Several states and local bodies have already enacted such regulations. Police brutality was just one aspect of the Black Lives Matter movement. It also drew attention to the discrimination against African Americans, their poverty, lack of jobs, negative cultural stereotyping including in books and media, and even in the treatment for COVID-19 and the distribution of vaccines. The poverty rate for African Americans is about two and a half times that for non-Hispanic Whites and Asians, and their mean household income is less than half that of Asians and two-thirds of non-Hispanic Whites, according to Census bureau figures.

Although African Americans are only about 12 percent of the population they make up about 33 per cent of those in prisons, partly as a result of discriminatory policing. Biden and leaders across business, academia, culture and politics have vowed to correct the historic wrongs and the continuing ones. Biden has proposed a commission to study reparations for African Americans descended from slaves to make amends for their forebears’ enslavement and its enduring consequences. Congress has a bill for creating the commission.