I’m half Polish and half Irish. In the 1970s, there was a Polish jokes craze. I didn’t feel unduly persecuted because I knew I was smart and the jokes were about how stupid Poles were. In 1979, I spent a college semester in London. I remember thinking how great it would be to not have to listen to Polish jokes. They didn’t tell Polish jokes at that time in England. Unfortunately, they told Irish jokes instead.

There’s always going to be something about us that puts us at either an advantage or a disadvantage. In some African countries, where nearly everyone is black, people discriminate against others on the basis of their tribal groups.

In the early 1960s, my husband’s family lived in Nigeria where his father taught at a university. Some faculty members were black Americans who had come expecting to be treated better in Africa than they had been in the US. To their surprise, many of the Nigerians looked down on them because they weren’t members of a tribal group and didn’t even know from which country their ancestors came.

One Nigerian professor wouldn’t even shake hands with a black American, but had no reservations about shaking hands with a white person. Privilege is a tricky thing.