Bullying, Intersectionality, and Black Queer Male Youth

• In Event: Anxiety and Agency at the Intersections: The Educational Plights and Possibilities of Black Queer Males

Abstract

Objectives

This paper argues that critical scholarship on the lives of Black queer male youth provides an invaluable site for interrogating research and policymaking on bullying. The narratives of Black queer male youth presented in this paper subvert the idea that bullying is based on any one particular identity or personal characteristic, instead pointing to intersections of discrimination and oppressive social forces that undergird the phenomenon identified as “bullying.”


Framework

“Intersectionality” is a concept from Black feminist thought that refers to the ways in which social identities and forms of oppression are interconnected in a “matrix of domination” (Collins, 2000). For this reason, meanings associated with racial identities, for example, are co-constructed by gender and sexuality meanings. Moreover, classism, as a form of oppression, can be interconnected with racial discrimination and heteronormativity. In this paper, intersectionality theory informs the analysis of the multiple and intersecting forms of difference and domination that converge in the bullying experiences of Black queer male youth.


Methods & Data Sources

The narratives discussed in this paper were derived from qualitative inquiry, specifically, in-depth interviews conducted with four gay and gender non-conforming Black male youth in the United States and Canada as part of a phenomenological study of the K-12 schooling experiences of Black queer youth. Interviews were conducted by the author and lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. Interview transcripts were validated by participants and analyzed by the author for significant statements and structural meaning units that described the essence of their schooling experiences.


Results

Violence was found to be a reality of the everyday lives of the Black queer male youth interviewed for this study. Each of the participants shared multiple stories of being harassed or bullied in both elementary and secondary schools. Their stories illustrated a complex picture of power relations, with participants being harassed and physically assaulted for a range of reasons, including on the basis of their skin color, gender performance, class status and/or ethnicity. Some participants fought back in the face of this discrimination, at times resembling the perpetrators who bullied them. On other occasions, participants described feeling as if they were victims who had no recourse but to absorb the harassment because teachers and adults in school settings were unaware of the complex power relations that led to the harassment.


Scholarly Significance

Through the eyes of Black queer male youth, bullying occurs at the intersection of multiple forms of discrimination or oppression. It is difficult to take into account this intersectionality given school policies that seek to define school-based interventions in narrow, instrumental ways that focus on individual students who are either the perpetrator of bullying or the victim of bullying. To counteract this limitation, the author suggests reframing bullying policies with intersectionality as their foundation. Additionally, the author calls for the literature on bullying to more rigorously capture the complex affects and intersections of power based on race, class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality.

Author

• Lance Trevor McCready, OISE/University of Toronto