I have a confession to make.  Unlike the way liberals tell us we're supposed to feel, I have never felt guilty for being white.  Never.  Sorry. 

I have been told that, based on the fact that I am white in America, I have a natural advantage over people who are not.  A statement like that is not only, to quote the adorable Janeane Garofalo, "racist, straight up," but it is also patently untrue.  White people have a natural advantage?  Tell that to kids who are white who can't get into the college of their choice because of affirmative action quotas.  Better still, tell that to the white schoolkid in Kansas City who got doused with gasoline and set on fire while being told, "You get what you deserve, white boy."

Was it true in the past that whites had an advantage?  Yes and no.  Many, maybe even most, whites did -- but not all.  However, it is very important to make this unambiguously clear: no rational person will deny that racial inequality, hatred, and destruction litter America's history.  It's ugly and utterly shameful and disgusting.

But people today who think that somehow present-day white people must "pay" for America's past sins are sadly mistaken.  In any crime, it's the one who perpetrated the crime who is prosecuted for it.  I would suggest to those folks who view everything through "skin-colored glasses" (aka racists) that if they really want to correct the errors of the past, they need to get into a time machine and have at it.

Keep in mind, however, that fifty years from now people will want to correct our mistakes.  Future folks will "know better" than we who are living life in present-day America.  "How could they have done that?" they'll say.  "We wouldn't have reacted like that."

An example: In 2062, some people might ponder, "Why did folks in 2008 vote for a guy who clearly had no track record of governing?  And whose political career was promoted by destructive anarchists?  And why would the largest single voting bloc -- Christians -- vote for this guy who supported partial-birth abortion, whose pastor espoused the racist 'Black Liberation Theology,' and whose playbook, Rules for Radicals, was dedicated to 'Lucifer'?"

(We can only hope that those same futurists won't be discussing the even more horrifying event of "Why did those same folks, four years later, after an utterly destructive administration, re-elect this clearly ideologically driven fellow?")

Many years back, during a cab ride shared with a pastor of a Manhattan church, I told the minister about my concern of  "acceptable racism" springing up in his church.  Several parishioners had started a "ministry" dedicated to racial equality.  Their idea, basically, was to make the predominately white church become more sensitive to the struggles of "minorities."  The literature that they were dispensing, however, was from the Sojourners magazine and written by the Reverend Jim Wallis.  It oozed the "white guilt" message.  The pastor told me that these issues are like a pendulum -- they swing too far one way, then they swing back again, until they eventually end up settling themselves out.  He said that he figured in ten years everything would have smoothed over.  (By the way, that cab ride was fifteen years ago.)

Out of respect for the pastor that day, I just listened to his explanation and nodded my head.  He did, after all, make sense -- well, sense for at least the time it took the cab to go thirty blocks, anyway.  After getting out of the taxi, I thought about the fact that Christ is never described in the Bible as a pendulum, but as a Rock.  The same goes for St. Peter.  By extension, the church is not supposed to be a part of the world's viewpoint, jumping aboard, swinging, and saying, "We'll show you worldly people that Christians can live by your rules better than you can!"

No.  A rock is a foundation.  We stand on it.  And when it comes to the issue of race and racism, St. Paul handled it sternly and emphatically some 2,000 years back.  He challenged St. Peter himself regarding preferential racial treatment (see specifically Galatians 2:11-21), and spoke definitive words when addressing the issue: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28, among other places).

Christianity is not about groups being deemed "minorities."  It's about individuals being set free.  Many churches have forgotten that, and that is a real danger to this country founded upon Judeo-Christian tenets.  If the church itself, which should know better, continues to follow the worldly example of separating people out by color of skin, there's truly no hope left for us.

America is on the path of destruction via a very simple adage: divide and conquer.  And when something like race continues to be a separating issue, how can we even dream of surviving much longer as a nation?