Thank you for writing this Mark. You’re right — it’s important to say these things out loud and to express solidarity and support for #BlackLivesMatter. Like you, I hate the “All Lives Matter” bullshit. It’s so obviously a coded message for denying the existence of racism and for denying black people the truth of their experience in the US.

On Friday, Geraldine and I had a black friend of ours over and he described all the times he’s been pulled over by cops and treated in ways I’ve never seen/heard police treat me or the white people I know. He had a loaded gun touching the back of his head just to get his driver’s license out of the glove compartment.

I’m disgusted when I hear stories like that, and you’re right, every friend I have who’s black (actually, save one), has told me they’ve experienced situations with police that my white and Asian and middle eastern friends haven’t faced. It’s nauseating. It’s wrong. And I feel so powerless to help.

BTW — not sure if you caught this Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0141854) but if not, it’s a great, mathematical breakdown of the clear institutional problem we face.