued to occur at rates five times higher than before the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks in 2001. By the year's close, the political and social environment was frequently deemed, by the media as well as Muslim and civil rights activists, as even worse than in the days, weeks and years directly following 9/11.

The reasons for the increased violence and discrimination targeting Muslims was largely associated with a backlash to the apparent resurgence of extremist groups such as Al Qaeda, Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and their affiliates. Many of these attacks happened in the Middle East and Africa, but garnering particular attention in the US were the attacks in Paris in January and again in November.

While President Obama has pledged to admit 10,000 new Syrian and Iraqi refugees into the country during 2016, this was in opposition to a vote by Congressional Republicans to make entry of refugees from these countries more difficult following the November Paris attacks. In the ensuing weeks, many governors and Republican 2016 presidential hopefuls publicly declared their suspicion and antipathy towards Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Thirty-one state governors, all but one being Republican, declared that they would ban some or all Iraqi and Syrian refugees – a move that critics argued was in fact unlawful under the US Constitution.

Regardless of its legality, this rhetoric created a volatile and dangerous climate for many Muslims already living, or seeking refuge, in the US. This situation deteriorated further following a 2 December shooting in San Bernardino, California that left 14 dead. While some uncertainty remains about the exact motives of the two attackers, a husband and wife, the media and US government has suggested they may have allied themselves with ISIS. As a result, incidents of anti-Islam violence spiked across the country, including acts of vandalism and arson at mosques in California, Pennsylvania and Texas, as well as individual physical attacks and death threats in Washington State, New Jersey and elsewhere.

In spite of this discriminatory public climate, in January the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that, by banning Muslim inmates from growing beards, Arkansas corrections officials had violated their religious freedoms. Later in the year, on 1 June, the Supreme Court ruled with an 8–1 majority in favour of Samantha Elauf 's claims of religious discrimination by the clothing store chain Abercrombie and Fitch, when they did not hire her after she wore a hijab during a job interview.

However, Muslims were not the only minority publicly vilified during 2015. During the early days of the US presidential nominations campaign, ahead of the 2016 elections, Republican candidates frequently used fear-mongering tactics to advocate for harsher immigration policies largely targeting the Latino community. The most notorious instance occurred during a campaign rally in June, when Republican candidate Donald Trump falsely drew a link between Mexican immigrants and increased crime rates in the US. However, while the data on crime rates and their correlation to numbers of immigrants is incomplete, the evidence that is available does not support Trump's claims. In fact, while immigration has increased since the 1990s, crime has decreased and crime levels among first-generation immigrants appear to be lower than those among native-born Americans.

While the negative portrayal of Latinos is not grounded in reality, the impact within the community of these representations can be devastating. This pressure has led some belonging to younger generations to assimilate more quickly and completely, to the detriment of knowing and practising their heritage and cultural traditions. The loss of cultural practices within the Latino community has had a multitude of negative consequences, including diminished life expectancy. While recently arrived Latino immigrants live on average three years longer than white Americans and six years more than African Americans, despite experiencing nearly double the poverty rates of the native-born population, this gap is seen to decrease among later generations of Latinos. The fall in life expectancy has been associated, in part, with a move away from traditional foods and increased consumption of highly processed products.

Research has found that family and community bonds are critical to the upbringing, education and passing down of cultural heritage to the younger generations, including cooking methods. Traditionally this has been achieved, to a large degree, by having multiple generations of a family living under one roof and sharing spaces intentionally set up to promote interaction. However, it has become increasingly difficult to engage younger generations in cultural education and practices, including teaching in traditional languages. Within the Latino community, initiatives such as the Rayito de Sol Spanish Immersion Early Learning Center have been established to promote cultural learning. The school, based in Minnesota, provides children with an immersive Spanish language curriculum and instruction in Latin American cultures.

But while cultural erosion remains a significant challenge for many communities, a related problem is that of misrepresentation and even caricature – one that has long afflicted the country's Native American population since colonization. TV and cinema, for instance, have for decades subjected indigenous people to harmful and inaccurate portrayals, a situation that remains evident today. This was highlighted during the year by reports that a number of indigenous actors working on the Netflix film, The Ridiculous Six, left the set in protest against what they saw as inaccurate depictions of Apache people, coupled with disrespectful dialogue and bigoted characterizations of Native Americans. Several of the actors in question subsequently produced a short film in response to their experience, as well as to highlight the rich and diverse cultural heritage of Native Americans.

Beyond film, the use of racist mascots to represent sports teams, both professional and in schools, was also challenged publicly during the year through targeted campaigns. Among these was the Native Education Raising Dedicated Students (NERDS), begun by Dahkota Franklin Kicking Bear Brown, a 17-year-old high school student in Jackson, California and member of the Wilton Miwok. Brown harnessed the success of NERDS – which he began as a peer-to-peer mentoring and tutoring programme to help Native American youth succeed academically – to lobby to change the mascot at his high school from the racist epithet of 'Redskins'. As Brown explained, research suggests that these pejorative labels and imagery are detrimental to the mental health and well-being of Native American youth. According to another campaign, Change the Mascot, about a dozen schools had changed Native American mascots by the end of 2015 and another 20 are considering doing so. Meanwhile, the prominent Washington Redskins American football team lost a federal court case to maintain trademark registrations on their name and logo; the judge specifically cited the team name's offensiveness in his reasoning. The team has stated that it will appeal the decision.

Equally damaging to Native American communities has been the appropriation of indigenous dance, art and costume by mainstream entertainment industries. One of the most egregious examples of this is the popular use by non-indigenous fashion models of headdresses resembling those worn traditionally by male (and on very rare occasions female) leaders of Plains nations during ceremonial events. Similar accusations have been levelled against the film, fashion and music industries by indigenous activists, who regard such appropriation as a form of theft and a one-way exchange that primarily benefits the white elite that continues to dominate these arenas. Headdresses have been popular among artists and audiences at music festivals, for instance. A further problem is that these symbols are often combined in haphazard ways, despite the fact that they may belong to totally different cultures. Activists have highlighted how, besides being disrespectful to Native American culture, the misuse and abuse of these artefacts draws attention away from the rich heritage of these communities – a living culture that remains vibrant despite continued discrimination.