Only someone so comfortably ensconced in privilege that they need to find ways to fabricate closeness to death to feel alive would leave their bed and blankets and house and clothes and city and the tens of thousands of years of civilization to finding more efficient ways to protect us from the elements in the dead of winter to belly flop into a billion gallons of toxic ice. It’s so white that if you happen to be a non-white member of the Polar Bear Club … you become, from the time you remove your clothes to the time you climb back out of the water, white by osmosis.”
-- The Author (Narration) (Introduction )

Importance: In this quote, the author offers an example of what he sees as the extreme nature of white privilege. Within the context of the Introduction as a whole, his point is that such attitudes and such behavior reflect a genuine lack of...