ABSTRACT
Differential treatment for students because they were black was experienced too in the larger Parlington community. For low-income black youth coming of age in a small city, high school becomes a time when class and race factors become palpable and intensified in everyday life. Having fewer financial, social, or cultural resources than their white counterparts, black students at Parlington High are at a disadvantage as soon as they step foot in school. Being racially marked in school, and all that follows from it, meant that the Parlington teenagers acquired a heightened racial awareness. Students needed to learn how to be less angry; being treated differently and being “othered” was rarely, if at all, seriously addressed. All of the black high-schoolers told a similar story. There is a general suspicion of white authority figures, especially in the criminal justice system, that many African Americans share based on bitter experience.
