Kendall delves into three childhoods—Deon’s, LaToya’s, and her own—to make the case that under discourse about the “super-predator” during her childhood, different outcomes depended upon what kind of family support and school policies were in place at the time. Deon was a young dealer forced to rely on street life to support a family. School and education beyond their underfunded school were not in his future, and he was dead by 30. LaToya was a smart young woman who was incarcerated for holding drugs for someone. She needed the money because her mother was terminally ill; support after she was released from jail helped her to establish a life, but such programs are no longer around. In Kendall’s case, she had family support when she veered into gray territory that might have landed her in legal trouble.

Today’s children of color in under-resourced communities are confronted with even fewer resources, zero-tolerance policies that have helped to create a school-to-prison pipeline, and harsh school disciplinary policies that give even bad, bullying teachers the ability to disproportionately apply such policies to students of color. Kendall recalls having to defend her son from arbitrary rules when a teacher threatened to write him up for studying in an empty classroom.