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 Full text: The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2022                                                           

China on Tuesday issued "The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2022." 

The following is the full text of the report: 

The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2022 

The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China 

March 2023 

Contents 

Foreword 

I. Dysfunctional Civil Rights Protection System 

II. Hollowed-out American-style Electoral Democracy 

III. Growing Racial Discrimination and Inequality 

IV. Worsening Subsistence Crisis among U.S. Underclass 

V. Historic Retrogression in Women's and Children's Rights 

VI. Wanton Violation of Other Countries' Human Rights and Trampling on Justice 

Foreword 

The  year 2022 witnessed a landmark setback for U.S. human rights. In the  United States, a country labeling itself a "human rights defender,"  "chronic diseases" such as money politics, racial discrimination, gun  and police violence, and wealth polarization are rampant. Human rights  legislation and justice have seen an extreme retrogression, further  undermining the basic rights and freedoms of the American people. 

The  U.S. government has greatly relaxed gun control, resulting in high  death toll from gun violence. The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the  Bruen case in 2022 became a landmark regression in the field of gun  control in the United States. Nearly half of U.S. states have relaxed  gun restrictions. The United States leads the world in gun ownership,  gun homicide and mass shootings, with more than 80,000 people killed or  injured by gun violence in 2022, the third consecutive year on record  that the United States experiences more than 600 mass shootings. Gun  violence has become an "American disease." 

Midterm elections  have become the most expensive ones in the United States, and  American-style democracy has lost its popular support. The cost of  elections in the United States has soared again, with cumulative  spending of the 2022 midterm elections exceeding more than 16.7 billion  U.S. dollars. Political donations from billionaires accounted for 15  percent of the federal total, up from 11 percent in the 2020 election  cycle. "Dark money" donations manipulate U.S. elections furtively, and  political polarization and social fragmentation make it difficult for  the country to reach a democratic consensus. With 69 percent of  Americans believing their democracy is at "risk of collapse" and 86  percent of American voters saying it faces "very serious threats," there  is a general public disillusionment of American-style democracy. 

Racism  is on the rise and ethnic minorities suffer widespread discrimination.  Hate crimes based on racial bias in the United States increased  dramatically between 2020 and 2022. The racist massacre at a Buffalo  supermarket, with 10 African-Americans killed, has shocked the world. A  total of 81 percent of Asian Americans say violence against Asian  communities is surging. African Americans are 2.78 times more likely to  be killed by police than whites. The sufferings caused by genocide and  cultural assimilation taken by the U.S. government against Indians and  other aborigines in history still persist today. 

Life expectancy  has plummeted, and deaths from drug abuse continue to climb. According  to a report released in August 2022 by the National Center for Health  Statistics under the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,  average life expectancy in the United States dropped by 2.7 years to  76.1 years from 2019 to 2021, the lowest since 1996. Interest groups and  politicians trade power for money, allowing drug and substance abuse to  flourish. The number of Americans dying from drug and substance abuse  has increased dramatically in recent years, to more than 100,000 per  year. Substance abuse has become one of America's most devastating  public health crises. 

Women have lost constitutional protections  for abortion, and children's living environment is worrying. The U.S.  Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe v. Wade has ended women's right  to abortion protected by the U.S. Constitution for nearly 50 years,  which lands a huge blow to women's human rights and gender equality. In  2022, more than 5,800 children under the age of 18 got injured or killed  by shooting in the United States, and the number of school shootings  amounted to 302, the highest since 1970. The child poverty rate in the  United States increased from 12.1 percent in December 2021 to 16.6  percent in May 2022, with 3.3 million more children living in poverty.  The United States had seen a nearly 70 percent increase in child labor  violations since 2018, and registered a 26 percent increase in minors  employed in hazardous occupations in fiscal year 2022. 

U.S.  abuse of force and unilateral sanctions has created humanitarian  disasters. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the United States  has carried out military operations in 85 countries in the name of  "anti-terrorism," which directly claimed at least 929,000 civilian lives  and displaced 38 million people. The United States has imposed more  unilateral sanctions than any other country in the world, and it still  has sanctions in place against more than 20 countries, resulting in the  inability of those targeted to provide basic food and medicine for their  people. Immigration issue has become a tool of partisan fight, and  immigration farces have been staged on a large scale, making immigrants  face extreme xenophobia and cruel treatment. There were a record high of  nearly 2.4 million migrant arrests at the nation's border in 2022, and  the death toll of immigrants at its southern border reached 856, the  deadliest in a single year. 

