I think "confronting history" is very difficult, because any specific individual can look at himself and say, "I never owned slaves," or "I didn't keep a black person out of college." It's not difficult to make a leap from there to not seeing oneself as culpable in any way, even though we're all part of a long historic contingency that is supragenerational. If I'm rich and you're poor it's much more pleasant for me to think that I'm rich because I went to college and worked my way into a good job. To analyze why I had that chance in the first place is to subvert my own sense of self, because in some sense, we're both historical accidents. Luck, for better or for worse, is a bigger part of our lives than we like to suppose.
I honestly the the entire thought of valuing your accomplishments are a moot point unless you as a person worked for them. It isn't a case of "I am rich", it isn't a case of "I got good grades". It's a case of "I worked hard for what I got and am proud of it". A person who simply looks at the world and says "you are poor therefore you have not accomplished anything with your life" isn't looking at what that person has managed to accomplish. It may have been a range where, without that person's effort, they could be in a far worse situations, but with the effort they stay afloat. A person can look at themselves, having never put their mind and effort to things, and be proud of where they are, despite having never done anything to deserve it. I know I have always felt this way about school, up until I met a point where I felt I was going to do bad, and I was going to do badly, but studied my ass off and managed to get a decent grade. I am a thousand times more proud of that B than I would be with an A I got from a class that was easy. Much in the same way, we can look at someone who is poor and still say they have put themselves there, if you are fully aware of that person's upbringing and background. You are entirely able to look at someone who is an alcoholic on the street and say "that person could have done better". However, when you apply the same to someone barely managing to hold onto their dead end job, you are putting down someone who works ten times harder for their lives than you have. That's where things fail. We should value people for their accomplishments in context, and should value their ethics on that also. Not based on their accomplishments as an absolute. Bill Gates is someone who deserved every cent he has made, despite the fact he started off well. Someone who was born to a rich family and simply became a multi-millionaire and kept the company they inherited afloat, however, accomplished little of praise.