Thousands of people around the world are sending a dual message to Americans as they protest the death of George Floyd , the latest casualty of the systemic violence against Black residents of the U.S. Their message: We see your pain and we see your country for what it really is.

To those outside Americas borders, the nations state-sanctioned racism stands in stark contrast to its proudly proclaimed ideals of liberty and equality in the more than 100 years that the U.S. has been a global power.

Black Americans and members of other marginalized communities in the U.S. often share their stories abroad in search of solidarity, recognizing that international embarrassment could help drive reform at home. Representatives of the U.S. government have offered foreigners a different narrative of progress towards fulfilling Americas promise.

Since Floyd died after a white police officer pinned him down by the neck sparking international protest and outcry its clear that deep skepticism persists worldwide about Americas commitment to racial justice and that people connected to the U.S., officials or others, will be asked to answer for it for years to come.

Its such a burden to have to carry that additional weight into the world, and I think that may be true for everyone, but particularly for the people who are being oppressed or mistreated at home, said Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, a former ambassador who served in the State Department for more than 30 years before resigning in 2017 . Not only do we have to deal with our own sorrow, but we have to answer for our European Americans. Ive got to try to explain white racism, white supremacy. Ive got that extra burden of trying to explain that, not just dealing with my own pain and sense of heartbreak.

Abercrombie-Winstanley added: Blacks have been in the foreign service being representatives of the United States since the late 1890s, when we were sent out as envoys, so we have struggled with the contradiction of representing the nation and being disdained by the nation at the same time, and even so, we have served well.

Before President Donald Trump threatened to violently suppress demonstrations in memory of Floyd, before the spread of recording equipment let the world witness how U.S. police brutalize non-white bodies and before I cant breathe became a global rallying cry challenging American cruelty and injustice, America tried to explain its racism to the world. It largely failed.

How The Story Got Told

European settlers made racist treatment of people of African descent integral to the entity that became America 400 years ago , when they brought enslaved Africans to the colony of Virginia. Two centuries later, much of the economy of the independent U.S. still relied on slavery as nations in Europe began banning the inhumane practice (while preserving other ways to oppress millions of people of color).

Americans who escaped slavery began telling the countrys peers about their mistreatment in visits abroad and in their writings. Frederick Douglass saw his Narrative translated into French and Dutch and spent two years speaking to audiences across Ireland and Britain. There, the chattel becomes a man, he reflected . Other Black Americans later echoed that sense of feeling fully acknowledged as human beings when they were away from American racism, even in other societies designed to benefit white people.

The Civil War and subsequent emancipation brought the U.S. in line with most European countries in barring the treatment of people as property. But it didnt end white elites interest in sustaining their own power or widespread prejudice and Reconstruction, the crucial period of efforts to allow Black Americans to truly exercise their rights, was brief.

A trio of developments in the next few years ensured racism remained central to Americas identity and how it was perceived abroad. White politicians instituted Jim Crow laws to ensure that millions of Black people across the South were denied full citizenship. The U.S. became more ambitious as its wealth and power grew, with the result that it announced itself as a major international player by successfully waging a war against Spain in 1898.

W.E.B. Du Bois, the sociologist and writer, saw a moment for Black Americans to redouble efforts to look beyond the U.S. in fighting for justice.

Its the era of post-slavery but really aggressive oppression so Du Bois is kind of Otto von Bismarck, writing to connect people, said Stephen Casmier, an associate professor of English at Saint Louis University, referring to the German leader who drove the unification of German communities into one country. In his book The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, Du Bois argued people of African descent all over the world were somehow connected together and involved in the same kind of struggle, Casmier said.

Tying Black Americans plight to the pain of European colonialism in Africa showed that as Americas prominence grew, so would the worlds knowledge of its domestic failings and that as powerful Americans united with leaders of other countries to shape global affairs with little regard for most people of color, other international bonds would flourish, too. Du Bois co-organized his first Pan-African Congress to try to shape the settlement after World War I. In the years that followed, some Black Americans who left for Europe , such as Josephine Baker, became cultural icons.

Global awareness about how discrimination was endemic in the U.S. couldnt force America to change its ways. But it helped make it harder to argue against reform.

By the middle of the 20th century, American officials often tried to describe their government as fundamentally opposed to racism and committed to tackling it for two major reasons, scholars said. Washington wanted to promote its defeat of the Nazis and their violent prejudice, and it was increasingly afraid of losing the global battle for public opinion to the Soviet Union.

The United States is participating in this global war against racism. Then you say, Wait a minute, the United States is doing this with a segregated army, said Moshik Temkin, a historian at Harvard University. That becomes a problem from a PR perspective. How are you actually selling the United States as a world democracy? It then becomes a severe geopolitical problem.

Moscow highlighted American racism and atrocities such as the Birmingham church bombing in propaganda materials, particularly among the newly independent nations in Asia and Africa, whom both the Russians and the Americans wanted on their side in the Cold War and who were already angry with Europeans treatment of non-whites. U.S. officials promoted examples of progress such as the Brown v. Board of Education ruling ending segregation in schools and started such programs as a jazz diplomacy campaign featuring Black musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Temkin said.