This is concerning.

As has been explained many times by many others, the existence of “white privilege” does not mean that white men do not suffer or face challenges, only that their various ordeals are not caused by their race and gender. People who face repeated, institutional, structural discrimination or intense violation and shaming may also happen to be white men, but that kind of problem is never because they are white men. A white man’s brief moment of discomfort in a diversity discussion (which seems to be the occasion that prompted this essay) is the exception that proves the rule that whiteness does not cause pain, and it’s not even really an exception, because (excuse my suggestion) what’s causing the discomfort is not so much the white man’s identity colliding with a structure that is designed to hurt him, but his difficulty listening to and accepting what other people are saying about their experiences of race and gender. In other words, diversity discussions in general are not designed to hurt anyone; they are opportunities for us to learn about each other, express support, and therefore to work better together in the future. They may be briefly confusing or uncomfortable, but their end result will improve our lives.

What alarms me even more in this essay is the emphasis on unfairness as something that cannot be resisted or changed because it is part of nature. Of course nature is unfair; some babies die shortly after birth through no fault of their own, for example, but I don’t think that’s the sort of unfairness that’s being discussed. The subject is racial inequality. Racism isn’t part of nature; it’s based in falsehoods we are taught socially and that we enforce politically. When people are in pain because of their race and gender, that’s a situation that would be avoidable if we had a better society. We shouldn’t shrug at people’s reports of racism or say that it bothers us to have to hear about it. We are responsible for resisting racism and stopping that particular unfairness.