I think I have to agree with both of you. Disadvantaged kids are underrepresented in higher education, and the poorer your background the more you have to compensate with intelligence, hard work, ambition, perseverance or, as Izzy puts it, fortitude. This is true everywhere, not just in the US, although there may be some qualitative and quantitative differences that I am not able to discuss. After all, I was a Math graduate student, not a social worker.

Unequal access or opportunity comes in many forms. Children of affluent parents will go to college even if they are not as bright as many from working poor backgrounds who do not. There is also "white privilege" even if overt racial discrimination is not there, and so on. You shouldn't think of equal opportunity as either existing or not, because then you have to conclude either that it does not exist, or you find yourself blaming victims of social inequalities for their "free" bad life choices. Neither conclusion is acceptable, nor does it follow from the analysis.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper