Hey I'm 3 days late but here's my white lady opinion. I've dealt with a lot of that "white guilt" problem. It can be really disturbing to identify more with your black friends because that's who you grew up with and spent time with than the white kids you hear saying racist shit. It can be really difficult to grow up with gay parents and be lumped into a group of straight people who "just dont understand", even though you get harrassed for it throughout adolescence. It can be emotionally devastating to be involved with the Desi community and be called out on white privilege by someone who grew up in a wealthy family with vacations out of the country, the best clothes, the best education, when I grew up in a poor neighborhood, with hand me downs and skipping meals all of the time.

Am I privileged because I'm white? Undoubtedly, YES. In some ways I am. I have never felt the need to defend myself so much as in the last few months because on one hand people are finally able to speak up for themselves about issues of race and speak forcefully about inequality after far too long. I think this is a good thing, obviously. But on the other hand, I see nasty awful comments on forums like "all these (black/muslim/etc/etc people are animals and they're all the same". Holy SHIT....It makes me hate white people too. But hey... It's almost like we cant just LOOK at anyone and know their whole story. I hope we get to that point really... that we can be more curious and open and less quick to judge each other... right now things are really intense, I have to hope that these tensions will peak we will settle into a more peaceful place for everyone soon. But maybe I'm an just an optimist. I do watch a lot of Bollywood.