Are We In The Midst Of Another Civil War?

To The Editor: 
Recent events should make it apparent that this country is in the midst of another civil war and like the Civil War of the mid-19th century the prevailing issue is race.
On one side is law enforcement, on the other side, is the black communities they police. Both have experienced the worst the other has to offer.
Blacks have been pulled over for “driving while black,” dragged from cars and beaten, and, worst of all, shot down in the streets. Police officers have been verbally and physically assaulted, unjustly accused of everything from racial profiling to use of excessive force, and, worst of all, ambushed and murdered while on patrol. When will this end? How can we put a stop to these internecine events?
We must try, however difficult it might be, to view things through the eyes of both the police and blacks. African Americans have been dehumanized, brutalized and discriminated against since they first stepped on a slave trader’s ship to the very present.
I know some whites retort “None of my ancestors owned slaves.”
The problem with this line of logic is that most blacks can claim that their ancestors were slaves, that their ancestors were segregated by the Jim Crow system, that their ancestors were denied basic civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution, that their ancestors were lynched, and that their ancestors were victims of police brutality.
The collective memory of most blacks is clear. The collective conscience of most whites remains nebulous.
From the perspective of law enforcement, especially those assigned to police inner city ghettoes of America, they are faced with a ubiquitous cycle of depravity, lawlessness, and violence, most of which is perpetrated by blacks on other blacks.
They feel they are under constant scrutiny, either by the general population, the media, or even their own departments.
In response, they often rally around one another to maintain the impenetrable wall of the “thin blue line,” obscuring the transparency needed to restore the confidence of the black community.
Many have become hardened by experiences of working in the ghetto environment. Some suffer from what is known as cognitive dissonance: the conflict that emerges in one’s mind between what they believe and how they react or respond.
Most police officers understand the despair and hopelessness that pervades the ghettoes of America and know that the majority of blacks living under these conditions are good people placed in a bad situation. Most know it is an issue of education and economics, not race, however, because the majority of people they encounter who are uneducated and unemployed are black, they react by blaming black people, whether justified or not, for their condition.
Furthermore, most contacts that police have with the black community are negative as they are most often because a crime has been committed. The overwhelming majority of police officers are conscientious professionals charged with an intractable task. They need the support of the general public as much as they need to restore the confidence of blacks that they are there to serve and protect, not to harass and brutalize. 
Finally, the only way to ensure that an encounter with law enforcement does not result in a police officer using deadly force is to comply fully with directives designed to protect the individual as well as the officer.
Even if you are innocent or believe you are being singled out because you are black, failure to comply will not help your case. It will, however, certainly escalate the situation and put the already stressed police officer on heightened alert, making the situation ripe for a confrontation and the possibility of a misinterpreted threat ending in tragedy. Black lives do matter, so act like they matter.