The U.S. reckoning on race, seen through other nations' eyes

27/9/2020 6:06

        It's not only in the United States where protests against racial injustice are part of the national conversation. A handful of America's critics have taken note too, using recent months' demonstrations and graphic images of police violence to denounce the country at the United Nations' gathering of world leaders this year.
        
        Iranian President Hassan Rouhani invoked the killing of George Floyd, the Black American man who died after a white police officer in Minneapolis pressed his knee against his neck even as he repeatedly said he could not breathe.
        
        Floyd’s death, caught on video, set off nationwide protests in support of Black lives.
        
        Rouhani said the scene was “reminiscent” of Iran's own experience in its quest for freedom and liberation from domination, and that Iran instantly recognized "the feet kneeling on the neck as the feet of arrogance on the neck of independent nations.”
        
        Cuba and Venezuela also took jabs at the U.S., making specific references to the protests during words delivered to the U.N. General Assembly.
        
        While the tactic of criticizing the United States for its racial tensions and policies toward Black Americans is decades old, it comes as historians and experts on democracy warn that under President Donald Trump, American moral authority and stature around the world has waned.