Comfort food needed

I'm still struggling with my feelings about what happened here yesterday, wondering what can be done to turn the tide on racism without causing violent destruction of lives and property.  Too many people of color have lost their lives already - how do we begin to fix this disastrous system without the sacrifice of more lives?  How do we demonstrate our passion for the cause without putting our own lives at risk?

As a Jew, I belong to a minority group that is hated.  But because I am white, it isn't obvious.  I pass unnoticed.  No person of color can do that.  I first became acquainted with the dangers of "driving while black" some fifty years ago.  My closest friend from college, an African-American historian who was a professor at Northwestern University at that time, was stopped by police while in a car with several of her friends for no reason other than that they were black. They maintained their calm and, once having established that they had a right to be in Evanston, they were allowed to leave.  But that incident contributed to the rage that has continued to grow.  Now driving while black has become a major cause of death, as has walking on the street, going to the park, sitting in one's own living room as a black person.  I don't know how people of color manage to tolerate the knowledge that they always have a target on their backs.

I hope that the widespread nature of the protests starts to bring home to those in power that this is a systemic problem, an institutional problem, that goes far beyond the death of one, or ten, or twenty black people.  I don't know how we can make that happen.