> no matter what you do, since you are white, your actions are of less value I'm saying, no matter what you do, your actions have the same value as anyone else

> no matter what you do, since you are white, your actions are of less value I'm saying, no matter what you do, your actions have the same value as anyone else's; but if on balance you've benefited from unjust systems, yeah, in my mind your starting point is different. This is part of how I judge my own accomplishments; I'm on the "favored" side in most of these systems. It's not as simple as "if you're white", since of course there are a lot of unfair systems in place in the world, not just racism. But just in the context of racism -- if Peter Norman had been aboriginal Australian, it seems quite unlikely he would have even been there, and thus never in a position to make a statement anyone would notice in the first place. Though it's hard to say, since this was still around the time the state was deciding it should stop forcibly removing Aboriginal children to be adopted into "proper" homes. Honestly, it's a bit weird to me that this idea gets such a negative reaction. Most people have this as a basic moral principle on a small scale. If you had an awful teacher at school who only liked kids with blue eyes, and he gave you a bag of sweets but nothing to the less-blue-eyed kids, would you feel some duty to share the sweets around on the playground, or would you sit in a corner and eat them all? If you join a card game, notice the dealer is an old friend (and he suggests he can "help" you win a bundle)... do you switch tables, or just figure it's your lucky day? On a small/simple scale we feel a responsibility to correct small injustices, and to avoid profiting from them. For larger, longer-lived (and more complicated) injustices... that feeling just tends to go away.