The white hat true believers, who assert Google does not punish quality sites that avoid black hat, should do a wee bit more review of threads on this forum, to find hundreds of examples to the contrary. 100% WH sites are being hammered all over the place these days, that's just a fact. Google simply does not support using SEO as a long term business model for small IM sites, despite the rhetoric to the contrary. It wants people to eventually move from getting free organic traffic to paying for it through PPC or other advertising.
When Google sees a small site (especially a new one) with quality content, optimal keyword placement, etc, it looks unnatural because it is so optimized, as in designed for the search engines, and so it penalizes it. SEO = spam, as far as Google is now concerned. G now asserts it wants to see 'AND'---earned authority, naturalness, and diversity in its links/content, NOT search engine optimization tactics out of a site. That kills both WH and BH SEO, unless we all adapt. The use of WH without BH techniques, or vice versa has been rendered mostly irrelevant by the recent updates.