Recently, someone on Medium asked me if I have “white guilt.” One way to respond to this question is that I had nothing to do with being born the way I am. I happen to have “white” skin; I also happen to be half-Jewish and half gentile.
But in the deeper realm of understanding privilege and the world in which I grew up — 1950s and '60s small-town Alabama — then yes, I have an abundant supply of guilt. I had a good childhood; I was raised in an intact, though dysfunctional in its own way, family including my maternal grandmother. And I was a middle-class white person which gave me advantages like being able to walk anywhere I wanted and enter any establishment I wanted without being viewed with suspicion or hostility (at least until I grew my hair past my shoulders).