The bills for America’s long-term complacency over racism have finally come due

Trump, an ill-tempered businessman and reality TV personality with authoritarian tendencies, is the spawn of America’s lack of vigilance in safeguarding its democracy, says Borzou Daragahi

Jamela J Pettiford sings during a protest outside the Hennepin County Government Centre, Minneapolis, on 29 May (Getty)

Between the moments when reports of the videotaped 25 May extrajudicial murder of George Floyd by a white cop emerged and fiery nationwide riots and unrest broke out across the United States, there was a 24-hour window.

During that time, a national leader with stature and empathy could have seized the moment. He or she could have read the mood of frustration and despair after months of lockdown and record US unemployment caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and sought to calm the country.

The gravity of the moment was clear. Yet another black man was strangled to death while begging for his life and pleading that he could not breathe, just a few years after a similar incident in New York.