0
SPEAKER_02
One day I was driving you to school and you were just very quiet that day and bummed out.
0
SPEAKER_02
I must have said something like, what s wrong?
0
SPEAKER_02
You just said, mom, I just realized that all my friends are white.
0
SPEAKER_02
You were very upset and you started just crying in the car.
0
SPEAKER_02
And you said, all my friends are white and I try my best to make friends with the black kids and they just don t want to have anything to do with me because they see me with these white kids all the time.
0
SPEAKER_02
And you were very, very upset about it.
0
SPEAKER_02
And so was I, quite frankly, because I didn t really know what to do about it.
0
SPEAKER_02
And I said, well, what about church?
0
SPEAKER_02
You know, you have all your Boy Scout friends and you were in Jack and Jill.
0
SPEAKER_02
You really did a lot of stuff.
0
SPEAKER_02
But school is very primary for young people, and I know that, and that s their main circle.
0
SPEAKER_02
So I spoke to your dad about it, and he said, don t worry about it.
0
SPEAKER_02
Once he gets on the basketball team over there, it s going to be cool.
0
SPEAKER_02
And indeed, it was.
0
SPEAKER_00
He was right.
0
SPEAKER_02
I mean, the conversation was longer than that, but that was the upshot.
0
SPEAKER_02
He said, eh, he ll make some friends.
0
SPEAKER_02
And indeed, that s what happened.
0
SPEAKER_00
So that s my mom talking about a conversation we had in seventh grade, talking about me feeling sad and probably angry in a way that I wasn t communicating, that I had so many white friends at that point in time.
0
SPEAKER_00
But I think what I was also saying was, I don t know where I go.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what shelf on the bookshelf I go on.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I think it takes a lot for me still because my parents, it s so scary to talk about your parents into a microphone.
0
SPEAKER_00
My parents, when they have your attention, it can feel very intense.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like when they re looking at you, they re really looking at you.
0
SPEAKER_00
When you re telling them something s wrong and they decide to take their turn to fix it, they really take their turn.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so, as a result, I don t often tell them when something s wrong until it hurts so bad that I don t know what else to do.
0
SPEAKER_00
I heard somebody say this about German shepherds, I have one, which is, they are so tough as animals.
0
SPEAKER_00
If they whimper, you really have hurt them.
0
SPEAKER_00
That, I think, is who I was at that age.
0
SPEAKER_00
So as I remember it, that was very tough day.
0
SPEAKER_00
Very specifically, what was going on was that I had kind of like a new girlfriend at the school who was black, who wasn t in the program.
0
SPEAKER_00
And some of the other boys, and probably honestly some of the girls too, they weren t feeling it.
0
SPEAKER_00
And they felt like, you know, like I was an imposter.
0
SPEAKER_02
And you re just a newbie.
0
SPEAKER_00
And just as dad said it, I got on the basketball team.
0
SPEAKER_00
Everything at that school was different for me for the next two years.
0
SPEAKER_00
Because at that point I had this kind of value for the school, which was that I was a ball player and it s performative.
0
SPEAKER_00
People come to the game, they see you, they talk about you.
0
SPEAKER_00
Oh, the kid on the basketball team.
0
SPEAKER_00
Everybody knows you.
0
SPEAKER_00
I knew some and then there were other black kids on the team the coaches black so all of a sudden I had this new social group and then what it became a little bit was in my classes then at that point then it was those kids the white kids being like you re the cool guy now but I was I could live with that they weren t intimidating I could deal with that so that was one time now
0
SPEAKER_00
The next time I told you I wanted to leave my school.
0
SPEAKER_02
So we researched and we decided that we really wanted you to go to Blake, which was a brand new school, excellent principal, excellent resources, lots and lots of good things.
0
SPEAKER_02
So we decided we were going to do that, but I made a deal with you and I said, okay, we can do that, but you have to stay in the band.
0
SPEAKER_02
Don t ask me why I thought that was so, but I just wanted you to stay in the band.
0
SPEAKER_02
And you said, okay, I will.
0
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think you didn t want to see me become one dimensional.
0
SPEAKER_00
You didn t want to see me try to flatten myself.
0
SPEAKER_00
And just be an athlete.
0
SPEAKER_00
There were elements of that experience that I love.
