Bread is a near daily part of my life. A few years ago I began baking my own, as it is healthier than store bought, and making it delivers its own satisfaction. Flour, salt, a bit of fat, water, yeast, a pinch of sugar, mixed and turned out to be kneaded. Eight, nine minutes of pressing, folding, turning, pressing more.

Eight minutes, forty-six seconds. Enough time to transform those few elements into a living thing under my kneading hands. Enough time for a man’s life to be ended under another man’s knee.

On Thursday, June 4, after Rev. Al Sharpton’s searing, and soaring, eulogy of George Floyd, I—along with millions of others—observed eight minutes and forty-six seconds of silence, marking the exact time on May 25 that Floyd was murdered.

Eight minutes, forty-six seconds passes in the blink of an eye when you’re busy. It seems interminable when you must be still. Yet what I was doing was not hard—what George Floyd endured was, and was unimaginable. I had not expected the tears that spilled from my eyes within seconds. I also did not expect the words and memories and thoughts that flooded through my mind, as they must have through his.

I am not wealthy, nor do I have civic, social, or public power. Yet I have the privilege of skin the color of the bread dough that takes form under my hands. George Floyd did not have that privilege. And for that lack, he died.

George Floyd was young enough to have been my child—my son, T, is only four years younger. I never lived the fear that Black mothers deal with, but T learned early what their sons are subjected to. As a teen, one of his close friends was M, a smart, articulate, well-mannered young man of color. Just the kind of kid I wanted to rub off on my kid. One day T came home after he and M had hung out together. He was agitated, angry. “We went into a store,” he said, “and this guy started following us around right away. He was watching everything we did, like we were going to steal something.” T knew it was because M was Black—clerks never did that when he was out with a White friend. “It made us feel like criminals.”

Guilty because of the color of skin—a knee on the neck.

The summer after I graduated high school, I worked in a shoe store. Not long after I started, N was hired. He was about my age and we hit it off. It didn’t hurt that I found him handsome. It didn’t matter to me that he was Black. But it mattered to our boss. He didn’t like it when N and I took our breaks together outside the store. We ignored the boss, and the passersby who glared at us. Then one day N didn’t have a ride home, so we hopped into my red VW and I drove him. Later, the boss strongly suggested it was “not a good idea” for me to be driving “to that part of town.” Within days, N lost his job. The boss said he wasn’t needed, but he quickly hired someone else. Someone White.

Not needed because of the color of skin. Or was it really “protecting purity”?—a knee on the neck.

Several years ago a now deceased friend took me to lunch at an exclusive club he belonged to. A couple of decades earlier, neither he nor I would have been allowed to dine there. R, who had retired at a very early age, had been one of the first Black men to break the color barriers in New York City banking. Now he led a national foundation focused on health education for Black men, he’d lobbied Congress, testified before the FDA, and was devoted to opening doors into the finance world for young Black men and women. As we were leaving, two White men he knew were entering. When he greeted them, their body language told me they were uncomfortable. But it was I who became manifestly uncomfortable when one of those so-called scions among the local movers and shakers used the word “boy” as casually as he might use R’s name. Which he never did. R gave no indication he noticed, but how could he not have? Revulsion still courses through me at the memory.

Lesser than because of the color of skin—a knee on the neck.

Always, as Rev. Sharpton said, the knee is on the neck.

Four days before George Floyd’s death—his murder—my car died at an intersection. Even with light traffic due to the stay-at-home order, drivers piled up behind me. As I was on the phone with Triple A, a Black man, about my son’s age, rapped on the rolled up passenger window, indicating he could push me. I had to wave him off, and I read the change in his face. A moment later a Hispanic man of about the same age came to the opened driver’s side window. I too had to signal him to wait a second as I finished the call. I apologized, and gratefully accepted his offer to move me out of traffic. He and the Black man immediately teamed to get me around the corner, into a drive, and under the shade of a tree. The Hispanic fellow headed off to wherever he’d come from almost before I finished expressing my gratitude. But even more heartfelt was my thanks, by way of apology, to the Black man—how I’d been in phone hell with AAA, how the passenger’s window wouldn’t roll down so I could talk to him. My relief was as great as his, with him knowing I had not flinched from him, feared him, because of the color of his skin.

When my bread comes out of the oven, its crust is beautifully brown. Before I learned to knead the dough well enough, there would be a hole in its center when I cut it open. My heart is cut open now, and there is a hole in it. There is a hole in the heart of this nation.

There’s no way to fix the hole in the baked bread, any more than there’s a way to heal the holes in our hearts. And there are many. They are named George Floyd, Manuel Ellis, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, and so many more, going back to Emmett Till, and so many, many other names we’ll never know. Christopher Cooper’s name could have been on that list. All holes gouged in our hearts over centuries of senseless, vicious, reprehensible deaths from knees and nooses and weapons wielded by man against man. Only because of the color of skin.

These are our sons, our daughters, our brothers, our sisters.

It must stop. We must stop it. And to do that, we must act.

Protesting is important because we take comfort in solidarity and community. But the public protests will eventually fade. The problem will not. Here are ways you can work to effect true, long-term change.

Write your county commissioners and sheriff, your mayor, your police chief, and city council members, to require implementation of 8 Can’t Wait. It costs nothing, it requires nothing except enactment, and decreases police violence by more than 70%.

Racism. Yeah, I seen it, and spoke out against my whole life. From leaving in Cleveland, Ohio, to Chicago, and now here in Tampa, Florida. At a early age my parents shown me the importance of treating everyone as equal. I never cared about how someone looked like, or the color of their skin. I accept everyone for who they are, and treating each other with mutual respect. But here we are today, the riots that have taken place lately is because of continuing treatment people have received from not being treated as equal. And the constant evidence of that comes from a behavior breed by hate. When I was a child I lived in a beautiful neighborhood community where every family was from a diverse background. I had neighborhood friends who were Black, Native American, Hispanic, Asian, and every spectrum of the world. In college, I found out just how much hate would go and it forever open my eyes. As Student President of the Ball State University Religious Council I was invited to march with the Student President of the Multicultural Affairs Council during the first ever MLK march at Ball State University. What was shocking was that cold day walking down McKinley Avenue was very little police presence, along with a handful of college students along the side of the streets. I was marching with at least 400 black students and leaders of the community. Needless to say I was excited, and a little bit uncomfortable as we approached Riverside Avenue. Men in white sheets, and hoods. It was the KKK. And their main office in Knightstown, Indiana is very close to Ball State. They just stared at me with looks of hate that made my chest, and heart get tight. I was told by one of the leaders marching beside me to not respond. As we marched past them one of them looked at me and yelled “We know who are N lover, and know where you live.” Shocked, I had my first real experience of how far hate from others was like. The next day walking home late from evening classes I found the place where I was staying at vandalized. Everything I owned was vandalized, rug soaked in urine, and my pet cats missing. I was scared and I immediately called the police department who never showed up. My first experience ever being a target of hate. Through out my college years I moved from place to place. Never publishing my phone number, or address. I cut back from student activities on campus. But I will never forget my first time ever dealing with racism. My Senior year I decided to no longer fear get the best of me, and to be more of advocate for Diversity, and culture. That’s the way I been since college. Lastly, Racism has no place in our society. We must not be afraid to speak out against it. What I did back then was stayed silent because I was living in fear of what could happen next to me. Those who are racist towards someone is a learned behavior, meaning they were not born to hate. We must put aside the fear and become learn to accept each other as equals. If we could do that with open minds, and hearts so much can be achieved together. Maybe what has happened this past week will open up a dialogue where we can to begin to heal, and learn to accept one another as equals? One can hope.