Having grown up poor, nobody taught me which fork to use, which wine glass was “correct” and whether the bread plate goes on the right or left. I remember being invited to dinner by some of the old guard in my neighborhood and, in the midst of my brilliant small talk, grabbing the wrong glass of wine. A lovely woman to my left whispered in my ear, “That’s my glass. Yours is to the right.” My small talk may not have been as fascinating as I thought either.
It’s one thing for a poor black kid with huge potential to get into an elite college like Harvard, but there’s a good chance he’s not going to know which fork to use either.
Within that cohort, he documented separate groups: the “privileged poor,” who had gained access to day, boarding, or prep schools that introduced them to the social norms and academic culture of elite higher education (for example, making use of office hours); and the “doubly disadvantaged,” whose path led from under-resourced public schools into an often bewildering environment on campus. For the latter group, that transition risked making the very students the colleges had recruited feel vulnerable and alienated, and thus more exposed to academic failure.
