Thinking Queer About the Space of School Safety: Violence and Dis/Placement of LGBTQ Youth of Color

Abstract

This chapter seeks to critically analyze contemporary discourses of queer pedagogy linked to issues of violence, safe space, and school safety. Informed by transnational theorizing and Black feminist queer praxis, I question how issues of neocolonial knowledge production might be at work in the contemporary framing of issues of violence, sexuality, and education for the nation. I argue that the contemporary rhetorical emphasis on providing “safe space” may reproduce epistemological bias by foregrounding the material realities of white, middle-class youth with documented citizenship in conceptualizing violence, safety, schooling, and education. A crucial component of a transnational Black feminist queer praxis, then, involves a rethinking of the imagery of “safe space” used in social justice educational reform efforts. Specifically, I argue for a more generative metaphor of “camp” in order to foreground the politicized yet playful nature of the classroom, school, and education more broadly. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how some queer and trans youth engage in practices of gender justice and activism as a form of queer pedagogy.