White women in Louisville line up to form human shield to protect Black protesters against white police

White women in Louisville line up to form human shield to protect Black protesters against white police

Injustice and discrimination tend to be described in binary terms: good vs. evil, female vs. male, Black vs. White.

However, at one of the at least twenty anti-police violence demonstrations held across the country on Thursday, an act of alliance disrupted that line of thinking by showing White bodies on the line to protect Black lives.

In an image captured by photographer Tim Druck, scores of White women in Lousiville lined up arm-in-arm to form a human shield separating the Louisville Metro Police from protestors expressing their angst about the murder of Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black people at the hands of the police).

Taylor was fatally shot by police as they barged in her home in March with a no-knock warrant and killed her while she was laying in her bed. The police were wrong about not only the suspect but also the apartment that they entered.

Using their bodies as sacrificial lambs, they offered up their White privilege for the safety of Black men, women, and children.

The photo went viral as it dismisses a divisive narrative that people of different races can’t get along. More poignantly, that white women like Amy Cooper, have no respect for Blackness if it does not serve them.