A. That's a good question, and one I wrestle with a lot.
Partly, I think it's a karmic thing. Don't think of it as "us white kids have to pay for the mistakes of our parents -- even if our parents marched with Martin Luther King." Think of it as "us white kids have a chance to set things straight."
There's still too much inequality going on for us to say that the scales are balanced. The fact is that I'm a weirdo with no college education and no economic ambition who has no prison record only because of the ironic nature of fate, while my buddy Drake is an intelligent, articulate, financially-ambitious black man who sprays the inside of his shoes. And yet, because I'm white and he's black, if we both put on suits and walk into bank, I've got a better chance of getting a loan.
Or, I could put it this way -- the same mental process that gives us statements like, "I'm only racist because I grew up around Mexicans and got beat up by them a lot," is what gives us, "All white people are the enemy." It's the same damn thing. When one disappears, so will the other.
