It would be comfortable for me to continue to believe that the civil rights movement forced the end of de jure segregation and routine discrimination, while ignoring the continued segregation of fact and the injustices faced by African Americans, who see incidents like the shooting of Michael Brown as isolated incidents. I could continue to shake my head and say that these events are tragedies, but they certainly do not justify nationwide protests. If there is no systematic pattern of disadvantage and abuse, then I am not morally obligated to act. In this class it is impossible for me to simply dismiss the complaints of groups like Black Lives Matters as overreactions. Like the rest of the nation, I must now engage in serious reality-testing, recognizing that racism is alive and well in America, and begin actively working to correct