Queer Youth v. the State of California: Interrogating Legal Discourses on the Rights of Queer Students of Color

Abstract

For nearly 2 decades, lawsuits filed on behalf of students who have endured antiqueer bias in schools have resulted in favorable verdicts and settlements for the plaintiffs, thus spurring an increasing number of school districts across the United States to establish antidiscrimination policies and other initiatives to protect students from homophobic harassment. While these legal victories mark an important turn toward creating safe schooling environments for all students, they also reveal an inattention to the intersections of multiple identities and oppressions that can mediate the harassment experienced by queer students. Drawing upon critical scholarship on queers of color, or a queer of color critique, this article interrogates the absence of race in legal discourses on the rights of queer students in California. Through its focus on the intersections of race and sexual orientation, this article considers new forms of knowledge on queer youth of color that not only may inform legal protections on their behalf, but also may shape the efforts of school districts and community stakeholders to improve the educational experiences of queer students of color.

Experiences with sexual orientation and gender identity conversion therapy practices among sexual minority men in Canada, 2019–2020

“…In the case of racial, ethnic, and immigrant disparities in CTP experience, we must work with racialized and immigrant communities to understand how CTP is presented in cross-cultural contexts. For example, researchers and sexual and gender minority-affirming organizations may undertake an in-depth examination of how LGBTQ2-affirming policies differentially reaches families and youth of colour [ 34 – 37 ]. In addition, reviews of the recent international growth of CTP point to a mechanism whereby a sizeable number sexual and gender minority immigrants may be arriving to Canada from countries where levels of sexual and gender minority stigma, and in some cases criminalization, are high, and therefore from contexts where CTP is even more common than it is in Canada [ 38 ].…”

Who is (Not) Protected by Title IX? A Critical Review of 45 Years of Research

“…In addition to the content and chronological analyses, we situated our approach to this body of research in an intersectional feminist (Crenshaw, 1991;Evans-Winters, 2015) and QOC critique (Duran, 2018;Ferguson, 2004;Manalansan, 2018;Marquez & Brockenbrough, 2015;Wright, 2014). QOC critique builds on knowledge and perspectives generated from the related fields of queer theory and "U.S. women-of-color feminism" (Brockenbrough 2015, p. 30;Wright, 2014).…”

“…We undertook this article based on the belief that a "thorough, sophisticated literature review is the foundation and inspiration for substantial, useful research" (Boote & Beile, 2005, p. 3). The authors coded the articles to examine trends and then analyzed empirical studies by applying an intersectional feminist lens (Collins, 2003;Crenshaw, 1991;hooks, 1984) and Queer of Color (QOC) critique (Marquez & Brockenbrough, 2015) as frames to better understand how White settler colonial cisheteronormative 2 hierarchies influenced what questions were asked, what methodologies were employed, and what questions so far have been under-or unexamined. As educators committed to antioppression and equity who have worked in K-12 and higher education settings, we are interested in a providing a critical examination of the ways in which this federal law in the United States has been framed and studied, whose perspectives have been centered, and what silences exist in this body of scholarship.…”

Joaquin’s Refusal: An Embodied and Geographic Active Subjectivity

“…The queer and trans youth in this ethnography contend with narratives of race, sexuality, gender, and class that serve to surveil, restrain, and contain their bodies. Indeed, a growing body of critical scholarship and education researchers have uncovered how systems of oppression and domination work congruently to marginalize and undermine the livelihood of queer and trans youth (Brockenbrough, 2013;Cruz, 2011;Marquez & Brockenbrough, 2013;Shange, 2019). Joaquin's statement, however, is a bodily and spatial consideration of resistance.…”