Joe Biden's government has invited UN experts to examine the United States' record of racism against African Americans, taking the opposite view of its predecessor Donald Trump.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the creation by the United Nations Human Rights Council of a group of experts to examine police violence against
"people of African descent"
committed in the world.
"Responsible nations should not try to avoid evaluating their human rights record, they should instead call on them with the intention of improving,"
he said in a statement. The head of American diplomacy therefore invited two UN special rapporteurs to the United States, specialists in contemporary forms of racism and issues targeting minorities, and called on other member states to participate in "
this effort to combat racism, discrimination and xenophobia ”
.
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This stance contrasts sharply with the posture adopted by former Republican President Donald Trump and his allies in the face of the giant protests that rocked the United States after the death, on May 25, 2020, of the African-American George Floyd under the knee of a white policeman. Denying the existence of systemic racism in the United States, Donald Trump blamed the violence committed by the police on
“bad apples”
and refused any criticism of the country's history. This posture remains the majority within his party.
"Rather than calling on the UN to come and tell us how racist we are, why don't you ask it to go to Cuba, where a demonic socialist regime is rushing into the people to beat them and kidnap them?"
, thus tweeted the Republican senator Marco Rubio in reference to the repression of historical demonstrations on the communist island.