I grew up in a white working class neighborhood in NYC under much, much better conditions.
But in my neighborhood, 90% of kids never go to college and those that do, go to a lower-tier one a few minutes drive from home. Most of these guys go into the building trades or get government jobs, live in their parents' basement apartment, live from paycheck to paycheck and spend all their time and spare cash tricking out their cars. A lot of them have illegitimate kids and they seem to just be waiting for their folks to die so they can inherit the house. Meanwhile they spend all their spare time drinking beers, smoking weed and watching sports or playing videogames.
It's not a tough life, but it lacks all ambition, all upward mobility, all self-improvement.
Yet even though conditions there were much more tolerable and therefore harder to leave, and even though the government gives me absolutely zero incentive to rise above it, I worked hard to get an academic scholarship to a top-quality private high school, I worked hard to get into a top college and unlike 99% of the people I went to grammar school with I own my own home, I have a job with tons of upward mobility and opportunity.
If I lived in a nasty neighborhood and there were free programs designed to give me a way out, I would jump at the chance to avail myself of scholarship opportunities, hiring programs tipped in my favor, etc.
I simply don't understand the mentality of people too lazy to even lift a finger to better their situation even though free means to improve are readily available.
You did, my father who was born of wedlock and grew up in very bad neighborhood in Cleveland did, but by definition most of the people don't. Few people swim against the current, whether they grew up in a good neighborhood and family, or a bad one. I grew up in a good neighborhood and a family which valued education, and I did what everyone else around me did- followed the law, did well in school, went to college, started a career, became a contributor to society.