> However, he definitely could have left out the sentence comparing the suffering of people experiencing racism to people who are afraid others might think them

> However, he definitely could have left out the sentence comparing the suffering of people experiencing racism to people who are afraid others might think them racist. The student letter didn't ask for special treatment because black students were suffering because of experiencing racism themselves, but that they are suffering anxiety because an unrelated black person was killed by racists. In terms of practical negative impact on a person's life, people thinking you're racist will probably make things a lot harder for you than "someone who vaguely looks similar to me was murdered on the other side of the country". Now, I'd hope people wouldn't be dumb enough to think someone is racist just because a high-profile racist incident happened in their state, and in that case, the above wouldn't make sense, but we did see a bunch of people become violentl against Asian people just because a virus was allegedly first found in a Chinese town, so it might be a very real possibility.