0
SPEAKER_00
I love music.
0
SPEAKER_00
I love making music.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s fun to learn an instrument, although extremely challenging.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I tried to quit a lot, both piano and trumpet.
0
SPEAKER_02
Yes, you did.
0
SPEAKER_00
But a lot of times, I think, when you saw me trying to avoid something, it just felt so sensitive, the line I had to walk, which was... Yeah, I bet.
0
SPEAKER_00
...continue to stay on this track with the gifted and talented kids, because you know it s important.
0
SPEAKER_00
Right.
0
SPEAKER_00
Your parents care about it.
0
SPEAKER_00
But I needed my friendships with the Black kids.
0
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
0
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
0
SPEAKER_00
And those were my real friends, and they re still my real friends to today.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t want to be
0
SPEAKER_00
pushed out of that community because they thought I was a cornball.
0
SPEAKER_00
I spent a lot of time and energy as a kid so focused on the minutiae of trying to manage that process.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I saw where other kids didn t manage it well, and it seemed to make life harder for them.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I m still trying to manage it, and I really want to let go of that.
0
SPEAKER_00
When I think of high school, I think of an arena more than I think of a place for learning.
0
SPEAKER_00
I think of being in that cafeteria and each table was like a path of options.
0
SPEAKER_00
Who do I want to be today?
0
SPEAKER_00
Who do I have to make laugh today?
0
SPEAKER_00
The stakes feel so high.
0
SPEAKER_00
The dumb thing, the silly thing, the vulnerable thing that you say that someone catches, that can be your identity for the rest of the whole experience.
0
SPEAKER_00
As I went through puberty, being like, how exciting.
0
SPEAKER_00
We re all in the locker room together.
0
SPEAKER_00
Dudes are taking off their clothes and stuff.
0
SPEAKER_00
Everybody s got these different bodies or whatever.
0
SPEAKER_00
But also feeling at the same time, so scared.
0
SPEAKER_00
What if my body s wrong?
0
SPEAKER_00
What if I find out they all have this and I have this?
0
SPEAKER_00
Then what?
0
SPEAKER_00
And I can t even say high schoolers who live out of this place of feeling are wrong.
0
SPEAKER_00
It feels like the risk of abandonment is sky high.
0
SPEAKER_00
And it is.
0
SPEAKER_00
I m still close to so many of my high school friends.
0
SPEAKER_00
I mean, especially the guys on the basketball team.
0
SPEAKER_00
I cared so much that I tried to adopt identities around stuff that I knew that they liked, that would make them continue to like me.
0
SPEAKER_00
I crafted an identity as the ladies man kind of thing.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was like, oh, these guys think it s cool if girls like you.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I really tried to figure out how to do that.
0
SPEAKER_00
I saw how much they love my dad.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I brought them around him a lot.
0
SPEAKER_00
When I got a car, I was always trying to drive places so that they would jump in with me.
0
SPEAKER_00
I just really needed them to love me.
0
SPEAKER_00
and I really needed them to like me.
0
SPEAKER_00
You wanna know what I did to look cool?
0
SPEAKER_00
Let s get real about it.
0
SPEAKER_00
Y all, some of you guys don t even know what this is, but my Black Planet profile, I used my friend s do-rag, I put that on my head, which I never even owned a do-rag.
0
SPEAKER_00
I held one of his Jordans in the shot, his little baby Chad holding a Jordan 12, I believe, with a black durag on and a white tall tee.
0
SPEAKER_00
I had like a hundred different vernaculars that I would use.
0
SPEAKER_00
I would talk one way with my friends who went to paint branch.
0
SPEAKER_00
I would talk another way with my friends on the basketball team, talk another way with Alicia s parents, another way with my parents.
0
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God, you hear me and my sister talk, you ll be like, I don t even recognize this person.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then the thing is that you don t have a wardrobe to keep up with all these identities.
0
SPEAKER_00
Nobody can have a hundred different ways to dress.
0
SPEAKER_00
And what that eventually became was over time in my adult life, I just started wearing the same thing every day because I couldn t keep up with this roulette of personalities.
0
SPEAKER_00
It would just, it was too much.
0
SPEAKER_00
Laleh became a costume designer in New York and she ran our high school fashion show.
