DW,
Actually white balance can indeed work when shooting raw. With my Canon 1Ds, when I set the white balance to AWB (automatic white balance), and make sure not to obstruct the white balance finder in front of the camera, there is an in-camera algorythm that calculates white balance information from the image data it receives and tags the image file accordingly. Then when you open in Adobe Camera Raw and keep the white balance to AS SHOT, ACR tells you the colour temperature that the camera selected for that image. Most of the time its pretty-good, but if you don't like it you can change it in ACR. The AWB can be fooled if the image is seriously lacking in contrast, but most of the time I have found it quite reliable.