![]() The pandemic and public health measures necessary to slow its spread resulted in lost wages or jobs, reduced health coverage, and reduced access to other essential goods and services. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated poverty and inequality in the United States, and disproportionately affected Black, Latinx, and Native communities. President Donald Trump repeatedly described the virus using racist language. Thousands of people of Asian descent reported incidents of attacks and racial discrimination after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. ![]() In May, Human Rights Watch urged state and local authorities in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to provide reparations to descendants and the remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, in which a white mob killed several hundred Black people and destroyed an affluent Black neighborhood. At the federal level, HR 40, a bill in Congress proposing the establishment of a commission to investigate slavery’s legacy and create reparations proposals, gained unprecedented momentum, with 170 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives and 20 co-sponsors in the Senate as of November. Some localities and the state of California recognized that these disparities are connected to the legacy of slavery and considered various forms of reparations to address them. These disparities are linked to longstanding inequities in health outcomes and access to care, education, employment, and economic status. The Covid-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on racial and ethnic minorities, primarily Black, Latinx, and Native communities, which faced increased risk for infection, serious illness, and death from the disease, as well as severe economic impacts. It flouted international human rights law as it partnered with abusive governments-though it did sanction a number of individuals and governments for committing human rights abuses. In its foreign policy, the United States worked on several fronts to undermine multilateral institutions, including through the use of sanctions to attack the International Criminal Court. After election officials across the US tallied the votes for the presidential election, determining that Joe Biden was the president-elect, Trump made baseless allegations of voter fraud. The administration of President Donald Trump continued to dismantle the United States asylum system, limit access to women’s health care, undermine consumer protections against predatory lenders and abusive debt collectors, and weaken regulations that reduce pollution and address climate change. The police killing of George Floyd in May, and a series of other police killings of Black people, sparked massive and largely peaceful protests, which in many instances were met with brutality by local and federal law enforcement agents. The grossly disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on Black, brown, and Native people, connected to longstanding disparities in health, education, and economic status, revealed the enduring effects of past overtly racist laws and policies and continuing impediments to equality. Important human rights failings of the United States were laid bare in 2020.
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