0
SPEAKER_00
I ve never seen Lotle be a different person.
0
SPEAKER_00
I ve never seen her do personality roulette, and I ve been around her in so many environments.
0
SPEAKER_00
I never felt like I was meeting the bar, basically my whole life.
0
SPEAKER_00
In high school, especially.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was on the team, but I wasn t a star.
0
SPEAKER_00
I got good grades, but I didn t get straight A s.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was in the band, but I wasn t first chair.
0
SPEAKER_00
Do you know what I mean?
0
SPEAKER_01
I do, because that s what I was saying about Alicia.
0
SPEAKER_01
She was an artist.
0
SPEAKER_01
I was just lower grade competition in the same class.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s what s
0
SPEAKER_01
cool about what I remember of my high school experience was none of us just got by.
0
SPEAKER_01
We did really well, but we also went out and partied on the weekend and never got in trouble.
0
SPEAKER_01
We weren t bad kids, but we were partying.
0
SPEAKER_01
I would say, oh yeah, I m sleeping at Jennifer s and we re out until 4am doing whatever.
0
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s what s so fascinating about it.
0
SPEAKER_01
We were just toeing the line of what parents might consider bad kids, but we got away with it because we did get good grades.
0
SPEAKER_00
It depends on whose eyes we re looking at ourselves from.
0
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
0
SPEAKER_00
That wasn t very poetic.
0
SPEAKER_00
But some of my friends on the basketball team definitely thought I was a nerd.
0
SPEAKER_00
But they also felt connected to me and in band.
0
SPEAKER_00
I felt less accepted by them, less welcomed by them than my teammates.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I know everybody s the hero of their own story and probably thinks they were different and imposter and separate and all these things.
0
SPEAKER_00
But that s really how I sort of felt.
1
SPEAKER_01
that more your lack of confidence would come out in decisions that I would talk to you about.
1
SPEAKER_01
I remember Kenny, he came and told you, you were talking to Ashley or something.
1
SPEAKER_01
He was basically like, yo, that girl s a bum.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m like, she s not cool.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I remember, like, seeing you.
1
SPEAKER_01
I was witness to that and let that happen.
1
SPEAKER_01
Then it was the next day you had treated her to goings, like, yeah, whoa, whoa, whoa.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, whoa, check, come here.
1
SPEAKER_01
You can t go like that just because Kenny said that she s not cool.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think that came from a lack of confidence of you wanting to be cool with everybody that was cool.
1
SPEAKER_01
You wanted to be like how they were.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I think that s something that I noticed that you grew out of.
1
SPEAKER_01
At some point, you left that behind, the idea of needing to fit in with other people.
1
SPEAKER_03
I changed schools a lot growing up.
1
SPEAKER_03
And when I got to Blake, it was like, please let this be the last time I have to change schools.
1
SPEAKER_03
Because every time I have to change schools, I have to ingratiate myself.
1
SPEAKER_03
I have to earn the affections of the kids again.
1
SPEAKER_03
The cool kids, the white kids, the black kids, the band kids.
1
SPEAKER_03
I have to do this all over again.
1
SPEAKER_03
And so at some point, I think I got very mechanical about it, which is just like, oh, that s the way the cool kids are going?
1
SPEAKER_03
All right, I m doing that shit.
1
SPEAKER_03
The thing that I wanted to be a certain way, and it wouldn t be, was me.
1
SPEAKER_03
I was on the basketball team.
1
SPEAKER_03
That was really exciting.
1
SPEAKER_03
But there were dudes on the basketball team doing fucking 360s.
1
SPEAKER_03
There were dudes that the cheerleaders had chants with their names in them.
1
SPEAKER_03
My dad is a college basketball player.
1
SPEAKER_03
To be close to something that s great and not be it is incredibly frustrating.
1
SPEAKER_03
I wanted to naturally be someone that dressed cool, talked cool, still got good grades, still was good at sports and in the band and all this stuff.
1
SPEAKER_03
I wanted to be good at those things because I could see that other people revered people who were good at those things.
1
SPEAKER_03
I saw how they revered me when I showed flashes, but I just couldn t lasso all of it.
1
SPEAKER_03
I couldn t grab it all and be all of it at once.
1
SPEAKER_03
And that made me so angry.