The United States, founded on  colonialism, racist slavery and inequality in labor, possession and  distribution, has further fallen into a quagmire of system failure,  governance deficits, racial divide and social unrest in recent years  under the interaction of its polarized economic distribution pattern,  racial conflict dominated social pattern and capital interest groups  controlled political pattern. 

American politicians, serving the  interests of oligarchs, have gradually lost their subjective will and  objective ability to respond to the basic demands of ordinary people and  defend the basic rights of ordinary citizens, and failed to solve their  own structural problems of human rights. Instead, they wantonly use  human rights as a weapon to attack other countries, creating  confrontation, division and chaos in the international community, and  have thus become a spoiler and obstructor of global human rights  development. 

I. Dysfunctional Civil Rights Protection System 

The  United States is a country defined by extreme violence, where people  are threatened by both violent crime and violent law enforcement, and  their safety is far from being guaranteed. Prisons are overcrowded and  have become a modern slavery establishment where forced labor and sexual  exploitation are commonplace. America's self-proclaimed civil rights  and freedoms have become empty talk. 

Collusion between  politicians and businesses paralyzes the gun control agenda. U.S. gun  interest groups have mounted powerful political lobbying for their own  interests. In defiance of public opinion, the government has drastically  relaxed gun controls, allowing guns to be carried in crowded public  places such as hospitals, schools, bars and stadiums. On July 3, 2022,  Bloomberg News reported that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the  "Bruen case" on June 23 overturned half a century's gun control  legislation in New York and six other states. Residents of these states  were allowed to make concealed carry, a landmark backward step in the  field of gun control in the United States. The New York Times reported  on Oct 28, 2022 that a federal court in Texas ruled that a state law  banning adults under 21 from carrying handguns was unconstitutional.  Nearly half of U.S. states have now relaxed gun restrictions. "The  country has been moving as a whole, in the past two or three decades,  very clearly and dramatically toward loosening gun-carrying laws," said  Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, a professor at the University of Washington.  American scholar Pamela Haag's book "The Gunning of America: Business  and the Making of American Gun Culture" points out that guns in the  United States are an industrial chain that "begins with production line  and ends with the death of victims." "The tragedy of gun violence in  America has its roots in the secular gun trade." 

Gun violence  rises in tandem with gun ownership. A study published in the British  Medical Journal suggests that the relaxation of gun control in the  United States has led to a simultaneous rise in gun ownership and mass  shootings. With less than 5 percent of the world's population, the  United States owns 46 percent of the world's civilian guns. The United  States leads the world in gun ownership, gun homicide, and mass  shootings. According to the Gun Violence Archive website, the number of  mass shootings in the United States has increased significantly in  recent years. In 2022, gun violence killed 43,341 people, and injured  37,763 people, and 636 mass shootings occurred in the United States, an  average of two a day. America's firearm homicide rate is eight times  higher than Canada's, 13 times higher than France's, and 23 times higher  than Australia's. In an opinion piece published on June 25, 2022, The  Australian said that the United States "is a country all but defined by  ultra-violence, in its media and on its streets." Gun violence has  become an "American disease." 

Major crimes such as murder and  robbery continue to rise. The USA Today reported on Sept. 11, 2022, that  in the first half of 2022, homicides in member cities of the Major  Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) increased by 50 percent and aggravated  assaults by about 36 percent compared to the same period in 2019. The  Wall Street Journal reported on Sept. 6, 2022 that as of September 2022,  the homicide rate in New Orleans was up 141 percent, shootings up 100  percent, carjackings up 210 percent, and armed robberies up 25 percent,  compared with the same period in 2019. According to a Council On  Criminal Justice report on July 28, 2022, in the first half of 2022,  robberies rose 19 percent and larcenies rose 20 percent in major U.S.  cities. Fox News reported on July 7, 2022 that since June 2021, the  overall crime in New York City increased by 31 percent, grand larceny by  41 percent, robberies by 36 percent, burglaries by nearly 34 percent,  and felony assault victims increased by about 1,000 per quarter.  According to a CNN report on June 8, 2022, 72 percent of Americans were  dissatisfied with the country's policies on reducing or controlling  crime, and more Americans said they worried a great or fair deal about  crime and violence (80 percent) than at any point in well over a  decade. 

