Prepositions...

Little things that mean so much:

I think it's important tease out the two sides of this story.

And so often overlooked!

(Read more slowly maybe? Makes no sense (..) leave out parts of your sentence...)

Hope this helps!

ADDED:
Remember, pronouns count too!
(It does the reader no good to know you've gone somewhere and seen something if you can't properly communicate what it is you're trying to say. Again, it ain't just a white thang, really.)

In fact, as I've said before, the experience made my bilingual and allowed me a certain access to spaces that I could not imagine having otherwise.

Perhaps English is not one of he (sic) two languages. Perhaps nobody reads his work and points out the numerous errors? Or is a race thing, with the standards deliberately lowered?

Moving on up?

This is the first year of my life that I've ever lived in a non-hood; I was born to Park Heights, and everywhere I lived after that was some variation. It's the smallest things I miss. At my neighborhood grocery story, people are a little ruder and think nothing of cutting the line. For awhile I couldn't understand why no one would say anything when this happened.
...
Someone cutting you in a line is a big deal when you coping with the grinding disrespect of poverty. When you're only coping with keeping up a private school payment, not so much.

Eh. Not for me, thanks.

ADDED: They had Ataris in the hood back in the day? Who knew.

On the one hand there was the code of the streets, which you really needed to know in order to protect yourself from bodily harm. And then there was the code of the Coates home, in which reading and writing were important, and the personal computer was privileged over the Atari.

Say, you don't think the boy is playing up his bad-boy upbringing, rebel w/o a real cause -- kicked out of 2 schools, Howard dropout -- just to up his street cred w/the white libs who employ him, do ya? Hmmm... makes me wonder.

(He reminds me of that early scene in Invisible Man, except I don't think he's gotten to the punchline yet. Do they have that book on tape yet, or excerpted, do you know?)

FINALLY:

With that said, I think it's also really important to also consider the benefits of being a member of an ethnic group, where you tend to have more cross-class contact than the norm. My parents both had college degrees. But virtually none of my friend's (sic) parents did. The result was that I was always between worlds.

Oh, oh. Ethnic groups sound cool! Where do I join up for this "other world" experience??

Somehow, this is not what I had in mind when I wrote yesterday that the American future really belongs to the ambitious gumption of those immigrant children handed nothing, and caught between two cultures. You see son, there's a difference between scrambling and making the most of every opportunity you can make for yourself, and ... throwing away in your callous youth every chance you've been handed to help better your own self. Not through out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Not through playing up the race card to advance yourself. But through finding a proper cause in that stuggling upbringing, one that forces you to work, and better yourself, not to gain accolades and bring external rewards, but because inside, you just know you're better than that.

Take it for what it's worth, and run with that. Still, nothing teaches like real-world, not secondhand, lessons. And copping from another? You can, surely, but it shows. Know what I mean?