When I was a kid, the labeling hysteria (everyone's LD, everyone's ADD) hit the black kids the hardest. Because of some one's say so, they were labeled with something wrong with them for life, and held back academically in 'special' classes. I escaped this with the mere label of having a lisp. When the second round of labeling came by in middle school, in which we would be divided into normal and honors, I passed easily, being put into honors for say, English, and pre algebra for math.

Of course, there is a split in my abilities. While doing extremely well in English with no prompting, I needed a teacher who actually knew what they were doing in the math department. I was a B (or in latter days, C student in math) This is not a disability- many people made such grades. The third round of labeling attempts is in high school, in which they divide you into honors, AP, regular, and vocational track classes. Many blacks were stuck in the last, although I was in the first for English, history, and biology, and only in honors for chemistry, and in regular for math. This is not a disability many people went into regular math in high school.

So now I am in college, and am seeing a strange difference in this labeling process. I forgot my lab notebook, so instead of trying to help, I get a labeling attempt. This is not a good idea, as these labels are deeply stigmatizing, and without any more proof than that you should not be making an attempt. I have seen girls dump their unknowns and forget to put their test tubes in their lockers. Are they 'disabled'? Worse yet, this prevents me from getting the help I need. I passed Calculus because instead of insulting and stigmatizing me, my teacher let me come before class, and helped me with the problems.

She did not feel the need to ask if I had checked with disability services. She did not feel the need to imply that I was a deficient person because I didn't do this one thing to 'standard'. My chemistry teacher has this problem constantly- implying that we are all stupid because we all failed the quiz isn't going to help us do better dude. And also, I find the idea that you can decide that I am a moron based on one score sort of dumb. Of course, if I was labeled in childhood, I would not be here. They would have retarded my progress and made me feel I was dumb, and couldn't learn. In fact, some of this effect has been observed, although I am an adult. I still feel rage about this, etc. I am even considering sending an editorial to the school newspaper.


Of course, people will insult me for this, but I'd like to tell them to go fuck themselves. Also, a weird link about this. Also, apparently, forty percent of folks are 'diagnosed' in college- although a real pervasive deficit would probably been noticed earlier.