My children were white. Most of the students I taught were white. But the AAU basketball team I coached was 50-50. I became very close to one boy, Gabe, who was black. Beginning in 8th grade, it had become apparent that Gabe was taller than the other boys, much more athletic, and a phenom in basketball. But he had a very hard time in school, especially with reading and math. He also lost his father to prison about this time. Years later, we found out Gabe was dyslexic, but in the 8th grade, nobody had tested him, he was written of as just a lazy learner, and sent on to the next grade with the same problem he had entered 8th grade with. The result of course was that Gabe went all through high school without learning to read or doing math. At the end of high school, because he was the best player in the state, he got several scholarship offers. But after a couple weeks, it became apparent that he could not do college work, and he dropped out. He began a professional basketball career, and kept playing for 10 years. Nobody felt sorry for Gabe - he was making quite a bit of money. But I suspect that several of the black men around him, especially those with children, knew what was coming. So eventually, when Gabe could no longer play at a professional level, basketball fell away, and he had to start making his way in the real world. But he couldn't read or write, and his life has become a struggle.

To me, this is a good example of adultification, and it is also a good example of systemic racism. Gabe was useful to the system for a long time, enough so that the normal educational requirements for a young man were essentially waived. And eventually the school's dereliction (i.e., not caring about the black kid) put an early end to his life.

I grew up on the other end of the system: my parents would never have allowed me to go untested and untrained and then coopted for the school system's purposes. But there was no one there to speak for Gabe, and so he became the 'lazy, ignorant black boy" who only cares about basketball. A wasted life, and for what?