The author of this commentary responds to an article titled "How We Might Make Special Education for Students with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders Less Stigmatizing," by J.M. Kaufmann and J. Bader, who maintain that identifying youth as having emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) and providing treatment for them is viewed to be stigmatizing by many people, which, in turn, has constrained both the support and use of special education and related services for EBD. In their article, Kauffman and Badar take the issue of stigmatization head-on and instead of trying to avoid it or act like it should go away, they help us to see why we need to understand and systematically work to reduce its impact on special education for youth with EBD. In this commentary, the author builds from Kauffman and Badar's article to examine the issue of stigmatization from four perspectives. First, he considers how efforts to avoid stigmatization may be related to current approaches to address emotional and behavioral problems in the general population. Second, he summarizes his views of what has been lost in the field of special education by efforts to avoid stigmatizing youth with EBD. From this backdrop, he explores how the suggestions offered by Kauffman and Badar can help realize the promise of special education for students with EBD. He concludes with a discussion of the need to bridge the constructs of research and caring within the concept of community in treating youth with EBD.