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By Giri Nathan
[vc_empty_space height="15px"]America’s days as the stand-alone economic superpower are long gone, but for better or for worse, we still export culture like nowhere else. American pop culture becomes global pop culture. American political concerns often become the concerns of the world. And in the past few weeks, specifically American political frustrations have been aired out worldwide. Mass protests against police brutality began stateside after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in June, and then spread all over the world—to Kazakhstan, to Japan, to Estonia. Sometimes, but not always, they were staged in front of U.S. embassies. American protests were mirrored in countries where the police isn’t as militarized and unaccountable as the American force; where systemic racism may exist, but differs greatly in the particulars, given local demographics and history; where the American concepts of race don’t map cleanly onto the local concepts. Our agitation led to a global agitation, against things that all right-thinking people can recognize as wrong: state actors committing violence with impunity, and bias on the basis of skin color.