I appreciate your explanation of your word choice, and your level headed response to criticism, it is refreshing to be able to engage in these kind of conversations on the internet without it turning into insult hurling.
I still disagree with your assumptions of character. I grew up on free lunch and food stamps, i dont snatch purses or steal cars. I started working full time at 16 because my dad couldnt make child support most months. I dont snatch purses or steal cars. I qork retail because on paper that is what i am qualified for, i have enough to eat and a home, but statistically speaking my anual income is below the national poverty line. I dont snatch purses or steal cars.
I am neither the exception to the rule or the standard of poor people, because people can not be generalised the way you want to. I have met more hard working poor people who appreciate what they have than the opposite. Most of the untrustworthy shady people i meet come from middle class backgrounds.
As far as the land of opportunity pull yourself up from the bootstraps portion of the post is concerned, i went to a high school in a poor neighborhood, the district was nearly bankrupt, good grades from my high school were not considered equivilant to good grades from other schools in the region on a college application, you had to be beyond an excellent over achieving student to be given the same consideration as an pretty good above average student from a better school.
This has gotten long, and quite possibly convoluted.
I agree completely with your post. One of the great tragedies in the U.S., to me, is honest, hard working people that are "stuck" in a poor area and the stigmatism that goes with it. And I've said to people since the 90's that one of the hardest things about being poor is getting through being "poor in spirit".
I articulate it this way: I don't have the drive or understanding (or connections) to do financially well that a child of a Rockefeller or Kennedy does. So, though I may be more capable, honest and hard working than someone from either of those clans, I will probably achieve less, partly due to less confidence in success as well as less confidence in my own abilities. A person who is raised in a poor area has that same problem relative to me, only amplified by several orders of magnitude. I'm amazed at those that make it out.
I actually read an article a few months ago that said that the rate of Americans rising up from the level of our society at which they were born is actually lower than it is in some European countries.
One of the challenges my wife and I accept in our part of KY is nurturing every young person we can find regarding the opportunity that is out there and the tools available to them. I'm a HUGE fan of Kahnacademy. Any kid with access to a computer and the internet can literally educate him or herself through high school via that site, and be more well educated than the lions share of the rest of the kids in the nation. And computer acces in the U.S. is now virtually universal, unless you are one of the VERY rare cases (as with some of my neighbors (that have not really entered the 20th, much less the 21st century.
I must take issue with one thing, though. It is important to "generalize" people if for no other reason than to ensure you don't get killed. It doesn't mean you do a "hard" generalization. It means you form a first impression by what you see. Their sex, their dress, their use of language, their race, their age, where they live. You don't take action on the profile you create. You use it as a starting point. You begin a conversation "tentatively" based on all this information. You initially respond to a street kid in a dirty hoody differently than a 70 year old white man in a tux that just stepped out of a Rolls. You are also probably going to be more careful about locking your car around one vs the other. That is not unreasonable.
BTW, I attended the Nordstrom sales training a few decades ago. One of their main points was to not judge a book by its cover and they drove it home with a dramatization. But we all know that only goes so far. Sometimes the cover is dead on. And sometimes your very survival depends on recognising it.
All that being said, When my tentative comments and questions prove my initial profiling results were incorrect, I modify my approach. I've walked up to scary looking people in "scary" neighborhoods that turned out to be very nice guys and we got along great. But sometimes the warning signs are real. And some of those people do not see their fellow man as I do. I'm a domesticated dog and they are a wolf. It's best that I carry.
Seriously though, please remember the golden rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. And as Forrest would say, "And that's all I have to say about that." 
i guess.
