It started with the killing of two African Americans by white police officers. Both incidents, a day of each other, one in Minnesota and the other in Louisiana, were captured on highly publicized videos, reigniting what has become a national debate. Protests started across several US cities. In one such demonstration in Dallas, five police officers were gunned down on Friday in a deadly ambush by a lone gunman seeking revenge over the police use of lethal force against African Americans. This is being followed by more protests. The US is reeling after a week of shootings in three states. Essentially the events appear to be overrunning the country. This week's outbreak of violence laid bare an America deeply fractured along racial lines. All the statistics show that black people in America are more likely to be killed by policemen. More than 1,000 people were killed in police operations in the US in 2015, nearly a third of them black — despite the fact that black people are 13 percent of the population. Unarmed black men are more likely to die by the gun of an officer than an unarmed white man. It is more dangerous to be black in America in that you could easily get killed. But the events of the past week did not take the US back to the civil rights throes of 1968. To say it's a civil war is to act like all policemen are like the two in Louisiana and Minnesota, and that all blacks are like the gunman in Dallas. The civil war was two regions of the country fighting against each other, not individuals that were stepping outside of the boundaries of the law. All that black people really want is for law enforcement to protect them. What they don't want is for police to kill them with impunity. This might be easier said than done. Many Americans are currently at a loss to deal with the violence that is everyday fare, in a country where there are many more guns than people, and with few rules in place about their use. And the police get no help from Congress, which refuses even to consider the possibility of regulating weapons, even in the face of repeated bloodbaths on American streets. The truth is that no great leader is going to narrow the gap in the US racial divide. Certainly not the presidential candidates. Donald Trump has his constituency. Hillary Clinton has her constituency. They are talking to their part of the world; neither is really talking about how you knit a country back together. The Democratic coalition — composed of urban white liberals and minorities — is more racially diverse than the Republicans, which has been becoming older and whiter for years. Trump leads Clinton among white voters, 51 percent to 42 percent. She crushes him among African-Americans 91 percent to seven percent. A true leader in this regard does not exist. The election of Barack Obama as the country's first black president, and then his re-election, has not seemed to have broken the color barrier, although Americans should certainly demand from the person they will choose to represent them a visibly strong attempt at unity. So what has America become? A people at war with themselves, unable or unwilling to control their most violent urges, seemingly wanting to settle every dispute with a gun? There is definitely a breakdown in trust. There must be a balance in the concerns on both sides. Police play a critical role in safeguarding communities but African Americans have legitimate reasons to distrust the law. The US is in an extremely challenging position right now. There is a certain fraying at the seams of the country. But as it continues debating racism and police relations, America should not let a few bad police officers and a crazed sniper define it.
