Originally published in RealClear Politics.

The partisan police reform battle brewing on Capitol Hill over the new Senate Republican legislation and House Democrats’ proposal, with President Donald Trump’s new executive order lurking in the background, reveal a division in America. But the divide isn’t a partisan or ideological one. It is both more subtle and fundamental: those who build, and those who destroy.

As illustrated by the recent protests and riots over racial inequality, there are deep and long-festering wounds in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. The continued pain and ongoing presence of these wounds is an unfortunate result of 345 years of legalized racial oppression (slavery and segregation) followed by only 56 years of efforts toward racial equality.

But these events have also illuminated a unity. Nearly eight in 10 American voters – with similar majorities among whites, blacks and Hispanics – hold a positive view of both protesters and police officers, seeing only a small number of looters or racists in each respective group. If that strikes you as surprising, it is only a testament to how the behavior and words of national political leaders (elected and unelected) and the news media have conditioned us to expect extreme divisions, and testament to the fact that Americans are more aligned on this issue than is supposed.

Such unity in American public opinion has paved the way for those who build to rise above divisiveness and pursue genuine solutions. Sen. Mitt Romney has sought bipartisan consensus on federal policing reforms and joined Black Lives Matter marchers on the streets of Washington, D.C. In Atlanta, rapper “Killer Mike” has called on protesters to “plan, strategize, organize and mobilize” rather than “burn your own house down for anger with an enemy.” And here in Utah, chapters of the NAACP and the Fraternal Order of Police have made joint statements about the protests and are currently pursuing police reform legislation.

Those who build have responded to the wounds and the pain revealed in recent weeks by showing a better way forward. They are seeking to create or deepen relationships that cross traditional divides in order to promote healing and find solutions to deep, longstanding problems.

Sadly, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Some of those who destroy are trying to take advantage of the current crisis as well. They sacrifice progress toward greater racial equality on the altars of money, political power, virtue signaling, or simply acceptance and popularity among friends.

The fruits of this destructive path are varied. Perpetrating violence on peaceful protesters or on law enforcement alienates mainstream, anti-racist Americans whose support is necessary to secure racial progress. Purely partisan legislative approaches undermine the consensus required to move solutions forward. Exploiting the cause of racial inequality as a political fundraising scheme pollutes the chances of achieving that equality. Denying the existence of a racism problem in America threatens to discredit the very legitimacy of American government by distancing it from the needs of its people.

Those who destroy enable racism by preventing the dialogue required for progress toward racial equality. By placing immediate personal gain ahead of sustainable change in the name of the common good, they ensure that equality and freedom will never be realized.

Fortunately, those who build have an advantage: They can appeal across prevalent divides in American society in ways that those who destroy cannot. They can unite across partisan, ideological, geographic or economic differences by appealing to their shared aspiration to build for the sake of others as well as their own.

As they do so, they will reveal American greatness by fulfilling the vision of a nation in which all women and men are truly created equal, and endowed with basic human rights granted by the hand of Providence. They will have healed a nation by ensuring that all the racial pain being currently expressed was borne for the sake of a better world. That is something worth building toward.