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A man who grew up in Seattle’s Rainier Beach neighborhood says the police shootings that killed two black men last week could be just the beginning and that people living in the Emerald City can expect racial tensions to keep building.

Marcus Harrison Green, the founder and executive editor of the South Seattle Emerald, told Seattle’s Morning News that while Seattle has a reputation of being liberal, it is a segregated city.

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“Seattle is the fifth whitest metropolitan city in the United States,” he said. However, it has one of the most diverse zip codes, he added. “That means you have people who have historically been isolated from the city geographically.”

Green attended a Black Lives Matter vigil last week in Seattle. published in The Seattle Times details how short his stay was at the vigil.

“I just felt like it was a rehash of something I’ve seen before and something I will more likely see again,” he said. The vigil involved the same chanting as they have in the past after a police-involved shooting. “It’s sort of the definition of insanity: doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.”

In his column, Green writes: “I fear this will be just the beginning, not only nationally but in this very city, which despite its liberal sugar coating has deep-seated issues of racism just like any other.”

³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio’s Dave Ross says the current protests over police brutality feel very much like riots during the 1960s. In those days, white and black people were calling officers “pigs.”

“This was years ago,” Dave said. “Why are we back there again?”

“It’s a wonderful question,” Green responded.

Green reflected on a Martin Luther King Jr. assembly he attended at Rainier Beach High School. Photos of protesters caught the attention of the students; one asked if the photos were taken recently.

Though some individuals within racial minorities have obtained notable statuses in society since those protests decades ago, Green points out that even having a black president doesn’t mean the underlying issues of racism in the country have been solved. Take a look at the criminal justice system, where nearly half of people incarcerated are black, he says.

While this country may have only scratched the surface of its underlying racism, Dave points out that one thing has changed: white people’s understanding of the interaction black people have with police. And, he added, there is actually a black middle class now.

“You do have black millionaires and blacks in the middle class,” Green said. “Most, I would say, are still in precarious situations.”

For now “the cry will continue,” Green writes in the Times. “Piling up casualties as it grows louder, more hostile, and untamable unless taken up by all in this country, echoing a demand for something that has eluded too many of America’s racially oppressed for too long: justice.”