They are victims of their stratified culture, but they are also the enablers of it, and they WANT a stratified society with great disparity, rather than a more egalitarian society.   They just don't want to be on the hurting end of it all.   Which is why they are never able to actually fix it.   The only time in American history that America ever even remotely resembled the ideals of justice and equality that so many Americans hallucinate is the norm for our society was post-New Deal and pre-Reagan.  It was very short, and it was only for white people.  That's over now and has been for a long time; we've been doing gluttony for the rich and austerity for everyone else for decades - "trickle down."

This European and EuroAmerican class struggle has been going on for over 1000 years in Europe, with the peasants revolting and demanding "fair' treatment within a social structure founded in exploitation since the Middle Ages.  It doesn't get better, and they don't seem to get smarter.