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UNITED STATES
In the United States, the pursuit of and access to truth is shaped by a legacy of racism rooted in a history of slavery and colonialism that has resulted in a deeply divided society. This country report focuses on truth specifically as it relates to the U.S. history of slavery and the genocide of Native peoples as suppression or denial of these truths is common in the public discourse. The country has experienced periods of reform and backlash around fundamental civil and political rights for more than 150 years.
From 2020 through 2022, many Americans were confronted in new ways by racialized violence that many trace to the enslavement of people from Africa, forcible displacement and genocide of Indigenous peoples and centuries of discriminatory policies and practices affecting immigrants and Americans racially coded as “non-white.” The contemporary legacies of this history include racial and ethnic inequities in economic status, health outcomes, educational and employment opportunities and physical safety of victims, survivor communities and their descendants.344 Tensions came to a head with the 2020 murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, both of whom were unarmed Black people killed by police officers. The killings sparked protests in every state and catalyzed conversations in every sector of society about the historical and ongoing impacts of the racialized targeting of African Americans by law enforcement.
Public shifts in the understanding of institutional racism expanded345 during the same time period to include not only Black Americans but also Indigenous
peoples, Americans of Asian descent, immigrants and refugees. The United States Supreme Court ruled in McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020) that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had the authority to try U.S. citizens for crimes committed on reservation land. The ruling was affirmation of Indigenous tribal sovereignty after centuries of repression of native nations when they asserted their treaty rights.346 These events followed more than 70 years of political advocacy, social activism and court decisions that affirmed basic rights for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and other marginalized communities.
At the same time, the trend toward greater political and social inclusion for Black Americans, Indigenous peoples and immigrants has catalyzed a counter-movement towards policies restricting eligibility for asylum
claims, requiring migrants along the southern border to remain in Mexico while their claims are processed,347 limiting services for them and banning “sanctuary cities” that do not permit local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws, among other policies.348 New legislation also restricted access to books, instruction and other materials that present information
about the history of slavery in the United States.349
Memory
The United States has yet to find a comprehensive way to confront and address racism or forge a path toward reconciliation and reparations for the enslavement of generations of Africans and for the genocide, internment and forced displacement of Native people. The federal government has not led a comprehensive national effort to memorialize these events or engage in truthtelling for victims, survivor communities or their descendants. Notably, however, the National Museum of African American History and Culture was established in 2003 and opened its doors in 2016 as a Smithsonian Institution museum intended to foster and share a collective public memory grounded in the truth of African American history and culture, a crucial step toward addressing the historic and contemporary forms of injustice and exclusion that BIPOC people and, specifically, the descendants of enslaved people in the United States face.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture prioritizes sharing of histories not only of race-based violence and racialized terror campaigns, but of the strength, resistance and resilience of Black Americans as well as their rich and unparalleled contributions to America's story.
Some preliminary steps toward reckoning with the past have been taken at the federal level in recent years including the declaration in 2021 of Juneteenth (June 19) as a federal holiday, commemorating the day when hundreds of thousands of Black Americans learned they were no longer enslaved. In June 2021, the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative launched a comprehensive review of Indian boarding school policies to “address the intergenerational impact of Indian boarding schools to shed light on the unspoken traumas of the past.”350 The Initiative is mandated to investigate the legal framework underpinning the cultural assimilation of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children by forcibly removing them from their families and communities between 1819 and the 1970s to residential schools where many of the children suffered physical and emotional trauma and abuse, and hundreds, if not thousands, died.351 The Initiative will produce the country’s first official list of boarding schools and seeks to identify remains found at the schools’ associated burial sites.352 The Initiative's first report, released in May 2022, identified 408 schools and 53 sites where children’s remains were buried in marked or unmarked graves instead of being returned to their families.353 The Initiative has also created “The Road to Healing,” a traveling memorialization project to help survivors “share their stories, help connect communities with trauma-informed support and facilitate collection of a permanent oral history.”354
State- and local-level governments have established memorials to specific events and people previously excluded from public recognition,xlv and in some cases have removed memorials commemorating the architects of slavery, such as the removal of Confederate statues.355 The removal of these memorials has largely not been tied to broader law or policy changes designed to acknowledge the country's legacy of slavery and Indigenous genocide.
