I agree with Bill that guilt-tripping whites is very counter-productive. So it's important to me that we liberals/progressives try to use an ethically sound approach to our ongoing, tough, race-related challenges.

As a very privileged older white male, my outlook is this:

340 years of America's white racial terrorism and 60 years of a weak national response is not my FAULT. But, as a beneficiary of that process, it is my RESPONSIBILITY to learn its historical details, and how/why it gave my family and me enormous advantages. With that knowledge, how can I not say I'm also responsible to try to fix the unfair system?

Isn't that what equal opportunity really means??

That said, last year I learned that a white woman

I know, who had considered herself a moderate Democrat for decades, had come to support Trump. She's well-educated and thoughtful, and we discussed this one day over lunch. I learned that her parents were from Ireland and a Soviet Baltic nation; they had escaped oppression in their home countries, immigrated to Canada, and pulled themselves up from nothing. Later they moved to the U.S., where my acquaintance grew up.

As a white woman, she is furious about being held responsible in any way for America's past sins against brown and black people and the idea that she should feel guilty. She understands that her skin color is a definite advantage for her, but sees the rest of the "charges" as very unjust to people like her. Though her history puts her in a pretty small minority of American whites, it reminded me of the perils of using broad brushes and guilt-tripping whites.