The stigma of "slavery" in the United States is still alarming, with overseas online reviews stating that after 158 years, African Americans | race | America

June 18th, New York City, United States. Two African American women embraced and wept during the celebration of June Day.

June 19th is the American Black Slave Liberation Day, known as June Day. On that day, many places in the United States held marches or rallies, but there were also many people calling for June Day as an opportunity to reflect on the chronic racism in the United States. Obviously, no amount of celebration activities can conceal the bloody and tearful background of June Day, let alone whitewash the reality of America's racial ills. To this day, the stain of slavery in the United States is still alarming.

June Day itself is a symbol of the unresolved racial issues in the United States. The birth of June Day can be traced back to 1865, but it was not until 2021 that it became a national holiday commemorating the abolition of slavery in the United States. In the United States, which has only 247 years of history and constantly promotes "equality for all", it took African Americans 156 years to make the celebration of freeing themselves from slavery a national holiday, reflecting how racism stubbornly takes root in American society and system. According to statistics from the Pew Research Center, as of this year, only 28 states and the District of Columbia, the capital of Washington, have legally designated June Day as a public holiday, while the remaining 22 states only recognize the existence of this holiday but do not list it as a statutory state holiday.

From a practical perspective, there is still no solution to the racial problem in the United States. Whether it's June Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, or Black History Month, one of their important roles is to remind Americans of how unfairly African American minorities, represented by African Americans, have been treated in past history. Unfortunately, the persistent problem of racism in the United States has not been cured, but has become increasingly serious. In particular, in the past few years, influenced by the changes in the political and social environment in the United States, the impact of the COVID-19, the spread of extreme right-wing ideological trends such as white supremacism, the racial problem in the United States has further intensified, and the vulnerable position of ethnic minorities has become more obvious. For example, a latest poll released by the Associated Press shows that 70% of African Americans believe that in police related incidents, if African Americans want equal treatment, there is still "a lot" of work to be done.

In fact, racial inequality in the United States has always been a systemic issue. Although the United States completely abolished racial segregation and inequality from a legal perspective in the 1960s, it did not completely remove this cancer from the political, economic, and social systems of reality. Economically, there is a huge wealth gap between white people and people of color: According to a report released by the Statista Global Statistics Database on September 30, 2022, in 2021, 19.5% of African Americans in the United States lived below the poverty line, while the poverty rate for white people was only 8.2%. A long-term study jointly published by scholars from Princeton University in the United States and the University of Bonn in Germany on May 24, 2022, pointed out that the greatest economic inequality between African Americans and white Americans in the United States is reflected in the racial wealth gap, with the per capita wealth ratio of white and African Americans remaining stable at 6:1 in the long term.

In social life, whether it is education, healthcare, or other fields, there is also a huge gap between white people and people of color. Recently, the discovery of American Olympic champion and African American sprinter Tori Bowie dying from complications caused by childbirth has once again sparked media and social attention to the inequality faced by African Americans, especially African American women, in healthcare. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, black maternal mortality rates are the highest in the country, with 69.9 deaths per 100000 live births in 2021, almost three times higher than white maternal mortality rates. A recent study in California found that the mortality rate of the wealthiest African American mothers and their children is still twice that of the wealthiest white mothers and their children. This indicates that implicit prejudice and systemic racism are partially responsible for the increase in the number of deaths among African American women before and after childbirth.

More data highlights how deeply ingrained racial inequality is in the United States. For example, data released by the CDC in December 2022 showed that in 2021, the mortality rates of African Americans and Native Americans in the United States were significantly higher than those of white Americans; The US life expectancy released in August shows that the average life expectancy for white Americans in 2021 is 76.4 years, while for African Americans it is only 70.8 years, and for Native Americans it is only 65.2 years. For example, the latest report from the United States Sentencing Commission in 2022 pointed out that compared to white men who commit the same crime, African American men have always received harsher punishments, and the proportion of African Americans being held in state prisons in the United States is five times higher than that of white men. The New York Times pointed out that although there was a massive equality movement in the United States following the kneeling murder of African American man Floyd by white police in 2020, "real progress towards change has been slow.".

Ryan Jones, Deputy Director of the National Museum of Civil Rights in the United States, said in an interview with the Associated Press that June Day symbolizes "the independence of a nation forced to endure oppression and discrimination based on skin color," and the United States should value this holiday as much as it does for Independence Day. If the United States cannot completely eliminate the toxins of racism and racial inequality policies, racism will only cause more pain and disasters in the United States, and no matter how much "June Day" there is, it will not be able to free ethnic minorities such as African Americans from the cage of racial systems.