@Smokin Joe
I am white in all my generations, except being 1/16 Choctaw, due to long ago, when the Choctaws were on the Trial of Tears and stopped in Arkansas and one of the "greats" in our family married a Choctaw Indian. I never thought of using that for gain.
We lived in a four room house with an outhouse for a potty until I was a sophomore in high school. My father bought stock in the Sun Oil Company where he worked, and paid for my college from selling stock until I was a junior in college, then I could pay it myself due to working as a teacher on an emergency certificate, then kept on going to university wherever I lived, for numerous years, paying the bill myself.
I was not a "privileged" white. I don't owe the so called "under privileged" anything. If one has the desire to better him/her self, it will happen. I see the graphs/charts of how much money one can get from the government (from us), if they don't work at all, and that is disgusting to me. There were no government student loans, no scholarships, when I went to college and now there are - anyone can get those, especially the government student loans. People are so dumbed down today, it is easier to stay home, do nothing, and get government money (our money) to live. What a mess we have today.
I grew up in an idyllic setting out in the 'sticks', also white back to, well, before the Norman conquest, anyway. But that place, the land my grandfather gave his only daughter, was overgrown with second growth Oak, and riverfront in the tidewater. We ate wild game, fresh fish (we caught it), crabs, clams, oysters, and once in a while beef or pork. Mother knew how to stretch a dime, and did, and to this day I tease her about being able to spread peanut butter and jelly in monomolecular layers. Dad worked hard, but had to drive, what then, was a long way to work, and that ate up some money. He didn't drive big sedans, but little fiat 600s he bought used. When we slid off a muddy road in one deer hunting and all got out, picked it up, and put it back on the road, Dad decided to get a bigger car.
I had a couple of breaks when I was young (my brother didn't want to go to college, and I got to because Dad had saved enough money to make it possible. My one year of Grad School was on a NSF grant, but everything was the result of work in the end, not some spurious privilege. Three Mile Island put an end to my pursuit of Uranium Mineralogy, and I went to work in the oil field.
If any of those expert whiners had wanted to spend 84+ hour weeks working in remote locations in weather from 122 above to -60 (wind chill -146) without being able to schedule anything, and not knowing when you'd be home next, and then endure following months to years with little or no work besides odd jobs or something to bring in some money, then they can come talk to me. At least few of my problems have been completely self-inflicted.
I have done 5 jobs which were on the top ten most dangerous list at the time I did them, and not always for a paycheck. I, too have lived with a wood stove for heat, an outhouse for relief, and no running water. I have worked for my dinner (that was the pay for the day--those folks were hurting, too, and I agreed to it--that tree had to come down or the next big wind might have crushed their (humble) house), and I have lived off what I could hunt for food. Somehow, all that just doesn't add up to someone swiping a piece of plastic in a well lit smorgasbord of delectables, where you don't even have to skin your own dinner, and someone else did the heavy lifting.
Yes, in my older years I have softened some, admittedly. But then, that has been the result of planning, frugality, and taking care of what I have as best I can so it lasts, not some spurious privilege.
