After pointing out the disproportionate support Trump received from the Scots-Irish community, Vance addressed the issue.

“But to connect it to the conversation about white privilege, I think it’s always important to note that there are obviously still advantages to being white, there are still disadvantages to being black, even when you control completely for class, income, and so forth,” he said.

Vance later added in his response that he understood that “most of the people” making arguments about white privilege are not being “reductive,” but “a lot more sophisticated in what they’re saying [about] how privilege operates along different dimensions in our society.”

Vance’s problem, he said, was that it “appears reductive” to other people—specifically white people, perhaps less worldly than himself—who lack the “cognition” to process the concept that Black Americans are historically disadvantaged in a number of ways that white Americans are not.