They were treated like dog shit until they worked themselves up in society. There were no handouts.
This whole notion of some unified White supreme collective is just bogus. Whites have been killing, pillaging, enslaving, and genociding other whites since the migration period, just like every other single phenotype out there throughout history.
Even if you were English or Spanish in the early formation of the US, you had a fucking rough life. The only people who really benefited from any type of privilege were the nobility.