I grew up in an America where a man with a strong back — and better yet, a strong union — could reasonably expect to support a family without a college degree. In 2015, those jobs are long gone, leaving only the kind of work once relegated to women and people of color. Those in the bottom 20% of white income distribution face material circumstances like those long familiar to poor blacks, including erratic employment and crowded, hazardous living spaces.

White privilege was never, however, simply a matter of economic advantage. As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1935, “It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage.” He was talking about admission to public schools, spaces and functions. Today, at least legally speaking, all of that is open to all. But as blacks have made gains, in the de jure sense, whites have lost ground economically. As a result, the “psychological wage” awarded to white people has been shrinking.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1201-ehrenreich-excess-death-white-working-class-20151201-story.html