Marvin, what you're missing is that, historically, in places like Baltimore and Detroit, the people in the cities DID attempt to leave the city as the jobs moved out to the outskirts, but were not allowed to. This kind of stuff lasted into the 80s. That's the generation living in those places now, and their children (and in some cases, grandchildren). Those communities weren't allowed to "lift themselves up," enforced BY the government in many cases, as those communities were entire city areas, dependent on business infrastructure that left. Right when they started picking themselves up, they were forced back down (businesses/work leaving, for instance, the manufacturing jobs that they moved to certain cities for disappearing or being shipped offshores), and when they tried the same path of escape as other (going to suburban opportunity), they were not allowed to, while those that COULD benefit from it now prospered from having less competition.
Much of this happened in the middle of the 20th century and lasted until around the 90s, which was around the peak of EVERYTHING being gone in those and similar places, opportunity-wise. What you and others are doing is looking at the tail end of this situation, at ta generation who suffered from the brunt of it, and saying "life isn't fair, but they should have come up with a way to fix their own situation, oh well," and then comparing it to people who built themselves up over GENERATIONS after their destitution. It's like asking why South African natives didn't fix themselves and were still poor 20 years after apartheid, and blaming all of their problems on them or saying tough luck, while comparing them to Asian immigrants to California.
