My series “Overcoming Racism” feels pointless when today’s theme is “Black Lives Matter.” Since I began my blog a year ago, the country seems to have become more divided. Black people have been forced to take as their own every black male, regardless of his guilt or innocence, because law enforcement and the judiciary—from Ferguson and Chicago to New York and Baltimore—protect their own from scrutiny and responsibility.

I feel hopeless. Will white America interpret “Black Lives Matter” as divisive or as an appeal to make black folk our own? Can we expect professional organizations—police or teachers’ unions—to weed out those individuals whose actions defame their professions? (That Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby charged the six officers involved in Freddie Gray’s arrest offers some hope, but, sure enough, the Fraternal Order of Police immediately protested.) And when politicians are backed by billionaires and lobbyists, whose interests do they serve?

With admiration, I watch my husband grieve for the victims of the earthquake in Nepal as if they were his own. With impatience, I pass Trenton Central High School—surrounded by fencing since last fall but not yet demolished, much less rebuilt—and grieve for the year already lost to its students, who are now scattered around town in buildings without libraries, science labs, or gyms. Young minds matter. When will we care for the least among us as if they were our own?

This will be my last post for a while.