"This offends most Americans’ sense of fair play and is leading to a backlash . . ."  The same adverese reaction was common among white segregationist southerners in the 40's and thereafter.  Yet it was the strategy of peaceful confrontation that won the day for minority civil rights. The sit-ins cost the lives of a number of demonstrators, while it only created a sense of outrage among the whites.  No parity there . . .

I'm a white deep Southerner who grew up in the 40's.  I saw black men beaten for not getting off the sidewalks as white women approached.  That brutality was in retaliation for their offending the whites' sense of a kind of perverted "fair play" according to a well-understood code of conduct imposed by the white overclass.  If fthe code was not enshrined overtly in the local statutes, that was no problem.  The white men on the bench easily found other infractions that could be piled up on the offending black citizen with no one looking askance.