1
SPEAKER_03
You might hear people say this about exercise or yoga or whatever.
1
SPEAKER_03
All of that anger that was pointed at myself for not being all the things I wanted it to be, it being me.
1
SPEAKER_03
Basketball was a place where I could exhaust that.
1
SPEAKER_03
Basketball was a place where I was supposed to be angry.
1
SPEAKER_03
I m like, here s how I can get it out.
1
SPEAKER_03
God, I m fucking sad that my friend died.
1
SPEAKER_03
I m mad that I m not
1
SPEAKER_03
more masculine or more feminine, shit, or more sensitive or more whatever.
1
SPEAKER_03
I m mad.
1
SPEAKER_03
I m not perfect yet.
1
SPEAKER_03
I m not perfect yet.
1
SPEAKER_03
Basketball was the place where you could go and be a nut on purpose.
1
SPEAKER_04
Chad came into our school.
1
SPEAKER_04
He came in with his classics, red pro models.
1
SPEAKER_04
You just have this weird guy coming in, hooping in red shoes.
1
SPEAKER_04
whooping with a lot of emotion and a lot of rage.
1
SPEAKER_04
Anger.
1
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, sometimes, if you didn t know him, if you weren t his friend, you d think he, quote unquote, fake it.
1
SPEAKER_04
But it s really just competitiveness and this chip that he had on his shoulder.
1
SPEAKER_04
He was very mature as a young man, but also could fly off the handle any second.
1
SPEAKER_04
He s a kid and a human.
1
SPEAKER_05
Me and Chad, we came to Blake around the same time, my junior year, his sophomore year.
1
SPEAKER_05
In the beginning of the basketball season, I just see this, I call him knife.
1
SPEAKER_05
I said, yeah, he definitely look like a knife, but he s for sure our manager.
1
SPEAKER_05
So I m thinking Chad is the manager.
1
SPEAKER_05
So I never seen like JV workouts or JV practice, but it was our first game against Paint Branch.
1
SPEAKER_05
And I see two guards on the floor.
1
SPEAKER_05
James Wish was the point guard and he was 5 1 .
1
SPEAKER_05
And 9th, he was 5 2 .
1
SPEAKER_05
These two little guards.
1
SPEAKER_05
And I m just amazed.
1
SPEAKER_05
I m like, wow.
1
SPEAKER_05
These boys is dominating.
1
SPEAKER_05
Scrappy.
1
SPEAKER_05
It don t matter who in front of you.
1
SPEAKER_05
And just to put that in perspective, you had on glasses, big head.
1
SPEAKER_05
This is not the same guy.
1
SPEAKER_05
He is a nerd.
1
SPEAKER_05
Still to today, I call him Knife because he just looks like a baby.
1
SPEAKER_05
But what was cool about Knife was he had the baddest girl right around.
1
SPEAKER_05
And his girl had the baddest friends.
1
SPEAKER_05
So Chad, I m like, yo, I need to be friends with Knife.
1
SPEAKER_05
He is the plug.
1
SPEAKER_05
So I m like, yo, I don t understand how these girls like this baby.
1
SPEAKER_05
In a nutshell, he was very feisty on the court and then very subtle off the court.
1
SPEAKER_05
You wouldn t even expect that to be the same guy that you saw last night at tip-off.
1
SPEAKER_04
Pitbull.
1
SPEAKER_05
Pitbull.
1
SPEAKER_05
But not even a pitbull.
1
SPEAKER_05
It gotta be like a sneaky dog where you re in the spectrum like a Dalmatian or something.
1
SPEAKER_05
You trying to pet the Dalmatian, he gonna bite the shit out of you.
1
SPEAKER_05
He got a nice cover-up to his toughness.
1
SPEAKER_05
You would think he s a sweetheart.
1
SPEAKER_05
He definitely a sweetheart.
1
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, but... Yeah, it s layers.
1
SPEAKER_05
It s layers.
1
SPEAKER_05
Yeah, but that s my ninth.
1
SPEAKER_03
I ve been such a precious snowflake during this entire episode, so I m excited now to take the spotlight off of me for a little bit.
1
SPEAKER_03
You know, my stuff was internal.
1
SPEAKER_03
It was real to me.
1
SPEAKER_03
It was in my brain.
