As a student at Dartmouth, I find this article to be extremely accurate and representative of the culture I've encountered amongst the protests here and (through conversations with friends) at other places across the country. As a white male, my friends and I are too intimidated by the Black Lives Matter protesters and their actions to try to initiate any sort of discussion on the matter in fear that we'll only provoke more anger and protest.
If people are angry about X and you go up to them and try to tell them how much you like/support X, isn't that what you'd expect? To make people want to engage you in a thoughtful discussion, it's important to demonstrate humility and open-mindedness to their opinions.
I recently tried to engage a BLM protester about the issues, hoping to have a thoughtful discussion about some policies and ways forward to improve the situation. 3 paragraphs latter, I was being told that my white privilege should exclude me from even participating in the discussion, let alone informing decisions about policy - ostensibly because I do not have a shared experience of discrimination.
