I find that Americans are still woefully illiterate when it comes to understanding not only how systems and structures shape outcomes, but also shape selves/consciousness. The myth of the separate individual self is arguably pretty deeply embedded across the West, but when I go to Greece for example, there is no across the board denial of the effects of systems and structures, partially because they have become impossible to ignore for the majority of the populace, but also because the United States is still a deeply religious and irrational country (in very good and bad ways) and one of its religions (perhaps its greatest) is the religion of the "Free Individual".
There is also something about an empathic gap that exists primarily because of both the way poverty is racialized in the United States, but also in how it is /spatialized/. Poor people are seen as the other, because they are the other -- it is very rare that a city in the United States has places where people of all classes (and all races) mingle together. There is much less "public space" in the US as a whole (exception, a city like NYC where literally everyone rides the subway together, even if they are going to different stops) so it is much easier to rationalize systemic outcomes as some kind of inherent failure of the other.
There is also something about an empathic gap that exists primarily because of both the way poverty is racialized in the United States, but also in how it is /spatialized/. Poor people are seen as the other, because they are the other -- it is very rare that a city in the United States has places where people of all classes (and all races) mingle together. There is much less "public space" in the US as a whole (exception, a city like NYC where literally everyone rides the subway together, even if they are going to different stops) so it is much easier to rationalize systemic outcomes as some kind of inherent failure of the other.