One of the challenges for makers of the MTV documentary "White People" was getting folks to talk about race when they didn't feel the issue concerned them — like those quoted as saying they consider white the "default race" or "normal."

So filmmaker Jose Antonio Vargas recorded white Americans in situations where they were forced to confront racial identity issues. He found to a white man who attends a traditionally black college, teachers on a South Dakota reservation where resentment toward whites is palpable, a young Brooklyn man bewildered by the Asian immigrants on his block, a white man who teaches a college course on white privilege....

"The only thing I fear is not having these conversations," Vargas said. "What I fear is the silence, the indifference, the ignorance. We can no longer have a conversation about race and diversity without having white people in it."

Racial issues are timely, topping the news during the past several months with the "black lives matter" campaign in response to police shootings and the debate over the Confederate flag. MTV President Stephen Friedman said he's wanted to look at how whites perceive themselves for several years, but it wasn't until he met Vargas that he felt he'd found the right person to do it.