Police violence gets worse. In 2022, a record 1,239  people died as a result of police violence in the United States,  according to the website Mapping Police Violence. During the year, there  were only 10 days when no police killing happened. Most police killings  occur during routine law enforcement such as stop checks or when  dealing with nonviolent crimes. Police are rarely accused of using  excessive force. In police killings between 2013 and 2022, 98.1 percent  of the officers involved were not charged with a crime. On June 27,  2022, police in Akron, Ohio fatally shot Jayland Walker, an unarmed  25-year-old African American, more than 90 times. According to a  preliminary medical report, Walker had more than 60 wounds on his body.  This was the third police shooting in Akron between December 2021 and  June 2022. 

The life and health of prisoners are threatened. The  United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and  prison conditions are terrible. According to a report in the Guardian on  Oct. 1, 2022, nearly 500 people per 100,000 were incarcerated in the  United States, which is about five times that of Britain, six times that  of Canada, and nine times that of Germany. According to an article  published by The Fair Justice Initiative organization on April 25, 2022,  inmates in Mississippi prisons were kept in dark cells without lights  or clean water, and the room temperature was often extremely hot. The  Chicago Sun-Times reported on Feb. 19, 2022, that cells at the Joliet  prison in Illinois were infested with rats, and rotten food and raw  sewage overflowed into common areas. Prisoners' lives are not  guaranteed. According to a study published in October 2022 in Prison  Legal News, a publication on inmates' rights, a shortage of guards and  inadequate infrastructure in Alabama's prison system led to high rates  of violence and deaths among inmates. There were 39 deaths in the first  eight months of 2022, 30 of which were unnatural ones. 

Prisons  became places of modern slavery. According to a report jointly released  by the University of Chicago Law School and the American Civil Liberties  Union on June 16, 2022, the United States incarcerates more than 1.2  million people in state and federal prisons, about 800,000 were engaged  in forced labor, accounting for 65 percent of the total number of  prisoners. Over 76 percent of the prisoners surveyed said they would be  punished with solitary confinement, no mitigation and loss of family  visitation rights if they refused to work. Incarcerated workers were  forced to provide food service, laundry, and other operations but they  have few rights and protections, said a report by the Prison Policy  Initiative on March 14, 2022. Besides, incarcerated workers typically  earn little to no pay at all, according to a research by American Civil  Liberties Union on June 15, 2022. American prisons have become veritable  modern-day slavery factories. 

Religious intolerance  intensifies. According to the Hate Crime Statistics for 2021 released by  the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Dec. 15, 2022, a total of 1,005  religious hate crimes were reported in the United States in 2021, of  which 31.9 percent were anti-Semitic incidents, 21.3 percent were  anti-Sikh incidents, and 9.5 percent were anti-Islamic incidents, 6.1  percent were anti-Catholic incidents and 6.5 percent were anti-Orthodox  incidents. Intolerance of Islam in the United States has intensified,  and Muslims are severely discriminated against, said a report released  by the Council on American-Islamic Relations in 2022. In 2021, the  Council on American-Islamic Relations received 6,720 complaints,  including 308 hate and bias incidents related complaints, an increase of  28 percent over 2020; 679 law enforcement and government overreach  complaints, an increase of 35 percent over 2020; 1,298 incidents of  discrimination in workplaces and public places, an increase of 13  percent over 2020. The Middle East Eye reported on Aug. 23, 2022, that a  study showed that Muslims are five times more likely to experience  police harassment because of their religion compared to those of other  faiths. 

II. Hollowed-out American-style Electoral Democracy 

Political  donations have made American elections a game for the rich, alienation  of two-party politics has turned into polarized politics, and American  democracy is losing its foundation in public support. Former U.S.  President Jimmy Carter once said political bribery has tainted the U.S.  political system. "It's just an oligarchy with unlimited political  bribery being at the essence of getting the nominations for President,  or to elect the President," Carter said. 

Money in elections has  set a new record. American elections are at the heart of its democracy,  powered by money. Election costs have soared since donation limits were  lifted in 2010 and again in 2014. According to an analysis published by  OpenSecrets, the total cost of the 2022 state and federal midterm  elections was nearly 17 billion dollars, the most expensive election in  history. Federal candidates and political committees spent 8.9 billion  dollars, while state candidates, party committees, and ballot measure  committees spent 7.8 billion dollars, both of which set all-time  records. CNN reported on Dec. 8, 2022, that the five most expensive  Senate races of 2022 have seen nearly 1.3 billion dollars in spending  across the primary and general elections. Leading the way is the  Pennsylvania Senate race, where nearly 375 million dollars have been  spent on the race this cycle. 

