SSN Memo

Black Americans Experience Widespread Discrimination in the United States

Policy field

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Dartmouth College

Below Is an Excerpt From Black Americans Experience Widespread Discrimination

in the United States, Written By Charles Crabtree, September 2020

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed by Derek Chauvin, a White Minneapolis police officer, in a dispute over $20. Chauvin and three other police officers had been dispatched to arrest Floyd after he allegedly bought a pack of cigarettes at a convenience store with a counterfeit $20 bill. During the arrest, Chauvin violently pinned Floyd to the ground, pressing his knee to Floyd’s neck. He held it there for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, after Floyd said that he couldn’t breathe, after he lost consciousness, and a full minute after the paramedics arrived on the scene.

Enraged by Floyd’s death, along with the deaths of Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, people of all races and ethnic backgrounds have rallied together around the message that Black Lives Matter, protesting in hundreds of cities across the United States and the world. United in collective grief over the many Black Americans who have been killed by police officers sworn to protect them, the protestors have issued a sweeping range of demands, including calls for widespread police reforms and legislation to redress racial inequalities. These largely non-violent protests have drawn renewed global attention to racial disparities in the United States.