In this article, I explore the ways in which school-imposed labeling at one "no-excuses" public charter school impacts teachers' perceptions of students who were labeled as being high risk or struggling academically, and how these students perceive their own schooling experiences. A primary aim was to extend how labeling is viewed in schools, from that as a innocuous practice to a mechanism of symbolic violence that can disproportionately affect males of color, and particularly as evidenced in this study, Black males.