Thoughtful piece, Katie. I'm not (at all) a Trump supporter, but I come from an area where lots of blue-collar whites sadly are. And what I saw, as an insider to that culture, was this: those "whites" were historically disadvantaged. (Actually, the "white" population was historically not even considered "white," since "white" is historically a moving target, not even to mention that the term means different things in different countries, but I digress...) Most of them were descended from Eastern Europeans and/or Italians — the two groups who were SO despised that they inspired the US to impose an immigration quota — and their immigrant ancestors arrived in an era before social welfare programs existed. Hence, socioeconomic disadvantage just basically got baked into the experience of these (despised) immigrants and their descendants across time.
Yes, over the intervening century or so, their (mostly) fair skin came to be considered "white" — but compared to other whites, the descendants of Slavs and Italians are still disadvantaged in regions like mine. Not to mention that even in my millennial lifetime, I've heard insulting jokes, assumptions, and slurs about both groups. In fact, a Mexican-American friend cavalierly asked me once why I'd want to move to New Jersey when there were so many Italians there — as if she believed the presence of Italian-Americans was a bad thing. Situations like this remind me yet again that many of the old prejudices are still alive and well, even if milder than before.
So what I've seen is that, if you try to tell a white person from my region — uneducated and poor — that they have "privilege," they will be able to see only their own socioeconomic disadvantage, and because of this, they will not want to hear that they have any privilege whatsoever. They won't be capable of believing it. They'll tune you out. (I know because I've tried to tell them.)
In other words, from what I've seen as an insider to that world, discussions of privilege will not go very far if they fail to acknowledge the deep socioeconomic disadvantages that persist among (today's) whites and how these, too, were seeded in racial prejudice. It's not that today's whites arrogantly NEED to be centered in the discussion; it's that impoverished, uneducated white people (who descend from impoverished, uneducated not-yet-"white" people) resent any suggestion that they themselves — or their not-yet-"white" ancestors — were powerful enough to have created today's racial inequalities... when they themselves feel socioeconomically marooned.
None of this is to deny that they still hold privilege. None of this is to deny that they benefit from many of the advantages that are unfairly given to whites. None of this is to deny, either, that their racism is real and has terrible consequences. I'm not defending them; I can't emphasize that enough. I'm just saying — from what I can see as a liberal whose hometown is a sea of blue-collar conservatives — that oversimplifications of race and privilege are detrimental to the discussion. Because if the point is to make ALL white people listen, then these groups will not be listening. For all the reasons I've just outlined here.
Finally, I will add: the biggest portions of my ancestry are Italian, Eastern European, and Ashkenazi, in that order. You can bet for SURE that people have been able to look at me and figure my background out, on sight. I'm often asked point-blank what my ethnicity is, and I've often been assumed to be other than "white" — because by some people's criteria, I am not. It's made for interesting experiences on any continent where I've ever lived, particularly as every country and continent (sad to say) has its own unique ethnic hierarchy. Sometimes I'm safer for it. In other ways, sometimes I'm not (e.g., when I am exoticized). Privilege is more than intersectional; it's also highly contextual, and it's unrealistic to expect uneducated people whose lives are defined by disadvantage to understand the privilege they concretely have. Sad to say. :(
