You did do it. No one's saying you didn't, but what people don't take into account is that society set is set up so that "your" hard work and effort gets rewarded. A line I heard in a movie between a white woman and a black woman. The white woman was talking about how something wasn't her fault because she had made good choices in life, and the Black woman told her: You didn't "make" good choices. You "had" good choices!

For marginalized people, effort (and sometimes good choices) doesn't get rewarded. We can put all the effort of the world into an activity and have it all unravel through one unkind act, a whispered comment to the wrong ear, a flat tire, or missed alarm clock, after which we don't get a second chance and have to start all over from scratch.