Two supporters of Donald Trump in Prescott, Arizona. Credit: Wikimedia/Twins of Sedona. CC0.
After living in the coastal cities of America for all of my life, I met rural white people for the first time in 1995. They were my sociology students at the University of Wisconsin, and I had assigned them the usual fare, heavy on the causes and consequences of urban poverty and racism. These students bristled, saying that their problems were just as bad. I was sure they must be wrong, of course: even if they were poor, they still had white privilege.
