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Good Morning. It was perhaps the understatement of the morning on this programme yesterday when Revd Jesse Jackson told Justin that America is in an ugly mood right now. President Obama, in Warsaw this weekend for what is likely to be his last NATO summit, begged his nation to confront racial disparities in policing while acknowledging the dangers officers faced. This, he said, is a matter for all of us. A video, filmed by Lavish Reynolds, girlfriend of Philando Castile, a black man, shortly after he was shot several times by a police officer whilst sitting in his car, has gone viral. Her plea that surely he cannot have died in this way led, it would seem, to the outpouring of protest and the eruption of violence in Dallas where 11 police officers were shot – 5 of them fatally. The killer is reported as having said he wanted to target white people. A Washington Post online museum reflecting on Obama’s Presidency suggests that the optimistic afterglow of the dream of a post-racial America [following his election as President] now seems misplaced. Racism, of course, remains a hugely complex issue, and not just in America. Addressing the causes and effects of racism demands tremendous courage and honesty. There was never, let’s face it, going to be the kind of change some expected in the course of two terms in the White House? The American networks have had plenty of black Gospel preachers in the past few days declaring racism as a terrible sin. It can have no place, they’ve been proclaiming, in a society where the notion of human freedom is linked to justice: where people show their love of God by how they treat their neighbour: the unique nature of God’s love breaks down all the barriers which human being erect. This is the essence of the creed they have been professing and the nub of the Christian Gospel. Indeed, one of the best sermons I have ever heard was Archbishop Desmond Tutu telling a packed football stadium in Bradford in the 1980’s that the colour of his skin was God’s essential gift to him. It was just a pity, he lamented as apartheid began to wane in South Africa, that not everyone saw his blackness in the same way. As victims of violence on all sides are remembered in many people’s prayers today, Martin Luther King Jr’s observation that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere continues to challenge the soul and psyche of America, and of us all.