The first time I am arrested, I am 12 years old.
One sentence and I am back there, all that little girl fear
and humiliation forever settled in me at the cellular level.
It’s the break between seventh and eighth grades, and
for the first time I have to attend summer school because of
my math and science grades, and I am angry about it. No
other Millikan kids come here, to this school in Van Nuys,
for remediation, only me. The summer school I attend is for
the kids who live in my neighborhood. It doesn’t have a cam-
pus, but it has metal detectors and police. There are no
police or metal detectors at Millikan.
Somehow, mentally, I don’t make the adjustment. I still
think of myself as a student there, which I am but not for
these summer months, and one day I do what I’d learned
from my Millikan peers to do to cope: I smoke some weed.
At Millikan it is a daily occurrence for kids to show up to
class high, to light up in the bathroom, to smoke on the cam-
pus lawn. No one gets in trouble. Nowhere is there police.
Millikan is the middle school where the gifted kids go.
[For more of this story, written by Patrisse Khan-Cullers & Asha Bandele, go to http://www.yesmagazine.org/pea...out-of-time-20180511]
Comments (0)