Need help with starting my server got a weird error

OpenJDK Client VM warning: You have loaded library /tmp/libnetty-transport-native-epoll6413497143924722508.so which might have disabled stack guard. The VM will try to fix the stack guard now.
It's highly recommended that you fix the library with 'execstack -c <libfile>', or link it with '-z noexecstack'.
[11:57:24] [Server thread/INFO]: Using default channel type
[11:57:25] [Server thread/WARN]: Failed to load white-list:
com.google.gson.JsonSyntaxException: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Expected BEGIN_ARRAY but was STRING at line 1 column 1
at com.google.gson.Gson.fromJson(Gson.java:815) ~[minecraft_server.jar:?]
at com.google.gson.Gson.fromJson(Gson.java:768) ~[minecraft_server.jar:?]
at mb.g(SourceFile:125) ~[minecraft_server.jar:?]
at kn.C(SourceFile:123) [minecraft_server.jar:?]
at kn.<init>(SourceFile:30) [minecraft_server.jar:?]
at ko.i(SourceFile:172) [minecraft_server.jar:?]
at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(SourceFile:421) [minecraft_server.jar:?]
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) [?:1.7.0_79]
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Expected BEGIN_ARRAY but was STRING at line 1 column 1
at com.google.gson.stream.JsonReader.beginArray(JsonReader.java:338) ~[minecraft_server.jar:?]
at com.google.gson.internal.bind.CollectionTypeAdapterFactory$Adapter.read(CollectionTypeAdapterFactory.java:79) ~[minecraft_server.jar:?]
at com.google.gson.internal.bind.CollectionTypeAdapterFactory$Adapter.read(CollectionTypeAdapterFactory.java:60) ~[minecraft_server.jar:?]
at com.google.gson.Gson.fromJson(Gson.java:803) ~[minecraft_server.jar:?]
... 7 more

This is the error and i have been looking around havent found anything please help!

 

delete the usercache.json and see if that works, if not, delete the other json files that are created in the main folder (ban, whitelist, ops)

 

@Boomer, if you look more deeply in the stack, it's the whitelist.

 

or more shallowly, yes. Looked too hard for it made it invisible.