The year-round community of Martha’s Vineyard is by and large a self-selective one. Most of us have chosen, at some cost and inconvenience, a life a bit removed, a bit more deliberate, a bit less competitive and we believe a bit more nourishing than off-Island living generally allows. We don’t mean to be smug, but we are in fact pretty happy that we can pull it off.

In exchange we give up easy access to the resources that the more densely populated mainland offers. Everything from schools and specialty health care to recreation and cultural institutions and big-scale shopping can be an ordeal to reach. We readily enough make the bargain, though; many of us even embrace the moat-effect the ferries embody, perhaps as a symbol of the modest control over our daily lives we hope for.

We understand that complete control in most things — especially something as complex and dynamic as the cohesiveness of a community — is an illusion. Instead, we’ve arrived at a formula, a series of conventions relying on fundamental mutual respect and generosity among neighbors, as well as on the broad set of similar interests and perspectives we bring with us, to keep community life on the Island within bounds that we can more or less happily live with.

That we prize what we have is made clear because the outside world can intrude with a vengeance. Michael Brown’s killing by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and its aftermath are a reminder of how complex and disappointing the larger world can be. Quite apart from the pointless death of a young man and the inconsistencies and serial failures on the part of the public officials and police officers responsible in the aftermath, the broader subtext of racism, fear, frustration and anger in Ferguson seems as alien to our lives on the Vineyard as an American community could be.

There are two Fergusons, just as there are dozens of parallel and unequal communities in towns and cities across the country. We can’t bridge the gap without talking about race and crime and fear, but our conversations are stillborn because of the dissimilarities of our realities, what Charles M. Blow, in an Op Ed piece in The New York Times, calls “a canyon of disparity.” As Blow says, we can’t have the conversation until we fill in the canyon.

Because most of us can’t easily relate to Ferguson and because we don’t know how to bring about the changes we wish for, we avert our eyes and move along, disengaged if not untouched. When we look away, though, we put national shame and personal tragedy to waste.

Systemic change is needed, focusing on structure and oversight for local police, on training and education, on transparency and public accountability and, ultimately, on confronting the root causes of racism in America. One can be pardoned for skepticism, though, as we wait for the honest conversation and brave leadership we need; we’ve learned that it’s almost impossible to underestimate the will or the courage of most American politicians and legislators to do the right thing.

Here on Martha’s Vineyard our amity owes much to the great good fortune of largely shared outlooks and a similarity of expectation. Our chasms are small, and more of our own making than not. Our self-interest lies in investing in the structures and enterprises and conversations that sustain a diverse but inclusive community.