Someone asked me last night, why I was worried walking around the area where the protesters and police were gathered.  I had half-jokingly said to a friend that she should walk beside me where she wouldn’t be so visible, in case she got beaten for WWI (Walking While Indian).  I joked that my pale skin might shield her a little, but that it’s possible we’d both get beat down. I recounted this story to a friend online who asked how her dark skin could be relevant.

Another friend, online, made this incredibly succinct and accurate comment:

In situations like riots when it is considered ok for the police to lash out at anything that moves, they don’t actually forget their usual prejudices. In fact all of a sudden they find themselves in a position to indulge them violently without much danger of political repercussions.

Exactly.  And this is why the people who normally face heightened levels of police attention/brutality even when the situation is calm as a Sunday afternoon, are very, very hesitant to put themselves at the kind of risk that comes along with being a marginalised person during these kinds of increasingly violent situations.

This is something you absolutely have to understand if you are a pale-skinned activist trying to work with people of colour.