Here are two videos that may help white Americans to understand—on a personal level—why protests are spreading into riots, and how peaceful protests can escalate into destruction. First, a short video by Trevor Noah, a comic and entertainer from South Africa currently living in New York City and host of The Daily Show.

Second, a short-interview between WGN and J’mal Green from this morning. Yesterday, on Sunday, May 31st, Mr. Green, a local activist and community leader, traveled back from the protests in Minneapolis to Chicago:

Finally, a novel for anyone to read: Ralph Waldo Ellison’s Invisible Man. This novel, written in America in the 1940s, is Ellison’s quasi-autobiography and exploration of Black identity in America. Like Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the racially-charged novel follows the journey of a young man discarded by society who attempts to find his place in an actively hostile world. In a documentary about the author, Harvard professor Cornel R. West observed, “Ellison is a crucible of fire through which one must pass.” It’s a book that changed and continues to change my life.

I encourage all white Americans struggling to understand current events to give this novel, now nearly 70 years old and strangely contemporary, a thoughtful read.