It was the summer of 1991, in Berkeley, California, when I took part in my first protests against police brutality, after video surfaced of the violent beating of Rodney King by white police officers. I had moved out there to take classes at the university, and a few friends had rented rooms near the campus. The school had recently announced plans to raze and repurpose People’s Park – site of the famous anti-war demonstrations of the 60s and an important public space for the city’s massive homeless community. Word spread of an uprising to challenge the park development and we went to watch from afar, uninvested.

But that first night, I watched a police officer wade into a crowd of hippies swinging his billyclub. I saw the club strike the hand of a woman; her fingers had been in a peace sign. I imagined the bones in those fingers breaking. I thought I almost heard the crunch. I am a pacifist. I was enraged.

The next night, the cops’ heavy-handedness continued. Hundreds of them had pushed hundreds of protesters out of the park and up one of the adjacent streets. We were at the front of the crowd, walking backwards, yelling our anger, as the wall of clear plastic shields and dark plastic helmet-visors slowly advanced.

Then someone threw a bottle – someone behind us, maybe 20 feet back. We watched it arc over our heads and land in the middle of the mass of police. Everyone got quiet.

“Oh, shit,” my friend Matt said.

The police charged and we took off running, tripping over feet. Some people fell. I worried about being trampled. It was chaos.

“They’re shooting at us,” Matt screamed. Pop-pop-pop. The whiz and blur of projectiles flying past us, ricocheting of the street. Pop-pop-pop-bing!

A wooden bullet had skipped off the pavement and hit Matt right in the ass. I heard him yelp as we ran. We sprinted for three blocks and got away, shaken but fine. Matt was limping, and took home a nasty bruise – a perfect circle-shape, a little larger than a silver dollar, almost black in in its lurid purpleness – but we were lucky enough to be able to laugh about it later.

“Who was the asshole who threw the bottle?” Matt asked, rubbing his sore spot.

We are lucky, still, people like us. Meaning: white people. Matt and I are both white. With the protests against police brutality happening today – or tomorrow or the next night, probably in a park near you – we enjoy the privilege of our position on the sidelines. Of choosing whether or not to get involved. If you are a white person who chooses to engage in street protest against racist injustice in America, you have an obligation do so non-violently.

Don’t be the asshole who throws the bottle.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest It’s OK to be angry at the bottle thrower and the police. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

When a peaceful protest tips into violence, the state’s case for the legitimacy of its use of suppressive force is validated, instantly. This is counterproductive, obviously, when the reason for protesting in the first place is to end what we see as wrongful use of state force. This is also a large part of why I am a pacifist: for pragmatic reasons. I subscribe to the belief that non-violent means are more effective than violent ones. I cannot assure you that I would subscribe to this same belief if I was black. I do not know that I would.

I have taken part in – and plan to continue to take part in, and encourage others to take part in – the current protests against racist policing in America, but I know and encourage others to remember this: Black people are on the front lines. It is first and foremost a black movement. Black people are risking far more by being out there face-to-face with cops than white people. (Recent history proves this all too convincingly.) White people’s role in protest should be a secondary one – a strictly supportive role, not agitating or bottle-throwing so much as chanting along, marching in time, bearing witness, simply being there to be counted.

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At the Millions March in Oakland earlier this month, black activists made a list of “Rules for Whites” that included “No megaphones” and “Follow black leadership.” As the East Bay Express reported, “When the march began, white demonstrators were asked to hang back and allow for its black participants to move through the crowd to the front.” So why are we still smashing windows and tearing down Christmas ornaments, weeks later?

In November, here in New York, I took my 10-year-old son to a demonstration protesting the grand jury’s decision in Ferguson. We marched around the park and joined chants of “No justice, no peace” and “No racist police” and even “Fuck the police”. (My kid didn’t say the “fuck” part; he’s kind of a goody-goody.)

Then a group of younger white folks in bandana masks and Occupy gear started up with a separate chant, from the outside: “Who do we want? Darren Wilson. How do we want him? Dead!”

I didn’t want anybody dead, and neither did my kid. And neither did a black woman marching in front of us. “Whoa,” she said in the direction of this new contingent. “Slow your roll. That’s taking it a little too far.”

She was right. And I’m glad my kid was standing close enough to hear her. I am more enraged than ever at the racist violence of America’s police. I am angry at the government and committed to affecting change. But I have zero patience for white people who throw bottles from the back of the crowd, who smash windows or throw garbage cans off overpasses or punch anyone or set anything on fire. Words are categorically different from physical actions, but I don’t think we should be calling for anyone’s death, either.

Police respond to violence with more violence, as they are sanctioned by law to do, and people get hurt. Police are heavily armed; protesters generally are not. The protesters closest to the police stand a higher risk of injury than those farther away. White people cannot be throwing bottles from the back while leaving black people in the front – on the front lines – open to further injustice. We have to stay in the back and keep our hands to ourselves. To do otherwise, fellow white person, is to co-opt a movement that is not rightfully yours. It’s not your white ass on the line.