The idea is that we want the system to be more meritocratic, and that a good place to start is to acknowledge that it's currently not as meritocratic as we tend to think. That's what the "meritocratic trap" is: thinking we have meritocracy when we don't.
That was always reductionist. Many emigres from China, Japan, Korea, USSR states, the Middle East and India arrived with high education levels. For 20th century society, where war could blow up or seize all your assets, education you ship with you in your brain is wealth that matters. Lots of uneducated people left behind in those countries, they just died or their life sucks now.
It is true that life situations (poverty, lack of parental assistance, safety and security, cultural roadblocks, etc.) are impediments to successful participation in school.
But is “access to education” a a demonstrable problem? Many states offer very low cost or free access to community college higher education.
Some search queries I recommend (just as a starting point):
- "Factors in access to education"
- "Access to education causal"
- "Access to education in America"
- "Access to education world data"
- "Access to education developing countries"
- "Public education and vertical mobility"
- "Relationship between education and innovation"
- "Relationship between education and health"
- "Public health and economic productivity
- "Access to education and marginalized groups"
The “racial or cultural superiority therefore black kids are fucked” thing you’re really believe in is stupid. It’s unactionable and nobody gives a fuck about that perspective. There are like a handful of legitimate ways to address the scarce spots for everyone not just high achievers, but the racial and cultural superiority people don’t spend even one iota of their time or one cent of their dollars making the good schools bigger. It’s a profoundly immature point of view, and its immaturity should give you insight for why people don’t like you.
We now see this kind of thing even infecting our education system, and it's driving a lot of liberal people to the political right. Look at how Asian American voters acted in the recent San Francisco school board recall, for example. (Also: try telling those people that their success in our society is due to luck, even though they came here in poverty and were discriminated against every step of the way...)