Political donations create an  oligarchy. U.S. politics has been kidnapped by capital and there is a  stable "money-return" relationship. "Of the people, by the people, for  the people" has become "of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, and for the 1  percent," as the slogan of the Occupy Wall Street movement says: "We  are the 99 percent, but controlled by the 1 percent." Helene Landemore, a  political theorist at Yale University, wrote in an article published by  the Foreign Policy magazine in December 2021 that American democracy  lacks "people's power," and that only the very rich, a very small part  of the population, can use their very high economic status to push for a  set of policy priorities that serve themselves. 

"American  billionaires spent a whopping 880 million dollars on the elections by  the end of October, with the final total likely approaching an  astronomical 1 billion dollars. That's a game-changing amount of money  that undoubtedly influenced the electoral outcomes we are now seeing,"  Fortune magazine wrote on Dec. 9, 2022, in a report, titled  "Billionaires had an extra 1 trillion dollars to influence the midterm  elections. Save American democracy by taxing extreme wealth." 

Billionaire  wealth has been, as Americans for Tax Fairness Executive Director Frank  Clemente put it, "drowning our democracy," the magazine reported.  Billionaires made up 15 percent of all federal political itemized  donations from Jan. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022, up from 11 percent in  the 2020 election cycle, Reuters reported on Nov. 9, 2022, adding that  Financier George Soros was the top individual donor, spending more than  128 million dollars to support Democratic campaigns. With plutocrats  using their money to control the outcome of elections, U.S. elections  are increasingly out of line with the nature of democracy. 

Dark  money donations secretly manipulate the direction of elections. Dark  money has been invisibly influencing U.S. elections. The Brennan Center  for Justice reported on Nov. 16, 2022, that four party-aligned dark  money groups pumped almost 300 million dollars into this election cycle  by giving to sister super political action committees (PACs) or buying  cleverly worded ads. There are hundreds more politically active groups  pouring secret money into the elections. 

A billionaire secretly  transferred 1.6 billion dollars to a Republican political group, the  largest known political advocacy donation in American history, according  to a report titled "Billions in 'dark money' is influencing US  politics" by the Guardian on Aug. 29, 2022. In 2020 alone, more than  1-billion-dollar worth of dark money flooded around weak disclosure  rules and into America's elections. Heading into the 2022 election, the  situation is getting worse. The two parties' major Senate and House  Super PACs are all being funded by anonymous dark money groups that are  not required to disclose their donors. Dark money has secretly captured  the U.S. political parties and government, and the majority of voters  have become tools of political games. 

Multiple tactics and  manipulation of election results. Many Americans have completely  abandoned the idea of equality, and it is often these people who reject  the idea of equality who set the rules that others have to follow, said  J. R. Pole in his book titled "The Pursuit of Equality in American  History." Laws restricting voters' eligibility to vote are frequently  introduced. According to the study published by the Brennan Center for  Justice on May 26, 2022, 18 states passed 34 restrictive laws in 2021.  For the 2022 legislative session, lawmakers in 39 states have considered  at least 393 restrictive bills, which have disproportionately affected  voters of color by setting up a series of voting obstacles. As many as  200,000 voters could be at risk of having their registrations canceled  after Arizona enacted a law regulating the provision of documentary  proof of citizenship for voter registration. On Aug. 4, 2022, the Global  Organization Against Hate and Extremism published a report titled  "Americans' Fears Suppressing Participation in Democracy," which said  that 40 percent of Black people and 37 percent of Hispanic people very  worried being denied the ability to cast a ballot. Strict voting  eligibility laws blocked nearly 16 percent of Mississippi's Black  voting-age population from casting a ballot. Mississippi has one of the  highest concentrations of Black people in the country, yet has not  elected a Black person to statewide office in well over a century,  reported The Guardian on its website in an article entitled "The racist  1890 law that's still blocking thousands of Black Americans from voting"  on Jan. 8, 2022. The National Urban League's release of the "2022 State  of Black America: Under Siege the Plot to Destroy Democracy" on April  12, 2022, showed that in 2021 alone, 20 states have leveraged census  data to redraw congressional maps. These means of manipulating elections  have deprived a large number of voters of their voting eligibility,  leaving equal voting rights to exist on paper only. 

American  elections are accompanied by violence and intimidation. Its political  history has not been short of violence and terror. Historically, groups  such as the notorious Ku Klux Klan prevented African Americans from  voting through violence such as beatings, lynchings, and assassinations,  creating a sense of fear that continues to this day. 

