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Because there is a disconnect between being a "practitioner" and an academic. They perceive people with formal education to be sitting in glass towers and separate from what's really going on.
Of course, there are plenty of us who have formal education AND activism under our belts. But there's so much bias and misunderstanding on both sides of the issue that we're undermining efforts for social change.
Also, blacks are disproportionately in poverty and disproportionately uneducated. Many people misinterpret this to mean that the majority of blacks are uneducated, impoverished (and immoral). So when you try to reach the black community through education and what others perceive to be pretention, you get criticized.
As you stated, people have a POOR sense of history and fail to realize that black educators have been trailblazers and activists from DAY ONE!!!
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