School felt like an extension of the streets. There, it was teachers, mostly white, who did the profiling. They labeled my classmates “emotionally disturbed” or “hyperactive,” diagnosed them with learning disabilities, and dismissed them accordingly. For us, Black boys mostly, it was a gradual process that sped up as we got bigger and more spirited. We didn’t realize we were inside the belly of a beast that ate insubordinate Black boys whole, one that labeled us so it could consume us and that used our reaction to justify itself to itself.
