Radicalized violence. A century ago, we called it “lynching.” Today, we call it “police brutality.” Both mean the same thing: our lives are in danger, threatened by some of the very people who vowed to protect and serve us. We all are tense, devastated and grieving.

We grieve for Alton Sterling. We grieve for Philando Castile and the rest of the nation over the senseless lost of lives in Dallas. The execution of police officers does not end the execution of Black Americans, nor does it put this country on a course of change.

The question we must ask and address is, is the United States repeating the same mistakes of 1967-1968?

In July of 1967 in Detroit, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey, race riots erupted in response to police brutality against African Americans. Rather than deal with the racism inscribed into American institutions, including the criminal-justice system, the government focused on building a massive prison state, militarizing police forces, criminalizing small offenses and quelling intermittent moments of racial tensions exploding into violence.

President Johnson had set up a commission to investigate the causes of the 1967 riots and provide future recommendations. Illinois governor Otto Kerner chaired this commission. The Kerner Report was incredibly hard-hitting. The most famous passage from the report warned, “This is our basic conclusion: Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”

Though the commissioners had softened the language from the first draft, much of the data remained the same, and the overall argument was still incredibly powerful. The report berated federal and state governments for failed education, housing and social service policies, identifying the major problem as an institutionalized racism. This meant that racism was not just a product of bad individuals who believed that African Americans were inferior to white Americans but that these racial hierarchies also were embedded in the structure of society.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had already pushed through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, largely ignored and rejected the Kerner Commission’s report and recommendations. One month after the report’s release in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.

The report also subjected police to intense scrutiny. In a haunting section, the report explained, “Negroes firmly believe that police brutality and harassment occur repeatedly in Negro neighborhoods.” The rioting had shown police enforcement had become a problem, not a solution, in race relations. More aggressive policing and militarized officers had become city officials’ go-to response to urban decay. “In several cities, the principal response has been to train and equip the police with more sophisticated weapons.” The report stressed that law-enforcement officers were not “merely a spark factor” to the riots but had come to symbolize “white power, white racism, and white oppression.”

This line of thinking and action has continued to this very day. African Americans, especially males, are seen as threats to the past and current strength of “white society.” These cancerous thoughts grow in strength as social and financial disparities widen within our country.

The uproar of the senseless loss of life over differences in skin color, gender, sexual orientation, belief, speech, education exceeds comprehension. To tolerate, care for and understand people, with all our differences, not only makes us a more diverse society, but also makes us more human. There is only one race, and that is the human race.