Urban Minorities with Education do Face Alienation

During the class session, I chose the Mike Rose group to participate in versus the Rodriguez group.  I felt a close connection to both authors in terms of their experiences, but after reading the Rodriguez piece closer I see many similarities to his feelings about being alienated.  Getting an education and becoming one of "them" is akin to no longer staying true to my roots.  I see and experience this type of alienation quite often.  I don't know or have not taken a close enough look to figure out why this occurs to me.  For me however, I don't see this from my family as he talked about.  I see it more with friends of friends who have no idea of my background or my youth.  If I were to analyze and reflect, I would surmise that their alienation has a lot to do with my appearance and my slips of intellectual bits of conversation that takes them aback.  I believe that perhaps these things convince them that our lives are vastly different and have nothing in common and the distancing commences.  I've heard countless stories (mainly from women) who's family would say "just because you are going to college, you're still no better than I am."  These utterances would come from parents, spouses, siblings, and other family members. I think that this would be an interesting theory to test as a project of some sort.  I think the study would have to study both the "educated" and the "less educated" ( not trying to sound better than thou) to see where the disjunction lies.  To discover the how and why from both sides seems possible with a large enough pool of respondents.