"White fragility: The second-hand smoke of racism..." Damn. That's as good a metaphor and title-that-drew-me-in as ever I've seen in a month of Sundays.

And so spot-on that what masquerades as "genteel" is just another conversation stopper and a way of white people appropriating the harm we perpetuate and making the conversation about our comfort instead of our solution. Put another way, we want to perpetuate our comfort (systemic racism) AND get all the sympathy as well.