I have long worked with issues of privilege, especially having to do with race, and continue to work on how these are part of my own and all of our lives (in my view) in a profound and really inextricable way, both because of how deeply they’re embedded in our individual and collective psyches and also because of how they likewise shape/invade/annex so much of our institutional and otherwise socially structured lives.  I’m thinking of James Baldwin’s “Talk to Teachers” here, and especially the idea that if the lives of people of color are premised on injustice and on lies, so is my life as a white person premised on all this as well.  This becomes most glaringly evident to me when I think about (and sometimes act in relation to/support of) my (white) children’s life opportunities, which

When I was in high school in the ‘60s (gasp), as part of a research project on LSD, I wrote to request information from Timothy Leary—infamous @ the time for his experimentation with psychedelic substances, arrested often enough “to see the inside of 29 different prisons worldwide," known for catchphrases such as "think for yourself" and "question authority." Leary responded with a standard cover letter and some printed material, which I found very helpful. I got an “A” on the project.