I don’t talk about my past interactions with cops because I try my best to repress that trauma, but the injustice done to Breonna Taylor has brought a lot back up. This space is not mine to occupy, but I also feel I have to speak up about why this is so utterly horrifying to me.

There have been times when I’ve spoken to other white people about police violence and realized that while they’re able to acknowledge the role that race plays in who cops target, they ignore that this is one disgusting facet of a complex power structure that thrives on abuse.

It’s easy enough to denounce racial discrimination, but the way that many white people use this as a loophole to still view police as a viable option or a source of justice is careless and blind. “I only survived because I’m white” may be a hard truth, but it can’t be an excuse.

I’ve survived because I’m white. I’ve had cops raid my home with rifles drawn after calling for a wellness check. I’ve had multiple cops kneel on my back to keep me restrained. I’ve had a police chief laugh in my face and ask to see my law degree when I asked for his warrant.

I’ve watched cops break bones with a battering ram because a suicidal person couldn’t unlock the door fast enough. I’ve hidden in my own house while cops climbed a ladder through my window without a warrant because I pretended not to be home after someone made a noise complaint.

I’ve seen indigenous people stalked, shot at, maced, gassed, dragged through razor wire, sprayed with frozen water cannons overnight, be bound, kidnapped, kept in cages, and have their belongings destroyed by officers who urinated, defecated, and burned their means of survival.

My privilege is concrete and proven by the fact that I made it out of any of these interactions, let alone so many, alive. But it does not mean that I can go along acting as though my safety is a universal truth. I cannot continue utilizing a system just because it spares me.

The precedents being set for police now may disproportionately effect the Black victims of their brutality, but we allow them to set those standards when we don’t fight the cause as a whole. That means pushing for nothing less than the total abolishment of policing as we know it.

Stop accepting your whiteness as a privilege and accept it as a symptom of a fatal disease, one that only leads to more suffering. Stop feeding the fever by selectively humanizing cops and settling for half-attempts at dismantling something that is so deeply broken.