Aside from the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, civil society has taken the lead both in preserving memories of past violations in the United States that might otherwise be overlooked, rewritten or erased from the dominant narrative and in making the connections between these histories and contemporary forms of racism and discrimination. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, established by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), is the first memorial commemorating the lynching of more than 4,500 Black people in the U.S. between 1880 and 1968, making visible the history of this public act of torture intended to terrorize the African American community. EJI estimates that 6 million people were internally displaced because of racial terror lynchings.356 The 1619 Project of the New York Times was conceived to re-envision the narrative of U.S. history through the lens of the legacy of slavery and to uplift the contributions of Black communities to U.S. democracy.357
Sixty years after the March on Washington in 1963, there is broad civic engagement in racial justice initiatives in the United States, with the majority of African Americans believing that “protests and demonstrations are ‘effective’ at combating racial bias in policing or inspiring reform.”358 The BLM movement, which was founded in 2013 after the murder of Black teenager Trayvon Martin, is among the highest profile non-governmental efforts in recent years and is recognized by some as the largest social movement in U.S. history.359 Alongside other pro-democracy and racial justice groups, such as the #SayHerName women killed by police360, BLM has sparked global efforts to end police brutality and violence against Black communities while advocating for policy reforms that dismantle the legacy of systematic racial discrimination.361
Justice
The burdens of retributive justice policies fall heavily on marginalized and low- income communities—especially communities that are majority BIPOC—which must also contend with legacies of segregation, racism and structural poverty. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with racial minorities and other marginalized groups disproportionately affected. Black people are incarcerated at a rate five times higher than white people, Native Americans four times higher and Latino or Hispanic people twice as high.362 Similar disparities are found throughout the justice system, from “arrest patterns to pretrial detention to the imposition of fines.”363 Many CSOs work to address the problems of mass incarceration. Across the country, organizations such as Sentencing Project, Vera Institute, EJI and Detention Watch Network are doing notable work on issues related to sentencing and incarceration reforms, drug policy reform, abolition of involuntary servitude and slavery, among other issues.364
The United States has not undertaken a national transitional justice process that might address its history of enslavement of African people and genocide of Native Americans; two national initiatives did not gain sufficient support to move forward.365 In 2020, California Congresswoman Barbara Lee introduced legislation calling for the establishment of the first United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation to examine how U.S. history and the legacies of slavery, institutional racism and discrimination against people of color impact laws and policies today.xlvi
In May 2023, Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush introduced legislation calling for reparations to descendants of enslaved Black people and people of African descent. Some state and local level governments have initiated truth-telling or reparations programs. These efforts are often catalyzed by years of advocacy by civil society and by individual elected officials. For instance, the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission366 was established in 2019 to research cases of historic lynchings in the state through public hearings in order to develop recommendations grounded in restorative justice. The state of California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans issued its first interim report in June 2022, recommending public apologies, psychosocial and medical support and a raft of law and policy changes as well as a detailed reparations program for the variety of harms experienced.367, xlvii
Local governments have also engaged in this work. Evanston, Illinois, has“ created a Restorative Housing Reparations program.368 Amherst, Massachusetts, is planning to create a reparations bank and a Reparations Assembly.369 Some of these efforts draw from the transitional justice processes of other countries.
For instance, the Grassroots Law Project, an NGO focused on education and advocacy related to the criminal legal system and people impacted by police violence and mass incarceration, partnered with the cities of Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco to create local Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commissions based on South Africa’s experience.370 Recent commissions have broadened their scope beyond a focus on harms done to Native and Black communities to encompass other marginalized communities as well.
Education
Tensions around teaching the United States’ history of slavery, racism and atrocities against Indigenous peoples have escalated in recent years, driven in many cases by concerns about critical race theory,xlviii prompting states, local governments and school boards to issue restrictions and enact laws that limit what educators are permitted to discuss in the classroom. At least 44 states have enacted legislation to either limit or “ban the discussion, training and/or orientation…about conscious and unconscious bias, privilege, discrimination and oppression,” which include discussions on race and gender.371
Recommendations
The federal government should invest in national, non-partisan truth-telling and memorialization programs that build on state and local efforts to address the legacy of slavery and its impact today.
CSOs in the United States should take action to ensure school curricula, libraries and educators provide students with access to information about United States history in all its complexities.
CSOs should expand the development and dissemination of resource materials that support continuing education about inclusive United States history.
The federal government should establish a non-partisan commission to explore the creation of a national human rights monitoring institution in the United States modeled on best international practices.
Libraries, museums and historic sites in the United States should enhance efforts to partner with community-based organizations and educational institutions to ensure access to and understanding of inclusive American history.
Notes
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