I'll address it, but before I do - look at how you framed the question and response. It's mildly disingenuous and makes it hard to have a discussion. Take this:

"I think it's pretty tough to make the case that economic and educational inequality in the United States along racial lines is intrinsically a good thing"

I don't know anyone that's making that claim. I mean that literally - I don't know anyone who says, "Economic and educational inequality along racial lines is a good thing." Most certainly I didn't make the claim, and I don't know of anyone that has.

But let's talk about relative inequality, because it's important. Take some groups of people - could be race, gender, religion, favorite color of car, anything. Some of the groups are doing better than others.

Is there a problem there? Well, sure, there is. You've got some people not doing as well as the rest of people. It'd be good for them to do better.

But is the problem that there are others that are doing well? Well, this comes down to how you think the world operates. Is most wealth created by people benefiting humanity or destroying humanity?

This can actually be looked into, and generally speaking, the way to get wealthy is to benefit humanity. This is kind of new thinking though - the old world thinking is that stealing from and oppressing people was what successful people were doing. This leads to innate hostility to people doing well, which is misplaced. The path to wealth these days to benefit other people, as Vietnamese entrepreneurs and Jewish scientists have done.

So here's what I'm saying: You should do the best you can. If someone is not doing as well as you, it would be good for them to do better. It would not be good for you to do worse. You should not feel guilty or uneasy about doing well, or about the race or religion you're part of doing well. You can feel bad that other races or religions aren't doing as well. But you should always feel good that you're doing well, and keep trying to do well, and do right as much as you can while doing well.

Here's what I understood to be the debate:

Original comment you quoted: > A lot of dating and who a person would consider for relationships is based on social, cultural and economic considerations, and it’s a simple and unfortunate fact that generally speaking whites are at the higher end of the social and economic spectrums.

Your response (paraphrased, I hope fairly): Vietnamese entrepreneurs and Jewish scientists did quite well, and that's not unfortunate at all. Inequality isn't inherently bad, and we should focus on bringing people up rather than down (or for people to bring themselves up, etc.)

Either your response is a bit of a non-sequitur, or the logical inference is that the fact "whites are at the higher end of the socio-economic spectrum" isn't 'unfortunate' (which is sort of a squishy word, but that's just the OP's language). I understood that to be the point you were responding to - if that's wrong, then I apologize and please do set me straight.

My point was that the OP calling better socio-economic 'outcomes' for whites "unfortunate" is pretty reasonable, as there's a good deal of evidence to suggest that it's not just the result of benign factors (see: history of slavery and segregation; evidence of present-day racism, as in the article I linked).

Likewise (and I sort of hate to use this example), a monopolist's market dominance may be the result of a superior product, or an unfair/illegal abuse of [whatever]. In the latter case, calling that monopolist's position "unfortunate" doesn't seem out of bounds - even if the best remedy is to bring the other market actors up, or even do nothing.

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

Agreed, with an addendum: white advantages are unfortunate if they come via the exploitation or active assumption of disadvantage by other groups.

An advantage held by one group is not "unfortunate" if it doesn't hurt anyone else, or prevent others from attaining those advantages.

That might be a "well duh" statement, but I think the posters farther up the thread are (intentionally?) ignoring that in favor of a more academic debate.

Having said all that, most white advantages are indeed unfortunate.

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.