Learning While Black

You've heard of racial profiling on the roads and in the skies. But are minority kids also being unfairly singled out for discipline in schools?

No one is saying Kenneth Russell is an angel. The 16-year-old high school junior from Salida, Calif., is a C student with a filthy mouth who has been known to saunter into class on his own schedule. And, yes, as Russell readily admits, after a bout of name-calling with a white classmate last fall, he threw the first punch in a fistfight that left him battered and his adversary with five stitches over his left eye.

But is Russell actually a victim? The N.A.A.C.P. and some of his teachers think so. His father John has filed a civil rights complaint...

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