Voters may  face intimidation at the polls and beyond from vigilante actors, the  Brennan Center for Justice said in a report released on Oct. 28, 2022,  adding that in Arizona, right-wing extremist groups have recruited  volunteers to monitor drop boxes, some of whom often showed up armed and  in tactical gear. 

The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism  said in a report on Aug. 4, 2022, that there is a growing sense of fear  among Americans, with minorities particularly concerned about security  at the polls and voters generally worried about safety at polling  stations. Overall, 63 percent of those surveyed said they are "very  worried" about such things as violence, harassment, and intimidation  happening at their polling place. The psychological shadow of lynching  and the atmosphere of fear became a great obstacle for voters to  exercise their right to vote. 

Two-party politics has become a  polarized one. Political polarization, especially the polarization of  two-party politics, has been one of the most striking features of  American politics in the past three decades. The widening ideological  divide and opposition between the Democratic Party and the Republican  Party have expanded the tear in American society and led to the idling  of American politics. 

Around 28 percent of Americans named  "political extremism or polarization" as one of the most important  issues facing the country, according to a survey by the U.S. poll  tracker FiveThirtyEight on June 14, 2022, adding that 64 percent said  they felt political polarization is mostly driven by political and  social elites. 

According to a report by NBC NEWS on Oct. 23,  2022, 81 percent of Democrats said they believe the Republican Party's  agenda poses a threat that, if it isn't stopped, will destroy America,  while 79 percent of Republicans believe the same of the Democratic  Party's agenda. Seventy-one percent of voters said the country is headed  in the wrong direction. "It seems like voters are no longer looking for  a 'Contract with America.' They want a divorce," said Democratic  pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates. 

Political  polarization and social rifts have made it difficult to reach a  democratic consensus, and election farce and post-election chaos have  become prominent features of U.S. politics. The polarization of party  contention and vicious rivalry has led to the collapse of political  trust and brought serious governance crisis to the United States, wrote  Marc J. Hetherington, professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt  University, and Thomas J. Rudolph, professor of Political Science at the  University of Illinois, in their book, titled "Why Washington Won't  Work: Polarization, Political Trust, and the Governing Crisis." 

Government  officials take advantage of their positions for personal gain.  High-level politicians can in advance get access to a lot of sensitive  information that could allow them to make profits. The reported net  assets of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with her husband Paul  Pelosi, are worth more than 114 million U.S. dollars, and a majority of  their wealth is derived from investments such as stocks and options,  The Hill said in an opinion piece on July 24, 2022. In March 2021, Paul  exercised options to purchase 25,000 Microsoft shares worth more than 5  million dollars. Less than two weeks later, the U.S. Army disclosed a  21.9-billion dollar deal with Microsoft. Shares of the company rose  sharply after the deal was announced. In June 2022, Paul bought up to 5  million dollars in stock options from Nvidia, a leading semiconductor  company. The purchase came as Congress was set to vote on legislation  that would result in 52 billion dollars in subsidies allocated to  elevate the chip-production industry. During Nancy Pelosi's term as the  house speaker, the Pelosis have made approximately 30 million dollars  from trades involving big tech companies the former House speaker is  responsible for regulating. Of the 435 House members, 183 traded stocks  through themselves or their immediate family members from 2019 to 2021,  Daily Mail said in an opinion piece on Sept. 13, 2022. It added that at  least 97 bought or sold stocks, bonds, or other financial assets through  themselves or their spouses that directly intersected with their  congressional work. A Wall Street Journal investigation on Oct. 11,  2022, found that more than 2,600 officials at agencies from the Commerce  Department to the Treasury Department disclosed stock investments in  companies while those same companies were lobbying their agencies for  favorable policies. In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash  scandal, former Pennsylvania judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan  shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted 2.8  million dollars in illegal payments from two for-profit lockups, The  Associated Press (AP) reported on Aug. 18, 2022. Ciavarella pushed a  zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of kids would be  sent to the facilities, the report added. Many top U.S. politicians were  making empty promises to voters while profiting financially from their  positions. 

