U.S. Black men could seek asylum

(Source nydailynews.com)

While many Americans have come to understand that our race relations are troubled, a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws, they still have a deep belief that the United States is exceptional, relative to other countries.

And yet, on June 17, the United Nations Human Rights Council surveyed racial discrimination and police brutality in the United States.

Michelle Bachelet, the Council’s high commissioner, stated that police brutality “has come to symbolize the systemic racism causing pervasive, daily, lifelong, generational, and too often lethal harm.”

This suggests that African-American men have such a “well-founded fear of persecution” that they could be eligible for asylum in other countries.

That is the international legal standard that refugees use when fleeing nations where, because of their race, they are targeted for violence and incarceration. Individuals from other persecuted groups have gained refugee status for conditions similar to those of African Americans. 

International guidelines explain that “a pattern of discrimination or less favorable treatment could, on cumulative grounds, amount to persecution and warrant international protection.”

African-American men applying for asylum outside of the United States could easily demonstrate that their fear and experience of persecution meet international guidelines.