The United States is bracing for its sixth day of mass protests against racism and police brutality, a rising wave of anger that has swept dozens of cities across the country.

Floyd, an African-American man, gasping for air as white police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck reignited simmering frustration with a country that has failed to confront racist brutality despite numerous similar tragedies and protests.

West, who is black, recounted being followed by a police officer in the prosperous suburb where he lives because the officer found him “suspicious.” When Mr.

West said, saved him from potentially becoming a victim of police brutality.

“When I have to tell my 12-year-old son he has to comply and just don’t ask any questions when these police officers are corrupt – that hurts,” he said.

In one incident, video showed police driving two SUVs into groups of demonstrators and knocking people down.

In Louisville, Ky., police pepper-sprayed a television news reporter during a live broadcast, and one protester broke the hand off a statue of Louis XVI.

The demonstrations follow a string of high-profile killings of unarmed black people.

In March, Louisville police opened fire in Breonna Taylor’s apartment after bursting in to serve a search warrant on the 26-year-old hospital emergency-room worker.

In early May, police in Georgia charged three white vigilantes with the February murder of 25-year-old jogger Ahmaud Arbery – arrests that only took place after video of the incident went viral.

Research from Yale University estimates that African-Americans were 3.5 times and Latinos twice as likely to die of COVID-19 as white people.

A Pew Research survey found that black and Latino people were also far more likely to know someone who lost a job or income as a result of the pandemic-related shutdown.

“It’s a pandemic and people of colour are getting hit harder,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Sunday on CNN.

A police officer kneels down in solidarity with protesters during a rally in Washington, D.C.

Trump’s presumptive challenger in November’s election, criticized demonstrators’ “violence.” He also vowed to tackle police brutality if elected, but offered no specific proposals.

But Alvin Tillery, an expert in American race politics, said the focus on property destruction was misplaced.

“No one’s condoning violence,” said Prof.

He argued that this wave of protests was different from previous uprisings over racist police brutality because millennials and Generation Z are less inclined to put up with institutional racism than their forebears.

“Young people are not willing to wait, or accept platitudes around slow changes in the ways that, say, earlier generations were willing to,” he said.

Tillery said, "I think that there’s an opportunity in Minnesota, with their leadership, to really keep pushing for police reform and to push more broadly for democratic reforms that make people believe that the system is working better for them.

He also said the Black Lives Matter movement has to focus on seizing this moment to build a multiracial national coalition pushing for racial justice.

Protester Raj Lakhiani, 37, said the demonstration was about broad inequality and lack of economic opportunity as much as about specific instances of police racism.

“It’s not just Trump; everything under him has to go,” he said.

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