In a time when resentment, betrayal and accusations consume us, it seems more than fitting to call upon the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the most inspiring, benevolent, empathetic, and passionate individuals to walk this earth.

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear,” King declared. “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

It is these sentiments that we must recall and that we must live by, because I truly believe without them we have lost our way as a society in harmony. The hate we brandish is too great, too ugly, and diminishes the beauty of being human and being aware of ourselves and others.

Of course, current and ongoing outrage is not without reason. Following the paths of other seemingly racially motivated instances of police brutality over countless years, beloved local CD and DVD salesman Alton Sterling was violently forced to the ground by policemen in Baton Rouge and shot multiple times in the chest, killing him. Only a day later, Philando Castile was pulled over on account of a broken taillight and a suspiciously negligible resemblance to a wanted suspect. Upon request, he reached for his ID, and also notified the cop that he was legally carrying a gun but had no intention of using it. In response, the officer reportedly shot him several times at length, and Castile was eventually pronounced dead. Highlighting the potential motives behind these events is a Washington Post study that found despite black men comprising only six percent of the country’s population, 40-percent of 2015 police killings of unarmed men were committed against this same cohort.

Equally tragic is the murder of five Dallas police officers by Micah Johnson, who appeared to be acting in retaliation to police brutality and expressed to negotiators that his aim was to kill specifically white police officers. Months earlier, Chief Flynn of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin police force emotionally revealed to interviewers that he was distracted by his phone during a commission meeting because he had been alerted about a drive-by shooting that involved the death of a five year old girl. Flynn lamented the prodigious loss of black lives to all crime, from police to non-police related homicides.

There is no possible way to deny that each of these events and those that precede them are devastating and in urgent need of discussion and resolution. But nothing substantial has been done – and everyone wonders why, although the truth lays directly before them. We are part of the problem, no matter what and who the word we constitutes; regardless of skin color, sex, religious orientation and political beliefs, we are all human. Race can serve as a wonderful, unique sense of identity and source of pride, but it also has a way of dividing us – real people who evolved from the same starting point and feel the same emotions and walk the same planet. Race is not necessarily real; somewhere along the way the color of our skin began to wrongly signify something better or something lesser. In many ways, race is no more than a social construct that has the ability to separate us along faulty lines.

In this situation, it does just that: it tears us apart and erases years of effort and progress. It pits people against one another, and pressures them to choose a side. If this idea seems unbelievable, spend an hour watching biased broadcasts by competing news networks that spin the problem of unforgiveable and immoral violence into a matter of black versus white; read comment threads on online news articles and social media outlets in which people accuse one another and make unproductive and circular arguments; listen to your peers and to yourself as simple disagreements take an angry turn and are left unresolved. It only takes one person to stop and say, What are we doing? Who have we become? Have we forgotten the message King wanted us all to believe – the one that he strove to convey throughout the entire Civil Rights Movement? There is one world, and we share it. We are all neighbors, and we will never overcome the challenges that face us without leading each other through it. Racism is evidently still alive, and that is undoubtedly one of the most pressing issues in the United States political sphere because it is simply wrong to prejudge anyone by such a basic and illogical standard. But nothing good is going to happen until we face this reality together and stop feeding into prejudice ourselves.

I recently watched a video in which two groups of Dallas protesters with contradicting views encountered one another on the street. Instead of giving into mere impulse and meeting with insults and criticisms, something absolutely touching happened: differences were tossed aside and the groups meshed into one as individuals embraced and spoke peacefully. This is so, so important, and the kind of news we should be seeing, because there is still hope. There is hope that we can mend our broken society, hand in hand rather than back to back. In doing so, I think MLK would be incredibly proud. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."