If you’re asking the son of an unemployed West Virginia coal miner to check his privilege, or appreciate the ways Barack Obama’s daughters might be underprivileged to him in certain ways, I think you’re asking too much of basic human cognition. That kid can’t look at his life and say about a group of people he doesn’t understand or interact with day to day that their lives are much worse than his. That’s one of the things that the modern discourse on racial privilege and racial disadvantage misses out. Even though I don’t think the people making these arguments are that reductive, I think that they are a lot more sophisticated in what they’re saying about how privilege operates in our society. The way that it is actually talked about appears very reductive and that’s a very significant problem.

JD Vance, Hillbilly Elegy (via millennial-review)