Black male students "are" endangered. As a high school language arts teacher who has taught in a predominantly African American school, the author has witnessed the suspensions, expulsions, and overrepresentation of black males in special education classes for more than 30 years. In "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," Michelle Alexander tells readers that the number of African Americans in prison, jail, or on probation today is greater than the number of African Americans enslaved in 1850; in 2004, there were more African American men who could not vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws than in 1870, when black people were explicitly denied the right to vote based on race. In this article, the author responds to the endangerment of the youth with powerful essays and powerful essay writing. Creating assignments that do the double duty of teaching students to read and write while also examining the ways race and class function in the society is absolutely fundamental today. As the author writes this article--to discuss an assignment that pushes students to analyze how their lives have been shaped by the "single stories" told about them--she is also writing to talk back to the galloping standardization that expects all students to reach higher standards through uniform readings that either bore them or have little relevance in their lives.