1
SPEAKER_03
It was in my body.
1
SPEAKER_03
It was defining my actions.
1
SPEAKER_03
But I had support.
1
SPEAKER_03
I had my parents.
1
SPEAKER_03
And as my friends said, girls did like me.
1
SPEAKER_03
I had stuff to like buoy my sensitivity.
1
SPEAKER_03
With adult insight, I can see, oh, like that was hard, but high school s hard for everybody.
1
SPEAKER_03
It wasn t that hard for you, boy.
1
SPEAKER_03
But the guy who was driving the car when the car hit the pole and Alicia died, he never had even the raw materials that I did to fit into all of those little boxes, to be all those different things that people s eyes were telling him to be.
1
SPEAKER_03
This is post 9-11.
1
SPEAKER_03
This is an Indian dude who looks like he s from the Middle East.
1
SPEAKER_03
He s got no eyebrows, no hair.
1
SPEAKER_03
He s trying out for the sports teams and not making it.
1
SPEAKER_03
He looks like what you imagine as a high school outcast.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I knew friends of his and I knew him.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s not like we hung out on the weekends, but we were friendly.
1
SPEAKER_00
I knew him enough to say hello in the hallways and catch up with him every once in a while.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I don t know what his experience was after 9-11, but I know that to a degree, I was guilty of a lot of the prejudices that were being exercised against Muslim Americans.
1
SPEAKER_00
I felt a certain way about people.
1
SPEAKER_00
It didn t make me avoid anybody.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I think that I was guilty of just a fear surrounding Muslim people after 9-11.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think I got over that pretty quickly.
1
SPEAKER_00
And public school has a wonderful way of doing that, I think, where you re surrounded by all different sorts of people.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think it helps you get over your prejudices.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I don t know exactly what his experience was.
1
SPEAKER_00
After that, I think what defined it for a lot of people was not religion, but was probably his appearance, because I can t speak to why, but he didn t have eyebrows and he s bald and he didn t have facial hair.
1
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, I didn t know whether it was alopecia or something more serious.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I think people kind of saw him as an entity unto himself, independent of
1
SPEAKER_00
religion or color.
1
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I would agree with that.
1
SPEAKER_03
You said that after Alicia s death, you felt inclined to defend.
1
SPEAKER_02
Mm-hmm.
1
SPEAKER_02
What made you feel like he might need defending?
1
SPEAKER_00
Just the fact that he came back to school was something that I admired.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know that I would have come back to school, but it was sort of like that ethos of finishing what you started and not
1
SPEAKER_00
running away from your problems.
1
SPEAKER_00
I admired that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And just simply by virtue of that, I felt like he needed defending in it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, anybody who gets in a car wreck and kills somebody that they cared a lot about, I don t think that that person is deserving of scorn or harassment or certainly not verbal harassment in the hallways of a high school.
1
SPEAKER_00
He was fighting an internal struggle, an internal battle that I can t even possibly imagine.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t like seeing people add on to that.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s not like he was gloating, is what I mean.
1
SPEAKER_00
If he was gloating, then that s a different thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
But there were people at the school that felt that his returning to school was him gloating.
1
SPEAKER_02
I didn t feel that way.
1
SPEAKER_02
Did people say shit like that out loud?
1
SPEAKER_02
Or was it a feeling?
1
SPEAKER_02
Was there an energy there?
1
SPEAKER_02
Where d you get that sentiment?
1
SPEAKER_02
I think that people would say things out loud that he could hear.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I never saw anybody start a confrontation with him.
1
SPEAKER_00
But as people would pass him in the hallways, I think daily he heard some kind of comment about what he had done.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t think it was fair.
1
SPEAKER_03
There was something really cool about him.
1
SPEAKER_03
Even though he was a complete outcast, I envy how he came to basketball tryouts after that.
1
SPEAKER_03
She died in the car.
2
SPEAKER_01
He went into a coma, he came back to school knowing that everybody was doing this little anger performance, and then he fucking came to basketball trial.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like he came into the arena within the arena, got cut from the basketball team, and still just walked around like himself.
2
SPEAKER_01
He s a fucking icon.
2
SPEAKER_01
How can you do that?
