Editor’s note: In the column, the president of the NAACP describes some of the history of racism in graphic language, including the use of a racial slur. We’ve chosen to include the quote unedited.

Is this it? Is the peaceful protest-turned-ugly Sunday in Long Beach the beginning of a new era in which racial discrimination is finally throttled to death?

There is hope among some in the black community, however slight, that the protests, largely peaceful but accompanied by fire, violence and looting all across the country in the days since the killing of George Floyd, are going to be the catalyst for changing the way police deal with young black men in this country.

There is hope, again a tenuous one, that the events will spark, finally, a positive move toward true equity and equality and an abandonment of hatred. The question is, does the healing start right now, or are we going to have to wait, yet again, for the fire next time?

Many African American city and community leaders have seen this before over the past 55 years, and yet they have hope that something good will come of the protests this time. And, for the most part, they disregard the looters and arsonists who have been systematically destroying inner-city communities and businesses as mercenary outliers and opportunists.

“I gotta believe in hope,” said 6th District Councilman Dee Andrews, who saw firsthand the damage that had been done to the neighborhoods in his district Sunday night.

“I’ve been through all 3 riots—Watts, Rodney King and all down the line,” said Andrews, 75. “I know that this violence and looting isn’t going to benefit anyone.”

Andrews got up at dawn Monday to help sweep up broken glass and otherwise assist in the rebuilding of the neighborhoods in his district.

“I hate to see things being torn down,” he said. “We have small businesses here and we can’t be burning them down or tearing them up. People have just started getting back on their feet again from COVID, and now people are tearing things down.”

Andrews said he has faith in reform and that people need to become angry enough to know that the system has to be changed, though, he said, “I do believe in our system, and I think and hope change can come without violence.”

NAACP Long Beach Branch President Naomi Rainey-Pierson is closing in on 70 and has seen the worst of racism since she was a little girl in a segregated neighborhood in Mississippi.

“There I was, a little 10-year-old person walking in the woods picking berries, flowers and herbs, and I’ve seen black men hung, with their genitals cut out and tongues cut out. My church was burned down. I had an elementary-school classmate who was chopped up and they used his blood to write on a school wall. ‘This is what we do to niggers when they don’t know their place.’ This has been going on since slavery.”

Those are particularly harsh examples of racism in America, yet, while horrifying, aren’t just remnants of the past. Sadly, the U.S. is a country today that isn’t listening to its better angels.

The protesters on Sunday, Rainey-Pierson said, were mostly peaceful, and blamed organized outsiders for the violent aspects of the day.

“I believe in nonviolence,” she said. “And I believe that if you believe in something, you don’t loot. You protest, but you don’t destroy property. You don’t all fight over everything.”

Rainey-Pierson said that the protests aren’t just about George Floyd. Echoing the philosophy and words of Martin Luther King Jr., she said, “If people think that, they’re failing to hear about those who live in ‘the other America.’ In other America, men walk the streets in search of jobs that don’t exist. In the other America, millions are forced to live in distressed housing. Their incomes are far too low, thousands of kids are graduating high school at 7th and 8th grade reading levels. Elementary school students get iPads or Google Books but they don’t have internet access, and their parents can’t help, so they’re getting farther and farther behind. It’s symptomatic of dreams deferred. Will we be, in another 50 years, still quoting Dr. King?”

The cyclical, deja-vu aspects of the Sunday disturbance are not lost on anyone who lived through the trio of racial violence episodes in California and beyond. And still the conversation hasn’t progressed, anymore than gun violence hasn’t been dealt with in any meaningful way.

Sharon McLucas, a longtime activist in the African American community, said she’s lived in Long Beach through the Watts riots in 1965, the King riots in 1992, and now this, and the repeating pattern breaks her heart.

“It’s unfortunate that we have agitators tearing things up,” she said. “There needs to be a change. There just needs to be a change. I cried when I heard George Floyd calling for his mama. I wish you could talk to my daughter.”

That was an easy wish to grant, because McLucas’ daughter, educator Sheba Gillis, was right next to her.

Gillis, 41, was a freshman in high school during the Rodney King riots. “I was living in Wrigley at the time and I saw all the destruction. I saw the DMV burn down.” She said it’s discouraging to see violence happening again.

“I’ve been in a few protests,” she said, “and for the most part, the vibe was amazing on Sunday.” But, later, the violence came and the needle moved back in the wrong direction again.

“We were just starting to bring new merchants to the area, then this,” she said sadly. “I won’t be surprised if they don’t come back.”