I agree, CogDog, with your points about privilege. As a white male heterosexual US citizen, I believe it’s my ethical imperative to act as an ally to people of color, women, people of different sexual orientation, people w/o citizenship or documents. One way to begin to do this is as you suggest – by acknowledging that it’s unfair that you & I are not suspects in the airport, at a border crossing, while driving, and so forth.

I also think it’s really important simply to listen to the people whom we wish to support, which is a lesson I learned from following activists on Twitter and seeing how people react to them (eg the ‘not all white people…’ objection to critiques of structural racism).