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'White privilege' is not something to feel guilty about. Here's what it does mean.

On some level, we can all agree that things aren't exactly where we'd like them to be.

Does the idea of "white privilege" make you uncomfortable? Angry? Guilty? Attacked? I don't blame you.

It's a hard thing to get your head around, and it feels kind of ... well ... accusatory. But the idea of white privilege isn't itself a bad or good thing; it's just telling us how it is.

And it's broken.


Let's explore an example about how racial inequity in our society is 100% real.


The U.S. Census Bureau decided to examine how wealth* was distributed across race and income. When they looked at the median net worth by race, here's what they found:

That's right, there's massive economic disparity across races at every income level.

And for the poorest of the poor, you can't even see them on the graph. We have to zoom in.

And zoom in EVEN MORE.

Remember, the median net worth for the poorest white household? It was $24,000. The discrepancy is so wide and so real that it is clear society somehow favors those who identify as white.

Something about the way our current system is functioning is not making up for how terribly our past system treated people of color. And that is what white privilege is about.

White privilege is a REAL thing, but it's not a BAD thing.

If life is a race, white people have been running for over 400 years, and black people just started running 50 years ago — and we just got shoes, like, 15 years ago. White people have distinct advantages in life over people of color because of structural racism, discrimination, and disenfranchisement both past and present.

This is not something to feel guilty about, but it is something to act on. Guilt is not productive. But conscious awareness is. White people should not feel guilty about the discrimination of the past but should feel compelled to help correct the inequalities of the present.

Racism still exists, and "colorblindness" makes it worse.

Racism has not disappeared from the country because we have a black president. People of color deal with discrimination on a daily basis, sometimes in small ways (like feeling uncomfortable in a store) and sometimes in big ways (getting killed by a cop despite not being a lethal threat).

The only way to make racism disappear is not to ignore it through “colorblindness" but to actively fight it — in your own mind and the people you know. No real problems have ever been solved by ignoring them. You're much more likely to fall on your face if you're unwilling to look for pitfalls.

Good people do racist things.

When Joe Biden called Barack Obama "articulate," it was kind of racist. But Joe Biden isn't a racist person. He just lets dumb stuff fall out of his face hole sometimes. The word "racist" is loaded because it immediately subjects the accused to shame. Unfortunately, we don't have too many alternatives. I wish we did.

Try to resist the urge to get defensive and listen to the person's arguments with an open mind. They didn't say you were racist. They said that thing you just said was racist. If the arguments make sense to you, change the behavior and move on with your life. Consider it a free self-betterment seminar. If you don't agree, consider changing the behavior anyway if it is feasible to do so. Can't hurt to err on the side of not hurting someone.

The first step — the very first step — is acknowledging that the system is broken. It's also the easiest.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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Innovation

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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