I was born not quite two years after the end of World War II and grew up in a small, middle class New England town. As a veteran, my father had qualified for a mortgage loan via the GI Bill and, so, my parents were able to buy a small home in a new, suburban development.

But home ownership — the primary way the middle class creates wealth — was not a benefit available for the vast majority of black veterans. While the Department of Veterans Affairs would co-sign loans, actual loan administration was left to the states. That led to widespread discrimination against blacks because of a long-standing practice of “redlining” (which prevented them from buying homes in white, suburban neighborhoods) and because many banks refused to lend money to blacks, regardless of their ability to pay.

Not surprisingly, then, in my childhood there was only one black family in our town and throughout my entire K-12 schooling, I had not one black classmate. White town, white neighborhood, white education. In that cultural context, parents and school teachers taught us that the police were our “friends” and the guardians of public safety.

In the latter part of the 1960s, I was a college student at the University of Massachusetts and, while intellectually supportive of the civil rights movement, I regret that I took no concrete action to demonstrate that support. In my privileged, self-involved, white middle class bubble, I assumed that discrimination was something that only happened in the overtly racist South.

It wasn’t until I was almost 40 years old and in graduate school during the 1980s that I learned how systemic racism had been institutionalized throughout American society and heard firsthand from African American descendants of slavery how racist policies and practices had affected them personally.

In 1986, my employer at the time, Digital Equipment Corp., made a strong commitment to valuing diversity. One of the results of that commitment was a requirement that all supervisory and management personnel (at least 100 of us) learn about racial and gender differences via a group dynamics/experiential education training format. It was an emotionally intense, multiday residential experience.

That’s when I finally began to wake up to the reality of racism. For some exercises, I was paired with a supervisory colleague. Because we had worked together extensively and had pre-established a level of mutual trust and regard, we were able to deepen our friendship and truly open ourselves to each other.

I will never forget the look on his face as we talked and shared late one night. I could see, in the depth of his eyes, a peer human being as he described his frightening and terrifying experiences with police: not in Georgia or Alabama, but right here on Interstate 91 in western Massachusetts! The fear that he experienced, and would continue to experience as a daily matter of course, was palpable and genuine.

Except for his skin color, my colleague was as solidly middle class looking as I; yet I had never been pulled over for “driving while white.” Whenever I saw flashing blue lights in the rearview mirror, I assumed it was because I had been speeding or perhaps had a tail light out. I never once felt personally endangered when I was stopped. But, indisputably, my colleague had been stopped many times for “driving while black.” And each of those experiences reinforced the feeling of being powerless and at the mercy of a system of justice that had no mercy toward people with black skin.

I still trust and respect the police and continue to view them as my helpers and defenders. However, I now know that some of them do not deserve that respect and are in fact aggressors and haters who have unfairly prejudiced the public against their brothers and sisters in blue. And yes, there are aggressors and haters of blue uniforms in the general public. But in a democracy, as opposed to in a totalitarian state like Russia, Iran or Venezuela, I hold law enforcement officers to a higher standard.

I expect sergeants, lieutenants, captains, chiefs, mayors, governors and district attorneys to model, set and enforce professional policing. I also expect municipal leaders and protest leaders to jointly plan events and agree on a strategy beforehand that sets specific contingencies for the prevention of personal harm, violence and the destruction of property.

I further expect that the primary role of police at a demonstration is to protect the First Amendment right of the protestors, as well as to protect their physical being from counter-protestors seeking to initiate violence.

Additionally, I would expect pairs of police officers and parade marshals to partner together and agree on the proactive identification and removal of any demonstrator, infiltrator or provocateur who engages in violent behavior. Finally, protest organizers, police officials and municipal authorities should engage in a retrospective review of the event to discern and agree upon lessons learned that could structurally improve policies and practices, as well as the efficacy, of future demonstrations.

In my opinion, this is how a democracy should work: with mutual respect and collaborative work toward improving liberty, equality and justice for all.

Flashing blue lights in the rearview mirror is just one, small example of a particular form of oppression experienced routinely by black Americans. And how many kinds of oppression have they been subject to, from non-verbal expressions to deprivation of civil rights to outright murder? I can’t even begin to imagine or comprehend what it must be like to wake up every day with anxiety and feeling in jeopardy just because of the color of my skin or who my parents happened to be.

Four hundred years of overt and systemic racism is enough! It must stop. We must all continue to protest until the system is fixed and individuals choose love and collaboration over hate and domination.

Bill Mailler, Ph.D., lives in Northampton.