Speech That Silences, Silences That Speak: Examining Safe Space for Sexuality and Race in School

• In Event: (Re)producing and Dismantling Heteronormative Spaces in Schools

Abstract

This work examines the thin line between politically correct speech and hate speech, which may look different yet lead to similar results—the violence of silencing. Such violence undermines the seemingly clear boundary between freedom of speech and open dialogue as well as between marginalization and silencing—showing how aiming at one can inadvertently generate the other. Drawing on ethnographic moments in which high school students deploy “that’s so gay” and “that’s so ghetto” comments, this research explores how these expressions spatially marginalize the students they target. Such speech acts operate as agents of interpellation that enact upon students’ bodies and identities in educational environments that strive toward constructing “safe” and “politically correct” space, complicating the very possibility of such educational goals.

Author

• Susan Walker Woolley, University of California - Berkeley