Neil Hamilton is an emeritus professor of law and former director of the Agricultural Law Center at Drake University Law School in Des Moines. He was raised on a 200 acre farm in Adams County Iowa, on land that had been in his family since the 1870s.

I remember the first time someone called me out for my white privilege. It was decades ago by a Black food activist in Detroit. Naturally I was offended – the label stung coming from someone who had no sense of me other than the color of my skin. My so-called white privilege was growing up in an ill-heated farm house without running water watching my parents eke out our living on a small farm. Where was the privilege in this?

Time can soften many memories and events of recent weeks have forced us, to examine the legacies of racial injustice and wealth inequality plaguing our nation. Recent events made me think more deeply about white privilege, a term used frequently in recent weeks along with the idea of systemic racism. It may be natural for Iowans to strike a defensive pose and say not me – how dare accuse me of exercising a privilege I neither claim nor recognize! But it is important to understand being the beneficiary of white privilege does not make you a racist – that is a function of your thinking. White privilege is a function of how society treats you.