Do you mean to have that comma there? It's very important. With the comma, it sounds like you mean that no white children's parents have had unfair or morally wrong hardships. But without the comma, your moral argument falls apart--we need only talk about the subset of parents who did have unfair hardships to motivate a solution (which was, in my proposal that I thought might have broader appeal: all children should have a baseline level of education that allows them a decent chance at pursuing the American Dream--and this baseline level must be pretty darn high now).

I agree with both your goals and the statement of the problems and injustices. And I agree that a WPA-style intervention can be effective if done well. I was only doubting that mindfulness of injustice would, on its own, solve the problem.

I still think you're mistaken about the more effective way to gain political support. You say that the Right has convinced many people that there's a zero-sum game here...and then propose an approach that is based off of race (which looks like: group X gets stuff; others do not) and thereby feels zero-sum. In light of that, I don't see how the bootstrapping would work because you'd never get started--there has got to be a political solution, not just a legal one.

I'd be happy if either approach worked, though.