A panel of United Nations human rights experts says African-Americans in the United States today are living in conditions not unlike those of the 19th century when mob violence led to the racist lynchings of thousands of men, women and children.
The working group, which visited the country in January for 10 days, will present a report to the UN’s Human Rights Council during its annual meeting in New York Monday for further discussion. The panel, officially dubbed the U.N. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, is comprised of five human rights experts from the Philippines, France, Jamaica, Poland, and South Africa.
In its report, the panel was particularly critical of the recent spate of violence against minorities at the hands of police officers.
“Contemporary police killings and the trauma it creates are reminiscent of the racial terror lynching of the past,” the working group concluded. “Impunity for state violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.
“The dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion amongst the U.S. population,” it said.
The UN’s criticism equates the behavior of modern police officers with the actions of racist mobs in late 19th and early 20th-century America, when thousands of blacks in America were traumatized by racially motivated extrajudicial killings that often involved public hangings — primarily in the Southern states. The panel says efforts by the United States to atone for this violent past have been insufficient.
“In particular, the legacy of colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remains a serious challenge, as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation for people of African descent,” the report said.
The panel concludes with a number of recommendations that it believes should be taken. Among them: