Two days lunch detention. That’s the punishment then-middle-schooler Gigi Smith got for swearing at her white classmate after they pulled her braids, hit her and called her the N-word. “If there’s an instance with a Black kid and a white kid, the first person to be pulled aside would be the Black kid,” now-senior Smith said. “There’s nothing you can really do [as a Black student]. You’re going to be punished more than anyone else.” This isn’t the only instance of racial discipline disparity in SMSD or at East. It’s administrative discipline like Smith’s case, teachers constantly telling freshman Addi Hall that she’s being “too loud” while talking at the same volume as her white peers or even a substitute teacher only calling out junior Jax Taylor for using his phone in a class full of white classmates doing the exact same thing. In cases like these, this isn’t just a feeling of being marginalized — it’s more. Student experiences like those above often echo national findings suggesti...