This paper debates how a group of Copenhagen schoolchildren use the linguistic identity labels “araber” and “perker”, to assign to each other situated roles linked to unfit and rash pragmatic and social behavior. The use appeals metapragmatic models of a low academic and social status. These models appear linked to vaster circulating discourses on schooling that limn non-Danish identities as educationally clumsy. The assays present that there are indexical reconfigurations appearing about the linguistic labels in focus via which certain ethnic identities have become symbolic of a societal low.