> If I misunderstood your point, I apologize. Care to correct?

You actually made quite good points. The problem that I see, though, is people often feel guilty for being successful just by virtue of being white, and it causes all sorts of other problems.

I'll tell you about my own bloodlines real quick - as far back as I can trace my ancestry, we've got no oppressors/thieves/etc. No one in my family has ever owned slaves, for instance, and we went from lower class to middle class only in the last generation. If I make it myself, I'll be self made wealthy, and my children (only half-Caucasian) will be the first in my bloodlines to be born into wealth.

> You called the OP out on calling white advantages "unfortunate" - I'm saying, it is.

I don't think it's unfortunate when white people are doing well, or when anyone is doing well. It's unfortunate when people are doing poorly, but there should be no personal guilt or unease, just a general sense of "let's fix this" - the negative emotions are counterproductive on many levels.

On a personal level, I've taken very few if any benefits from American society, and learned a great deal of my lessons living in Europe and East Asia, taking friends and lovers of all colors, and just learning a lot at the sometimes-unpleasant school of hard knocks.

Personally, I feel no guilt at being white - but I was sort of raised to, like most people born after 1970, and did for a while. You know what really broke it for me? It's when I spent some time in England and saw lots of really multiracial groups of friends - it was common to see a guy from Africa, a guy with Middle Eastern blood, and a couple white guys hanging out. Or a Sri Lankan first generation immigrant, Chinese 0.5 immigrant, Aussie, and a couple Brits. They always "took the piss" out of me for being an American, but the groups in London actually are a lot less aware of race. The guilt in America over being white forces people constantly highlights our differences, which actually perpetuates racism.

I don't want to ramble on too long, but here's two last thoughts:

1. A lot of elitist white people think "those poor unsophisticated [blacks/Asians/Hispanics], we've got to help them!" -> This leads to teachers speaking slower to them, cutting them "breaks", etc, and there's been a lot of research that when a teacher thinks a child is stupider or slower and teach down to them, the student performs less well. So the, "Oh my, we white people have exploited, and let's now make it right" has nasty secondary effects of treating people like they're second class citizens and perpetuating the old race roles.

2. I see a lot of pro-minority groups that instead of taking a "pro-humanity" stance, they take an adversarial "us vs. them" stance. It's understandable to some extent, but it's a damn shame. As an example, look at how the Duke Lacrosse case went down. That was really shameful. I've read a lot of Dr. Martin Luther King's speeches, he was really a tremendous man. He was always stressing that he wanted to see blacks and whites gathering together, doing great things, supporting and working and serving great causes together. A lot of leaders have gotten away from "let's work together, all races, for a better world" to, "those no good people are exploiting us, let's get them back and make sure we get ours". Maybe it's understandable, but I don't think it's so helpful.

Guilt over being white is straight up a bad thing. People of Caucasian descent have done bad things throughout history, as have people of African descent, as have people of Arabic descent, as have people of Asian descent, and so on, and so on. Hell, the things the Spanish, French, and British Empires did to some of their colonies is more horrible than anything that happened in the United States, but the lack of individual guilt among their descendants on racial lines makes the societies closer knit and less racist. We need less "us vs. them" - and thinking it's unfortunate that whites are doing well is still, however well meaning, "us vs. them". Let's get people who could be doing better up to speed, but let's also never feel guilty about becoming more prosperous.