2
SPEAKER_01
That s impressive.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had all these feelings that were so loud in my head, but the burden, the burden he had to carry, I just can t even imagine it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I started researching the story about Kenesha, the girl who was killed in the parking lot, and the other girl, and I m calling them girls because they were girls, you know, they were kids.
2
SPEAKER_01
The girl who killed her, the name the courts gave her is Juliana.
2
SPEAKER_01
The court records hit her last name because she s a minor, but Juliana s defense lawyer defended her by saying that this was the first time she ever got in trouble.
2
SPEAKER_01
She was an honors kid.
2
SPEAKER_01
She was a good kid.
2
SPEAKER_01
She was just a kid.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was a freak accident.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s like, if someone were describing me in high school, they would describe me as the exact same thing, the boy version of this girl, Juliana.
2
SPEAKER_01
She probably walked around with her cool face on.
2
SPEAKER_01
She probably felt tried by people who stepped on her shoes, or liked the same boy as her, or talked to her any kind of way.
2
SPEAKER_01
Whatever you re imagining, because you hear my voice and you hear how I talk, whatever you think I was that s different from her as a kid, it is not so.
2
SPEAKER_01
We were the same kid from the same town.
2
SPEAKER_01
I am probably just as likely to have done what she did as I am to have done what the driver in that car did.
2
SPEAKER_01
The girl who was killed, most people, white people, would say she didn t look like a good kid.
2
SPEAKER_01
They were just kids, man.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I found Kenesha s principal at the time.
2
SPEAKER_01
Her name is Deborah Monk, because I wanted to hear more about her life, the girl who was killed.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, this is something you don t forget.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, there s a lot of things that happen when you re a high school principal, but this really stands out in my memory.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was not, of course, at the game.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was not my school that was playing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And as I was headed for bed, the phone rang.
2
SPEAKER_00
And my director called me and told me that I d had a student who was stabbed and who had passed away.
2
SPEAKER_00
When you first hear something like that, it just seems so unreal.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, really, Montgomery County, you know, how does something like this happen?
2
SPEAKER_00
But what was interesting was when he told me who it was, I knew immediately, which is odd because I was a new principal.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was new to the school, so I didn t know the kids all that well yet.
2
SPEAKER_00
And she was a freshman.
2
SPEAKER_00
She had only been with us, you know, for what, a month?
2
SPEAKER_00
So why should I know her?
2
SPEAKER_00
And there were two things about her that stood out.
2
SPEAKER_00
First of all, one of the things that I had my assistant principals do is I like to screen kids.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m always looking for talent that is hidden.
2
SPEAKER_00
You always have those high performing kids, but lots of times you have a really smart kid who s underperforming or who hasn t been recognized.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I love to scan through test scores and find those kids.
2
SPEAKER_00
And often they re minority kids, very often.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Kenesha was one of those kids.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so I conversed with the assistant principal about this, and we decided to bring her in, show her her test scores, and say, Kenesha, you are really, really a bright girl.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we want to put you in honors classes.
2
SPEAKER_00
And she was kind of starry-eyed and couldn t believe it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we said, let s try one honors class, but we really think you can do this.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so that s what we did.
2
SPEAKER_00
So she had started into honors classes.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, we had had no behavior problems with her or anything.
2
SPEAKER_00
But the other distinguishing thing about Kenesha is she had a large tattoo across her chest.
2
SPEAKER_00
which is rather unusual.
2
SPEAKER_00
Back then, tattoos weren t quite as prevalent as they are now, and it was pretty visible.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so people noticed her.
2
SPEAKER_00
And when she walked through the hall, she walked with confidence.
2
SPEAKER_00
She was not a shrinking violet by any means.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it was just strange that I knew this ninth grader.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so when the news hit me, it was really devastating.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s so much that you ve just said that I would want to unpack a little bit.
2
SPEAKER_01
One thing I m curious about is the tattoo.
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you remember what the tattoo was?
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, I was afraid you were going to ask me that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I debated whether to even tell you about the tattoo.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you know the answer to your question?
2
SPEAKER_01
I know what I ve been told.
2
SPEAKER_01
Tell me.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ve been told that the tattoo said, sexy bitch, across the chest.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s right, okay.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, I think Kenesha, I think she could have been a leader.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, for so many reasons, I was sorry she was gone, but I saw a lot of potential in her.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think we had a shot at moving her in a positive direction and she could have taken a lot of other girls with her.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because she was a leader.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you re smiling while you say that, which is really something.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s really meaningful.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like you re remembering her.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re seeing her in your mind s eye, and you re smiling at what you saw there, even still today with her gone.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s really sweet.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there s something really powerful about that.
2
SPEAKER_01
What s underneath that smile?
2
SPEAKER_01
I m curious.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, you know, I love stories where the protagonist grows and is better at the end.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I guess because I was in education, I loved that process of taking a kid, a ninth grader, and seeing them grow over four years and develop confidence and become what they can become.
2
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes you re successful, but sometimes a crumb of recognition, it makes all the difference in the world.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I would have liked to have had that chance with Kinesha.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m sorry, because I think the raw material was there.
2
SPEAKER_01
Did you ever deal with anything like this again after Kinesha as a principal?
2
SPEAKER_00
You can t be a high school principal without having deaths of students.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had several car accidents.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had an overdose.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had a kid who we don t even know why.
2
SPEAKER_00
He just died in his sleep.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I buried a number of kids and it s a principal s worst nightmare.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s just horrible.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I have to say she was the only one that was quote unquote murdered actually.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is now just a question of morality.
2
SPEAKER_01
What do you make of a teenager that does something like that?
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you see it differently than if it s an adult?
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you see it differently than, I don t know, you said, quote unquote, murdered, and that s the exact same way that I talk about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m like, I guess it was a murder, but I don t know what to call it because it s a kid.
2
SPEAKER_01
What do you think about that?
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I ve thought a lot about this.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, first of all,
2
SPEAKER_00
If you work with teenagers, you expect them to make bad choices.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s age appropriate.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, their brains are not fully formed.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re trying to separate themselves from their parents.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re trying to figure out who they are.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re going to make the biggest decisions of their lives when they re the least capable of making them.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so the goal, I always felt, was to try to make sure that they didn t make decisions that would have lifelong, earth-shattering consequences.
2
SPEAKER_00
Something like a car accident where they re paralyzed from the waist down, a pregnancy that they have to deal with.
2
SPEAKER_00
addiction.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, yeah, we can send them to rehab, but you know, all their life they re going to be dealing with addiction.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so my biggest goal was to let them be teenagers, but to try to help them not make mistakes that would alter the course of their lives in a negative way.
2
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so this falls in that category, of course.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, this is the ultimate.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know Juliana, and I m sure even if she s moved on with her life, this is a dark shadow that will never, never leave her.
2
SPEAKER_00
And certainly her parents and friends who experienced it, and then on the same side is Kenesha as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
But teenagers, you just expect them to make mistakes.
2
SPEAKER_00
Unfortunately, it s part of being a teenager.
2
SPEAKER_01
She knows teenagers and she said they re supposed to make mistakes, to try things and fail and eventually figure them out.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re supposed to push away from their parents.
2
SPEAKER_01
They re supposed to fuck up.
2
SPEAKER_01
Supposed to is almost too generous.
2
SPEAKER_01
They are wired to do those things.
2
SPEAKER_01
This was a fuck up.
2
SPEAKER_01
Juliana fucked up and killed somebody.
2
SPEAKER_01
I guess I have to admit, also, the driver fucked up and killed someone.
2
SPEAKER_01
He made a mistake.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t even know if I can call it a mistake.
2
SPEAKER_01
He might ve been driving the speed limit for all I know.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was rainy.
2
SPEAKER_01
Maybe his brakes went out.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_01
I messaged the driver to ask him to come onto the show.
2
SPEAKER_01
It took me a whole day to write the text to the driver.
2
SPEAKER_01
I wrote so many versions of that text.
2
SPEAKER_01
I changed punctuation.
2
SPEAKER_01
I changed words.
2
SPEAKER_01
I did so many things to try to make that text exactly what it was supposed to be.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it was brutal to finally send it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m sure it was brutal for him to receive it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And now I wait for his response.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I guess the place to go next
3
SPEAKER_00
is exactly where I went in real life after Alicia died, which was the total opposite of where I was emotionally at that time, which is basketball season.
3
SPEAKER_00
With basketball season came parties, girls, shit, going into white people s houses for the first time.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that s where we re going in the next episode.