You are right that the vast majority of people are responsible for where they are in life, but I think you underestimate the number who have been dealt such a horrible start in life that blaming them for their state is unfair.
Unfortunately, the world visits the sins of the parents on their children: meth babies, crack babies, children born with fetal alcohol syndrome, children abused as children who adopt the treatment they received as the norm of human behavior, children raise even by non-abusive parents who do not manage to model virtues then mis-educated by state schools that by design do not inculcate virtue, children given no sense of love or belonging until they encounter a gang which they promptly join,... Add to them the mentally retarded, severely autistic, and everyone else with biologically based debilitating mental or physical conditions, and I'm afraid they make up a bit more then 1% of the population.
Sure, there's a certain percentage of people who are victims of the horrible choices of their parents.
How many/what percentage of underachievers do you think that is?
I'd say the great, overwhelming majority of people are victims of themselves, if you want to put it that way.
At some point in life, if you live long enough, you should recognize what is the right thing to do and what is the wrong thing to do.
Nevertheless, when I read stories about thugs who get themselves shot and killed by the police, I don't take the time to inquire about their upbringings.
I've read two stories recently about two white thugs getting themselves shot and killed by the cops in the Twin Cities area. Maybe they had bad upbringings. Maybe their parents were on dope and screwed up their sprogs.
I don't care, they committed serious crimes, and they paid the ultimate price.
It should be pretty obvious to black males that resisting arrest and putting up a violent struggle very often leads to bad outcomes for them.
But they continue to those things that get them killed while obeying the police would have allowed them to live.
Too many black males are out of control and have to be stepped on hard....for their own good and for the good of society.