Public confidence in American democracy continues to  decline. American scholars Thomas R. Dye, Harmon Zeigler and Louis  Schubert pointed out in their book The Irony of Democracy: An Uncommon  Introduction to American Politics that few Americans today still believe  that government is run for the benefit of the people. Most see the  political system as run by a few big interests for their own benefit,  leaving the average person forgotten behind, the book added. Sixty-seven  percent of Americans think the nation's democracy is in danger of  collapse, said a poll by The Quinnipiac University Poll on Aug. 31,  2022. AP said in a report on Oct. 19, 2022, that there is a general  despair over democracy in America which comes after decades of  increasing polarization nationwide. Just 9 percent of U.S. adults think  democracy is working "extremely" or "very well," while 52 percent say  it's not working well, it added. PR Newswire reported on Nov. 4, 2022,  that a nonpartisan More Perfect poll before the midterm election showed  that 86 percent of voters said the U.S. democracy faces very serious  threats. Seventy-two percent of American voters rated the health of  American democracy as poor; 64 percent said there is too much money in  politics; 61 percent believed U.S. politics is corrupt; and 58 percent  thought there is too much-biased information and misinformation in  American democracy. According to a survey by NBC News on Nov. 9, 2022,  72 percent of Democratic voters, 68 percent of Republican voters and 70  percent of independents agreed that democracy was threatened. Public  confidence in American democracy continues to decline, reflecting that  American democracy is losing popular support. 

III. Growing Racial Discrimination and Inequality 

The  UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said in the  Concluding observations on the combined tenth to twelfth reports of the  United States of America released on Sept. 21, 2022, that the lingering  legacies of colonialism and slavery continue to fuel racism and racial  discrimination around the country. 

In recent years, hate crimes  and hate speech incidents in the United States have increased  significantly, the number of race-related gun injuries and deaths has  jumped substantially, and people of color and ethnic minorities continue  to face systematic discrimination in medical care, education, housing  and other fields, the agency said. 

Racial discrimination is  widespread. Racial inferiority and superiority complexes are deeply  embedded in U.S. systems and have become "inextricable." Interviews with  more than 3,000 African Americans showed that 82 percent of them  considered racism a major problem for African descendants in the United  States, while 79 percent reported having experienced discrimination  because of their race or ethnicity, and 68 percent said racial  discrimination is the main reason why many Black people can't get ahead,  CNN reported on Aug. 30, 2022. According to a survey published by the  Ipsos group on March 29, 2022, 65 percent of the Latino Americans  surveyed reported having experienced racist comments in the past year.  According to a report released by the U.S. National Asian Pacific  American Women's Forum on March 30, 2022, 74 percent of Asian American,  Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander women reported experiencing racism  and/or discrimination over the past 12 months, with 53 percent  reporting the perpetrator was a stranger and 47 percent reporting the  incidents took place in public places such as restaurants and shopping  centers. 

Racial hate crimes remain high. Fifteen major U.S.  cities saw a double-digit growth in hate crimes between 2020 and 2021,  and an increase of about 5 percent in bias-motivated incidents till  August 2022, according to a study by the Center for the Study of Hate  and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. In an  article titled "Hate crime reports surge" published on Oct. 21, 2022,  the Chicago Sun-Times reported that as of Oct. 18 that year, the Chicago  Police Department had received reports of 120 hate crimes. On May 14,  2022, Payton Gendron, a 19-year-old White gunman, killed 10 African  Americans and wounded three others in a racist massacre at a supermarket  in Buffalo, New York. The killer also videotaped the attack for live  streaming. According to a report published in February 2023 by the  Anti-Defamation League based in the United States, the number of U.S.  mass killings spiked over the past decade, and all extremist killings  identified in 2022 were linked to right-wing extremism, with an  especially high number linked to white supremacy. "It is not an  exaggeration to say that we live in an age of extremist mass killings." 

Rampant  hate crimes against Asian Americans. A report issued by the non-profit  organization Stop AAPI Hate shows that it received reports of nearly  11,500 hate incidents between March 19, 2020, and March 31, 2022. An  online poll by the research firm AAPI Data found that one in six Asian  Americans nationwide experienced race-based violence in 2021, the Los  Angeles Times reported on March 22, 2022. The New York Times reported on  March 14, 2022 that a 28-year-old man was charged with hate crimes in  connection with a two-hour spree of attacks on seven women of Asian  descent in Manhattan, and four Asian New Yorkers had died in recent  months after being attacked. CNN reported on Nov. 30, 2022 that in  Yonkers, a man punched an elderly Asian woman more than 100 times,  hurled racist abuse at her, stomped on her body repeatedly and spat on  her. The Houston Public Media reported on Aug. 22, 2022 multiple attacks  on people of Asian descent in San Francisco. One of the victims, Amy  Li, said that she still sees the offender in her neighborhood almost  every day. "I've reported this case to the police and haven't heard  anything ... Every day my son and I live in fear." 

Fifty-seven  percent of Asian Americans said they often or sometimes felt unsafe in  public places because of their race or ethnicity, 81 percent of the  group agreed that violence against the Asian American community was on  the rise, and 73 percent said violence posed more of a threat now than  it did before the pandemic, according to a report published on the  medical magazine Health Affairs on April 12, 2022. According to the  testimony of Erika Lee, regents professor of History and Asian American  Studies at the University of Minnesota on Discrimination and Violence  Against Asian Americans before a U.S. congressional hearing, "As  shocking as these incidents are, it is vital to understand that they are  not random acts perpetrated by deranged individuals. They are an  expression of our country's long history of systemic racism and racial  violence targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders." 

Entrenched  racial discrimination in law enforcement and justice. A concluding  report of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms  of Racial Discrimination revealed that it still widely persists in the  United States that law enforcement officials use excessive violence  against people of color and minority groups and get impunity. Statistics  from the Mapping Police Violence website show that in police killings  between 2013 and 2022, Black Americans were 2.78 times more likely to be  killed by police than white people, and unarmed Black Americans were  1.3 times more likely to be killed by police than whites. In Boston,  Minneapolis and Chicago, Blacks are over 20 times more likely than  whites to be killed by police. Citing a report from the National  Registry of Exonerations, National Public Radio (NPR) reported on Sept.  27, 2022 that Black people represent under 14 percent of the U.S.  population, but they account for 53 percent of those who were falsely  convicted of a serious crime and then freed after serving at least part  of their sentence. Black Americans are about seven times more likely  than white people to be wrongfully convicted of three major crimes, and  Black people were 19 times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of  drug crimes, it added. The criminal justice system permeated with racism  "is increasingly serving as a major gateway to a much larger system of  stigmatization and long-term marginalization," noted the book published  by the National Academies Press, The growth of incarceration in the  United States: Exploring causes and consequences. 

Widening  racial wealth gap. Workers of color have long been forced to do  literally "dirty laundry" due to the racist barriers they face in  employment. CNN reported on Aug. 30, 2022 that two-thirds of Black  Americans said that the recent increased focus on race and racial  inequality in the United States had not led to changes that are  improving the lives of Black people. A recent long-term study,  co-released by researchers from Princeton University and University of  Bonn, found that the racial wealth gap is the largest of the economic  disparities between Black and white Americans, with a white-to-Black per  capita wealth ratio of 6 to 1. The racial wealth convergence between  Blacks and whites after the abolition of slavery followed an even slower  path and then had stalled by the 1950s. Since the 1980s, the wealth gap  has widened again as capital gains have predominantly benefited white  households. In 2021, 19.5 percent of Black people living in the United  States were living below the poverty line, compared to 8.2 percent of  white people, Statista Research Department said in a report on Sept. 30,  2022. More than half of Black and Latino households and over two-thirds  of Native American ones reported the recent price increases driven by  inflation had caused them serious financial problems, according to a  national poll jointly released by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson  Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on Aug. 8,  2022. The impact of inflation on Black Americans is "extremely  devastating," said professor William Darity Jr. at Duke University.  "People will have to make very, very hard decisions about whether or not  to purchase medicines or buy food or forgo payment of their  utilities." 

Discrimination in housing policies. The UN Committee  on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said in its concluding  observations that there is a high degree of residential racial  segregation, persistent policy and legal discrimination in access to  housing on the grounds of race, color and national or ethnic origin. The  gap between white and Black homeownership rates in the United States is  at its widest in 120 years, according to a BBC report on July 10, 2022.  Some 19.4 percent of Black applicants were denied a mortgage in 2021,  compared with 10.8 percent of white applicants, according to the  property firm Zillow. For many Black homeowners, interest rates are  already often higher than their white counterparts regardless of income,  The Hill quoted a 2021 Harvard University study as saying on Aug. 28,  2022. Just 45.3 percent of Black households and 48.3 percent of Hispanic  households owned their homes during the second quarter of 2022,  compared to 74.6 percent of white households, it added. 

Severe  racial inequality in health services. The UN Committee on the  Elimination of Racial Discrimination said in its concluding observations  that racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected by  higher rates of maternal mortality and morbidity. Ethnic and racial  disparities in maternal mortality rate increased significantly. The rate  rose markedly for non-Hispanic Black women in 2020, 2.9 times as  non-Hispanic white women, according to a report published by National  Center for Health Statistics on Feb. 23, 2022. Study showed racial and  ethnic disparities persist in outpatient COVID-19 treatment among Black,  Hispanic and Native American patients, according to the U.S. Centers  for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report published on Oct. 28,  2022. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused disproportionate impact on racial  and ethnic minority groups, it said. Inequitable health services affect  minority patients' right to life. Hispanic populations in California  lost 5.7 years of life expectancy between 2019 and 2021. Black  populations lost 3.8 years, and Asian populations lost 3 years, while  white populations lost 1.9 years, according to a study by Princeton  School of Public and International Affairs published on July 7, 2022. 

American  Indians have not seen their misery alleviated. "The first root of  America was the colonial genocide of its indigenous peoples. This root  remains a fundamental pillar of American society and permeates American  culture." The U.S. Department of Interior released the first part of the  Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative on May 11, 2022. It admits  past efforts by the federal government to assimilate Native American  children into white American society by separating them from their  families and stripping them of their languages and cultures. 

The  review notes that from 1819 to 1969, there were 408 federal schools in  37 states. Children and teenagers at these schools were subject to  systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies by the  federal government, including getting English names, haircuts, and being  banned from using their native languages and exercising their  religions. The initial investigation found that 19 boarding schools  accounted for the deaths of more than 500 American Indian, Alaska  Native, and Native Hawaiian children. The number of recorded deaths is  expected to increase to tens of thousands as the investigation gets  underway. 

It was a genocide, said Marsha Small, a northern Cheyenne researcher. 

Donald  Neconie, a Native American tribal elder who was once student at a  government-backed Indian boarding school, testified about the hardships  he endured, including beatings, whippings, sexual assaults, forced  haircuts and painful nicknames. Neconie recalled being beaten if he  spoke his native Kiowa language, "Every time I tried to talk Kiowa, they  put lye in my mouth." "It was 12 years of hell," he said. "I will  never, ever forgive this school for what they did to me." 

Misery  that American Indians endured historically persists through today.  Minority households reported the price increases driven by inflation had  caused them "serious financial problems." It's even higher among Native  Americans, with that number rising to more than two-thirds of those  surveyed, according to an NPR report on Aug. 8, 2022. 

A U.S. CDC  report analyzed maternal deaths for American Indian and Alaska Native  people who are more than twice as likely as white mothers to die of  pregnancy-related causes but often undercounted in health data due to  misclassification, according to a report released by USA Today on Sept.  19, 2022. More than 90 percent of indigenous mothers' deaths were  preventable, according to the analysis. "In both African American and  Native Americans, we see this historic and unfortunate, constant  disparity in outcomes," said Dr Andrea Jackson, division chief of  obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San  Francisco. 

IV. Worsening Subsistence Crisis among U.S. Underclass 

The  nation sees widening wealth gap, worsening living conditions for  low-income groups, increasing homeless people, life-threatening drug  abuse, and dropping average life expectancy. U.S. underclass is facing a  severe survival crisis. 

Wealth gap has further widened. The  United States is a poor society with many super riches. Through an  in-depth analysis of the U.S. society, the New Class Society: Goodbye  American Dream?, demonstrates the wide range of inequalities based on  class, gender and race in the United States. Co-authored by Earl Wysong,  professor of sociology at Indiana University Kokomo, Robert Perrucci,  professor of sociology at Purdue University, and David Wright, professor  of sociology at Wichita State University, the fourth edition of this  book shows that a new polarized double-diamond social structure has  emerged, featuring a privileged class, consisting of the top 20 percent  of the population who are wealthy, and a new working class, consisting  of 80 percent of the population who live at the bottom of society and  are getting increasingly poor and unstable. According to data published  by Statista Research Department, Sept. 30, 2022, the Gini coefficient in  the United States rose to a record high of 0.49 in 2021, as the poverty  rate rose for the second year in a row with 37.9 million people living  in poverty. The U.S. Federal Reserve statistics show that the total  wealth of the richest 1 percent of the U.S. population reached a record  45.9 trillion U.S. dollars at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021 and  their fortunes have increased by more than 12 trillion dollars, or more  than a third, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the approximately 1.7  trillion dollars in excess savings held by American families as of  mid-2022, about 1.35 trillion dollars was held by the top half of  earners, while just 350 billion dollars by the bottom half. 

Inflation  continues to hurt low-income households. While U.S. residents' savings  have run down, necessities like car repair, food and housing become  sharply more expensive, The New York Times repor