All this is without getting into the intersection of race and class, which map onto one another so powerfully in the US. Because I am from a white working class background, and because every nonwhite person I knew as a child was clearly higher-class than me, my native inclination is to separate the two very easily. I've learned not to (just living in LA, the mutual imbrication of race and class is so intensely clear) and I teach my students the Stuart Hall quote "race is the modality through which class is lived" (and Hall, of course, is British, which just goes to show how my own experience is very far from universal, and very raced). I think that it may be in communities of color, in particular immigrant communities, that your US-based mapping of class and education could fall down; anyway, I know highly educated people on both sides of the Atlantic who have worked low-class jobs and live working-class lives because of the particularities of their immigrant status and their subjection to racism.

But I think I've commented enough for one day, and I have to go do my actual work now. FYI, I am really interested in your response, but I probably won't reply to it right away unless my work magically ups and does itself.