On Tuesday, President Joe Biden issued a firm call to heal the United States’ racial differences, take more steps, and promised more to confront racism and inequality, which he said has plagued the United States for too long.
Racial tensions simmered during the turbulent four-year presidency of Donald Trump, and Biden noted that Trump supporters’ siege of the Capitol on January 6 was carried out by “warriors, insurgents, political extremists and white supremacists.” But Biden said he believes most Americans believe in equality.
“We have never fully lived up to the fundamental principles of this nation – to say the obvious – that all human beings are created equal and have the right to be treated equally throughout their lives,” Biden said in comments at the White House. “And it’s time to act now, not just because it’s right to do, but because if we do, we’ll all get better at it.”
Biden took executive action on four fronts: restricting the US government’s use of private prisons, strengthening anti-discrimination measures in housing, emphasizing a commitment to Native American sovereignty, and condemning discrimination against Asian Americans and Americans of Pacific Island descent who he said had risen under COVID-19 -pandemin.
The Democratic president has sought to bring back some of his Republican predecessor’s policies and deliver on racial justice reforms he promised during the election campaign.
Critics accused Trump of pursuing policies based on “white complaints” in a nation where the white population is declining.
Black voters proved crucial to Biden first when he won his party’s presidential candidate and then to defeat Trump in the November 3 election.
The United States, still aware of the legacy of slavery that ended in the mid-19th century, was shaken by protests against racism and police brutality in many cities last year in response to incidents including the death of black man George Floyd in the Minneapolis Police Department in May 2020.
On the day he took office last week, Biden signed an executive order that set up a government-wide initiative to address racial discrimination and systemic racism in federal policies, laws and programs.
‘I promise you’
On Tuesday, Biden said in the coming weeks that he would reaffirm a federal “commitment to diversity, justice and inclusion and accessibility.”
“Again, I do not promise that we can end it tomorrow, but I promise you that we will continue to make progress in eliminating systemic racism, and every branch of the White House and the federal government will be part of that effort,” he said. Biden.
Biden said his order instructing the Justice Department not to renew its contracts with privately run criminal detention facilities is intended to end the department’s use of private prisons. The order did not apply to agreements for private prisons from the Department of Homeland Security, which uses such facilities to detain immigrants who are illegal in the country.
Biden described the move as the first step in “preventing companies from making money on incarcerated prisoners, saying it was” just the beginning of my management’s plan to address systemic issues in our criminal justice system.
Biden called for a restoration and extension of the landmark suffrage, although many states are pursuing Republican-backed measures that Democrats have said are intended to suppress suffrage. After the election, Trump made false allegations of widespread voting fraud and irregularities as part of his failed attempt to reverse Biden’s victory.
Biden said it is “a struggle for the soul of this nation.”
“And the simple truth is: our soul will be anxious as long as systemic racism is allowed to endure. We can not eliminate it. It will not be overnight. We can not eliminate everything, but it is corrosive, it is destructive and it is expensive. “
The Biden Administration’s recently announced policy for fair housing requires that the Department of Housing and Urban Development studies and counteracts racially discriminatory effects of previous policies.
“Housing is a right in America and home ownership is an important tool for creating wealth and being passed on to generations,” Biden said.
(REUTERS)
