You make a lot of good points--a lot of the ones that I thought you were going to make in the first post.

I too have noticed that the same crowd that on average says they advocate for personal growth and achievement simultaneously fails to provide opportunity for growth and achievement.

I still wonder, though, whether there's any point embracing the victim perspective when it comes to education. Not because it's factually wrong--you've given plenty of support for why it's right. Instead, I wonder whether it might be not useful in most cases. It's not denying that there is and was injustice, but the worst of the injustice was perpetrated by those who escaped responsibility by dying long ago--at which point, what purpose does focusing on it (rather than just noting it) serve? "Ancestors of people who looked more like you than like me oppressed ancestors of people who look more like me than like you" isn't a very powerfully motivating force for a lot of people. And I doubt anyone has the stomach for doing the detailed genealogy. (Though you probably could off of ancestry.com.)

In cases where the opposition is coming from people who are strongly motivated by such things, sure: these are mostly in affluent liberal areas that still won't fund schools and community programs.

But in many places, opposition is coming from people who feel that your story, while not without some moral weight, is directly degrading other equally important moral concerns like equal treatment and personal character. Talking louder about victims isn't helpful because it doesn't address the other concerns--it just motivates the anti-victim crowd to find rationalizations why the victimization isn't happening so the moral conflict is resolved. So I doubt that angle will work.

But cognitive dissonance might.

If you take the people who say they want to reward personal growth and achievement and use not a narrative about victimization, but their own words and concerns to persuade them, then at least they're faced to force their own beliefs head on, and resolving that dissonance requires them to reject one of their own beliefs--and the "we shouldn't pay for stuff" might be the easiest to fall because it's mostly not a moral issue but self-interest.

The argument would be as follows: America is great because anyone can work hard and have a good life, no matter who they are and where they come from. It's not supposed to be "America is great because if your parents are wealthy and involved, they can set up great things for you so you can be wealthy too". But today many good careers require a solid education--and that means everyone, everyone, needs access to good schools that will allow kids with drive and motivation to chase the American Dream.

There's nothing about victims or historical injustice there. It's 100% concerns that (much of the) anti-victim crowd says are really important to them. But it gets you to exactly the same place as you seem to want to, doesn't it, once you get down to details, at least with regard to education?

You side-step all the issues about moral failings because they're kids. What moral failings does a kindergartner have? The whole concept is preposterous. You just look: where can't kids get what they need to have a decent chance at the American Dream? You can do it in a totally color-blind way and you come to basically the same conclusion about which areas need help--unless you're arguing that poor non-black communities should suffer with terrible schools and poor funding and no real way to climb out of the situation, which I don't imagine you are.

(Yes, there's a counterargument available, which some will use: it's not fair for people who can't provide for their kids to nonetheless have many and ask the rest of us to sacrifice to educate and feed them. And then there are counterarguments to that. It would take too long to argue out all the branches of every thread. In any case, you only need enough leverage to start getting laws passed, not enough to fully convince everyone.)

This isn't a recipe for fixing all of society, but for getting adequate resources for education it seems like a more realistic strategy to me.

There is another problem, though, with both this approach (taking the opportunity perspective) and the one you described (taking the justice perspective): do we actually know how to intervene in a positive way?

If we don't, everything is dead in the water. Someone might be moved to tears thinking about injustice and willing to devote their life to rectifying it--but that's basically irrelevant if there's nothing they can do that actually helps.

And that, I think, is another danger of dwelling too heavily on the victim aspect--the same danger that one might also think endangers students' motivation. That is, focusing on condition or status instead of how to effect improvement can sap our ability to improve. If we can confidently say: "this WORKS, just do it!" we have a much stronger moral case for action (and spending), whichever way we motivate it.