“I finally got up my nerve to ask a stranger directly about white privilege as I was sitting next to him at the gate. He had initiated our conversation, because he was frustrated about yet another delay. We shared that frustration together. Eventually he asked what I did, and I told him that I write and teach. “Where do you teach?” he asked. “Yale,” I answered. He told me his son wanted to go there but hadn’t been accepted during the early-application process. “It’s tough when you can’t play the diversity card,” he added.Was he thinking out loud? Were the words just slipping out before he could catch them? Was this the innocence of white privilege? Was he yanking my chain? Was he snapping the white-privilege flag in my face? Should I have asked him why he had the expectation that his son should be admitted early, without delay, without pause, without waiting? Should I have asked how he knew a person of color “took” his son’s seat and not another white son of one of these many white men sitting around us?I was perhaps holding my breath. I decided to just breathe.”

More