I was not a poor black child. I grew up in Baltimore, on a street with big shingled houses and leafy trees. But after my father left and returned to Zimbabwe, my mother, sister and I lived in a state of persistent, low-grade economic anxiety. One year we could not get heating oil delivered so we all slept on the floor by the gas fireplace to stay warm. (I actually cherish the memory, because we snuggled together.) My mother enrolled us in summer academic programs, sometimes working two jobs and once doing a brutal night shift. I felt ashamed to see her exhausted, and worried I caused her distress. To help out, I took jobs I loathed, as a catering waitress and a telemarketer. So, we were not poor, but we were part of the fearful working class, worried that we might not be able to keep up with our bills or achieve our ambitions. Of course, so many people today are in the same boat that my family was back then.

I can’t help but think of my personal history when I listen to the spate of wrongheaded analyses of poor children, from Newt Gingrich’s call to make them janitors to “If I Were A Poor Black Kid” by Gene Marks on Forbes.com. The article has gotten more than 500,000 page views (as of 1pm Friday), both from supporters and critics. The author’s facile analysis boils down to: go to a magnet school, study hard, and learn to code. Even if some kids get into magnet schools, others are left in educational ghettos. And many poor families cannot afford broadband to take those online coding classes. (Next summer, a new industry initiative will offer $9.95 broadband access to low-income families, but until then, they can expect to pay forty to one hundred dollars a month.)

The Forbes article literally has no class, not only because it panders to stereotypes about black achievement, but also because it misreads income inequality and perpetuates the myth of the classless society. As a study by the Pew Research Center pointed out earlier this year, the Great Recession has had a devastating effect on black and Latino families, and the wealth gap in relation to whites has widened. In 2009, the net worth of white families was $113,149, versus $6,325 for Hispanics and $5,677 for blacks. The gap is a key aspect of class in America, which is more closely linked to the advantages of inter-generational wealth than current income.

My family had relatively little financial wealth to pass on, but great reserves of intellect, spirit and knowledge. I went to public school in Baltimore, and then to Harvard, where as my work-study job I hauled Blue Books at the Law Review while its president, Barack Obama, stood a few feet away. Right out of college I interned at Newsweek, where in 1990 there was a fifty dollar late dinner allowance on nights we were closing the magazine. I found myself sitting in a Swiss restaurant eating steak and spaetzle at 10:30 in the evening, laughing with my colleagues, and feeling both grateful and oddly displaced. We know that sliding down the income ladder, which so many people have in recent years, can be psychologically devastating. But jumping up a class is disorienting in its own way. Do your habits, politics, and aesthetics track with the world you knew, or the world you circulate in? How do you see your responsibility to help others back home?

The lives of black folk are measurably different from our peers of the same income. At the time many of our white friends are getting that nut from their parents to put a downpayment on a house, we are saving or living paycheck-to-paycheck. And we’re more likely to have to help out our families, meaning money flows not to us but from us. I’ve supported my family in Baltimore and Zimbabwe, ipaying overseas exam fees and hiring a lawyer to sort out the legalities of an abandoned house next to my mother’s. I’ve been privileged to contribute to those I love, and I recognize that as privilege.

That’s the real problem with analyses like Marks’. There is no recognition of what privilege means in America. (Marks, the owner of a management consulting firm, responded to critics by saying that he’s “not rich.”) In Lake Wobegon, all children are above average. And in America, everybody is sorta-kinda-middle class, or wants to think so. The myth that there is no class masks the divisions in opportunities we have, and undermines our quest to re-invigorate social mobility.