A racist quandary in a whiff of smoke

Years ago, I became aware of my white privilege as both a blessing and a curse. The unearned privileges have become well known, sparked by Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 article “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies.”

But the curse of white privilege is not so well explored. One aspect of it for many of us raised to be “good…