I am white and middle class, but spent nearly the first 30 years of my life in poverty. I had all of the disadvantages you listed in another post, and then some - born in a poor neighborhood, had a poorly funded school with few resources, a father who was MIA, a mother who was an alcoholic, plus I am visually impaired and can't drive or read anything more than two feet in front of my face. I eventually got out by sheer determination. Plus, it didn't hurt that I'm reasonably intelligent, so I was able to avoid the 'ticking traps' that a lot of people I grew up with fell into. (The biggest one being having kids they couldn't afford to raise.)

My own analysis of the whole thing is that neither liberals nor conservatives understand the situation as much as they think they do. Things are a lot more complex and nuanced than systematic this or that, or somebody simply making the wrong choices in life. It's generally the latter that fucks people up the most, but many of them grew up dysfunctional, because they were raised by dysfunctional parents. If we don't find a way to stop this cycle, we're eventually going to end up just like Idiocracy.