I have been to excellent public facilities in the US. Excellence is not evenly distributed anywhere, but the discrepancies of available public services between rich and poor neighbourhoods, between predominantly white and predominantly black neighbourhoods have been stark in my (n=1, granted!) observation of the US.

I think that the reality for the underclass in the US is that in theory, public services, voting, parks, community centres, education, jobs, and so forth are equally available, but that is not how it works in practice.