Nonviolent Protest and Resistance Privileged

[The Grand Nudger]

I'll walk you through my thought process, as tedious as that is, but it looks like it's needed since you think I'm trying to shame the current crop (and maybe I did inadvertantly).

I'm not saying violent revolution doesnt have its place. Thats a different discussion. The OP says that they were told nonviolent protest is a white privilege.

Which it is.  If I non-violently protest something the chances of my being beaten with a baton or teargassed or jailed are markedly lower than a black man doing the same.  I am privileged to have certain expectations of how authority will respond to me, regardless of my perceived belligerence.   For me, even pointing a gun at a cop but not shooting is still "peaceful protest" in a significant portion of the public mind.   

I have to assume the idea behind that is that only the privileged whose livelyhoods aren't threatened can afford to take a patient, nonviolent route. The first thing I think of when I think of nonviolent protest is the SNCC, so you could already imagine how silly the white privilege idea is applied here to me, but I offered an example anyway. The direct violent response to their sit-ins... yadda yadda. Beat the dead horse. They couldn't afford to be violent, not with their lives and not with their message. Violence was always an option, of course, but only barely. Only if they wanted their message to be tarnished, and only if they wanted a more violent backlash than they already saw. So in a sense, and in response to the OP, it's violence that's a white privilege, at least in that time. And some might argue it's true now, when any violent act by a Muslim is an Islamic extremist FEAR ALL MUSLIMS! and any violent act by a white American Christian is a lone wolf, leaving all white people's reputations intact. But in reality, it's case by case, and given all media outlets, everything gets praised or tossed under the bus pretty evenly.

It doesn't seem to be a "case by case" basis when, in each case, one ethnic group relative to the other possesses the privilege no matter which way you cut it.  

I agree that the violent response to their non violent protest was as much a part of getting their message across as the nonviolence itself, but had they lashed out, the narrative would have changed. So in staying nonviolent, they controlled the narrative and they kept their message.

The narrative would have changed to what?  The narrative -then- was already as dismal as it could be.  We fondly recall the civil rights movement -now- in light of history, and not all of us...but then..they were a bunch of criminals and anarchists, and riots and murders and rapes were attributed to them.  

To be clear, using the peaceful protests of the Civil rights movement wasn't meant to shame anybody, but as a stark contrast to nonviolence being a white privilege.

You, yourself, just gave examples as to why non-violent protest was then and is now a white privilege.  They were -beaten- and -killed- for their trouble, both by the public and by the state...while the press demonized them roundly. Alls well that ends well, we might imagine..and say "at least it worked".....but, obviously, some rioters don't agree that things ended well at all.