African American

because I'm white. Being white doesn't mean I automatically get everything I want, but it does mean, among other things, that if I get pulled over by the cops because a tail light is out, all that will happen is I get a polite reminder to get it fixed; I don't get arrested or shot. It means that nobody is likely to call the police because I'm barbecuing in a public park or trying to get into my own house when I locked myself out, driving through an upscale neighborhood in an expensive car, waiting for a friend at Starbucks, campaigning door-to-door, or so many of the other mundane, harmless things black people have been harassed for doing. I do most of those things routinely and nobody bothers me and I don't think they will. Hearing about these incidents has made me much more aware of the fact that I do benefit from my race, every day.