Being a white, middle class 20-something straight male in the suburbs, its a lot like being transparent. You can go most of your life without really thinking about being 'white.' I don't have a deep-rooted connection to my culture. The only true struggle in my family dates all the way back to my great-grandfather immigrating from Italy, then marrying outside of his Italian bloodline which caused his family to disown him.

It's easy to take everything for granted. I understand (but don't condone) the prevailing attitude among white people that we're living in a post-racial society where there is an even playing field for everyone, and people who complain about racism are playing the victim. When you're in a middle-class suburb, everything seems fine in the world. It's called naturalization: being born into something, therefore you assume subconsciously it was meant to be this way. I took pride in being a 'moderate' because I thought the world was on the right course and anyone too far on either side of the political/ideological spectrum simply didn't understand my enlightened point of view that everything was going to be OK.

It's not until my late teens that I started taking stock of all that's come to me because of my heritage and skin color: a fantastic school system, nearly crime-free neighborhood, never being broke, people actually listening to your ideas and opinions, immediate respect every time you say something 'smart.'

I see how people can go their whole life never understanding their 'whiteness,' and spouting generalizations about racially-based events such as Ferguson (live in Missouri by the way, so I have to deal with middle-class white people complaining about the 'race-card' nearly every day).

I'm not ashamed to be white, but I'm not necessarily proud either. I'm proud of my family, of my heritage, but not of my race. I'm such a mutt of welsh, irish, italian, english, that I really have no connection to my ethnicity.