Mark's discourse and diction do not reflect an Ivy League education. Here, as elsewhere, Gates is at pains to create as much distance as possible between himself and what he perceives to be black pathology, while confirming for whites the legitimacy of their inclination to regard poor blacks as alien. This is what comes of embarking on class analysis from the standpoint of alienation. One might be excused for thinking that Gates' dear old dad was the last black man in America to work two jobs in order to feed his family, so repeatedly does Gates contrast the nurturing environment of his own upbringing against the frayed and tenuous ties of today's black family. But detached alienation is a stance the working poor can neither afford nor achieve.
Thousands cross it every day, leaving kith and kin on either side.
Those lost souls sitting in the crackhouse or the jailhouse are not someone else's sons and daughters, but theirs. And that woman cycling from welfare to work and back again is not someone else's auntie, but their own. As a practical matter, the working poor cannot achieve Gates' physical distance. They can only achieve his existential distance by negating themselves. The Real DuBois As head of Harvard's DuBois Institute, Gates wraps himself, snugly and frequently, in the mantle of that great scholar.