Kristof with some important and troubling studies about the mostly unconscious yet powerful biases against women and minorities in our society:

It's not that we white men are intentionally doing anything wrong, but we do have a penchant for obliviousness about the way we are beneficiaries of systematic unfairness. Maybe that's because in a race, it's easy not to notice a tailwind, and white men often go through life with a tailwind, while women and people of color must push against a headwind.

While we don't notice systematic unfairness, we do observe specific efforts to redress it — such as affirmative action, which often strikes white men as profoundly unjust. Thus a majority of white Americans surveyed in a 2011 study said that there is now more racism against whites than against blacks.

None of these examples mean exactly that society is full of hard-core racists and misogynists. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a Duke University sociologist, aptly calls the present situation "racism without racists"; it could equally be called "misogyny without misogynists." Of course, there are die-hard racists and misogynists out there, but the bigger problem seems to be well-meaning people who believe in equal rights yet make decisions that inadvertently transmit both racism and sexism.

So, come on, white men! Let's just acknowledge that we're all flawed, biased and sometimes irrational, and that we can do more to resist unconscious bias. That means trying not to hire people just because they look like us, avoiding telling a young girl she's "beautiful" while her brother is "smart." It means acknowledging systematic bias as a step toward correcting it.