The dinner table is one of the most sacred places in the household. For many families, it is the place where difficult conversations, delicate family dynamics, and restorative fellowship all come together. These complex events come to a head here because the dinner table is a safe place. Often, during the holidays, the dinner table feels so safe that many family members are comfortable uttering their most racist, transphobic, queer antagonistic, misogynistic, and generally ugly ideas over their turkey and cranberry sauce. Some white people who see themselves as nonracist will just play nice instead of clapping back directly at these problematic family members. This year, consider doing something different.

Let’s start with the history. In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education decision of the Supreme Court of the United States declared “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional. This formally ended segregation in the United States, integrating public schools, lunch counters, water fountains, buses, and all other public spaces in the country. But these legal changes didn’t fundamentally change the structures of discrimination and segregation in the United States. Even though Black-white segregation may be decreasing over time, research shows that white Americans still actively engage in “white flight,” or moving away from neighborhoods with nonwhite populations, especially if they are middle class. These divisions have important implications for income and wealth distribution. As writer Ta-Nehisi Coates noted in a 2014 article in The Atlantic, “The average per capita income of Chicago’s white neighborhoods is almost three times that of its black neighborhoods.” Neighborhood segregation means that many white Americans don’t see many nonwhite people as members of their communities, and certainly not as their next-door neighbors.

White Americans are also isolated in their social groups, as research has found they are the group least likely to have diverse friends and peers. According to a 2016 analysis from the Public Religion Research Institute, the average white American has a network of friends that’s 91% white. A combined 8% is Black, Asian, Latinx, mixed-race, other and of “unknown” racial backgrounds. The same study found that Black Americans, on average, have a friend network that’s 83% Black, 8% white, 2% Latinx, 0% Asian, and roughly 7% that’s mixed, other, and of unknown race. Not only are white Americans often isolated by race where they live, they are unlikely to be surrounded by friends and loved ones who are nonwhite. If anti-racist white people do not muster up the courage to challenge their bigoted family members this holiday season, no one else will be there to do it.

These forms of isolation mean that many white Americans don’t have to confront racial differences in their personal and daily lives. Because of white privilege, many of them can simply opt out of difficult conversations that challenge internalized stereotypes or beliefs about people who aren’t like them. These attitudes are shaped from an early age. As University of Rhode Island history professor Erik Loomis put it in a recent piece in the Boston Review, when citing a study of white school children in a specific town in the Midwest, “almost none develop a meaningful critique of structural racism, question their own privilege, or think seriously about how to combat racial prejudice.” They may “oppose overt racism,” he continued, “but they also see themselves as deserving of every advantage they have received.”

The issue of racism is tangled up with a host of other issues, including gender and sexuality, class, and education. Starting the conversation can seem daunting, but it can also be a gateway to a host of other meaningful interactions about systemic prejudices and inequality.