On Late Night With Seth Myers, Margaret Cho, responding to criticism of the North Korean military character she portrayed at the Golden Globes ("This is not a show. You no have thousands of babies playing guitars...You no have Dennis Rodman or any basketball at all.") notes that it's the whitest whites who profess the greatest offense on behalf of non-whites. [Margaret Cho: Whites 'Too Scared' to Talk Race with Blacks, by Michael D. Nguyen, NBC News, July 23 2015]

I see the same thing.  Americans of Italian descent are often immune to charges of racial insensitivity, while the fiercest crusaders for white self-flagellation are often blond and blue-eyed.  Or come from the northern reaches of the United States—beatific WASPy sorts from Vermont, North Dakota.  I have never seen a guy named Vinny from Dyker Heights calmly intone about the evils of white privilege.

I reject the idea that, as Eric Holder once sneered, whites are "cowards" when it comes to discussing race, unless it's cowardly to fear getting fired, immolated on social media, or physically pummeled.

But Cho's angle isn't far off when she declares that whites are less afraid of Asians than blacks.  That is true for 100 percent of all living whites, Italian, English or otherwise.