White privilege is a hard conversation because we all want to believe in the American dream. We want to believe that America is both a democracy and a meritocracy, where all of our lives are the result of our own hard work and ambitions. I believed exactly that, all the way until I was getting my master’s degree and took a class called Social Determinants of Health. Only then did I realize that not only do some people not start from zero, a lot of black people start in the negatives. And that’s just not fair.
