The recent protests in the US have fuelled commentary and spurred demonstrations around the world.
In Australia, there have been protest rallies held in a number of cities around the country.
And yesterday, The Australian’s foriegn editor Greg Sheridan commented on Sky News’ ‘Afternoon Agenda’ that the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police officer in Minneapolis wasn’t representative of most American life.
“Most African Americans are middle class, and they don't suffer daily, shocking racism,” Sheridan told the program.
“I myself have lived in the United States on four separate occasions. And I never saw any racial confrontation. I never heard anyone make a racist remark.”
“The very fact that America is convulsed over this shocking incident shows that it is not an America in which racial violence against blacks is normalized or accepted, you know, carried out by official agencies or by private private individuals.”
Sheridan elaborated on his thoughts surrounding America’s treatment of African Americans in his in The Australian.
In the column, Sheridan called the death of George Floyd an “intensely evil” act. He wrote, it was “heartbreaking and traumatic to watch. If I hadn’t seen it, I would scarcely have believed it.”
But he questioned whether it was an example of “deep structural racism in the US” or just a “terrible act by a shocking individual.”
Sheridan also referred to the shooting of Justine Damond Ruszczyk, a white Australian woman killed by a black police officer in Minneapolis, the same city where Floyd was killed by a white police officer.
"Although it was a tragic incident, it didn’t really reveal any wider cultural pattern. It wasn’t given wider significance. This is only relevant to suggest that not everything is racial."
Is the George Floyd death an isolated incident?
In short -- no.
Sheridan is correct in saying that a death like that of George Floyd isn’t a daily incident, but data indicates that it is more likely to occur to African Americans than white Americans.
- a data collection organisation drawing from crowdsourced databases - found that between 2013 to 2019 more than 1,000 unarmed people died at the hands of police officers in the US.
And around 17 per cent of those deaths were African Americans, who make up a bigger proportion of any other racial group in this data set.
Mapping Police Violence also found that in 2019, people of colour, which includes the minorities Sheridan mentioned -- as well as Hispanics, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders -- were 44 per cent more likely to die at the hands of the police.
And that was a one per cent increase on the previous year.
Sheridan also talked about the broad experience of people of diverse backgrounds in the US. “Other racial minorities have done extraordinarily well in the United States, Asians, Indians, Chinese and so on. And that wouldn't be the case if it was a society which locked people out on the basis of race.”
While there are many success stories in the US relating to people of all backgrounds, there is also evidence that suggests a difference in opportunity and outcomes might exist.
African Americans, as well as other minority groups, have been found to be disproportionately affected by the economic impacts of the coronavirus. A recent found that 24 per cent of African American workers declared they had lost their job, along with 20 per cent of Hispanic workers, 19 per cent of Asian workers and 11 per cent of white workers.
And when it comes to other areas of discrimination, Sheridan’s claim doesn’t exactly match with other findings. A found in 2017 that Asian Americans reported experiencing discrimination in the US across a wide range of experiences, including in areas such as rates of pay and applying for jobs.
Within the same survey, a third of Asian Americans respondents reported experiencing racial slurs.
Are most African Americans middle class?
Sort of -- but it’s a bit more complicated.
Despite, more than 40 per cent of African Americans being middle class, their living conditions are vastly different to white Americans who earn similar incomes.
In 2015, a study published found middle class white and Asian American families lived in middle class neighbourhoods, while black families who earned around the same income were more likely to live in lower socio-economic neighbourhoods.
Home-ownership among African Americans may be at 42 per cent, but those black families earning middle class salaries are more likely to have bought in neighbourhoods with lower incomes than the regular low-socioeconomic white family.
The Brookings Institute, a think tank whose major funders include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the BHP Foundation, research in 2016 into found the average African American family had a net worth ten times less than that of their white counterparts.
African Americans also have a than white Americans, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“[African Americans] don't suffer daily, shocking racism.” Is that true?
While events like the case of George Floyd don’t happen every day, and Sheriden referred specifically to racism of the ‘shocking’ kind, it’s hard to determine the daily extent and occurrence of this. However, data indicates the experience - even of the non-’shocking’ form - is prevalent.
A recent study by tracked the experiences of 101 black teens from Washington over a two period.
In that time, the young black teens involved in the study reported more than 5000 experiences of racism.
An example of the questions participants were asked included: How many times were you mistaken for someone else of your same race/ethnicity (who may not look like you at all)?
The answer was seven.
Rutgers University’s Devin English, who led that study, , “Part of why these types of microaggressions are so insidious is that a lot of times, white people can see them as not real, or not a big deal.”
“But this is showing us the magnitude of the discrimination faced by black adolescents. It’s happening all the time. And it’s affecting how they feel.’’
