The latter article is a great example of exactly what "white privilege" means with respect to the white rural poor; ironically, it does so entirely unknowingly, providing an example of exactly the kind of anti-white, prejudiced thinking often perceived by these communities.

We have a tale of two presidents, each with ambitions of reducing poverty, each of whom happens to share skin color with the majority of their program's expected beneficiaries. But only when the president is white is it considered a problem, an example of privilege. Likewise the new rural assistance proposed.

Some minor lip service is given to equality, that none should be left in poverty, but the author does not call for sufficient funding to run both programs and actually strive toward this goal. Instead, it comes down to choosing who to help, and the author seems to take it as given that minority lives are of greater worth; in fact, not only does he not back up this claim, he goes so far as to cast aspersions of racism and white supremacy on rural intervention advocates for allegedly valuing white lives over those of minorities.

This is the problem that so many, especially low-income rural whites, have with the idea of white privilege: they may occasionally be mistaken for upper-class whites and receive some informal benefits thereby, but all the formal race-based differences of treatment (e.g. affirmative action) work against them. Unconscious bias may favor them, but deliberate bias (however well-intentioned, and however ultimately beneficial to society it may be) has a visceral quality all of its own. And it is this visceral aspect of institutionalized race-based support that leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of the hungry, while hunger itself does not discriminate based on the color of your skin.