To be fair, the author is white. I think the point of this piece is less about white people not understanding, and more about people from some cultural backgrounds not understanding.

With regard to the police shootings, there is certainly a distrust of the police in minority communities and there are good reasons for that to be true. Race relations is a large lumbering ship, it takes time to change course. Trust doesn't come back overnight, and the DOJ investigation into Ferguson came back with ample reason for black people in that community to have no trust in their local government.

I've certainly met people who went on and on about privilege and not being able to understand what its like being x minority. None of that seems particularly useful in terms of having a dialogue about race, and often times it almost seems like I'm expected to feel bad because of my gender or my ethnicity. I don't think that this group of people realize that they are probably doing more harm than good.

This isn't to say that racism is dead. It isn't. Being white doesn't get you followed around stores for no good reason, but it does tend to make racist people think you are just as racist as they are. I went to school in Atlanta, and I was shocked by how many people -- that I'd know for a little while, and seemed like reasonable people -- would just drop the most racist comments. These weren't elderly people, or even stupid people, but they grew up in environments that were apologetically racist, and reflected that environment.

Again, there is a social momentum at work here, and it is going to take generations to rectify. Even the people who were just being awful and racist from my perspective harbored far fewer ignorant viewpoints than their parents. Frankly, in some situations that is the best we can hope for as a society -- that in all things, the next generation is a little better than the last in all respects.