Beyond Queer Blindness: Sexual Identity, Social Studies, and Sexual Civic Empowerment in Urban Communities

• In Event: Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: LGBT Perspectives and Experiences in Education

Abstract

Elaborating on inequity in civic systems, Meira Levinson refers to the disparity between the civic access and dispositions of white students and students of color as the “civic empowerment gap”. While the racial and socioeconomic origins of the civic empowerment gap have been the subject of rich and ongoing exploration, less attention has been afforded to the role of sexual identity in developing theories of society, citizenship and belonging. This paper shares and theorizes narratives and counter-stories of urban Black students as they develop, confront and globalize conceptions of their sexual identity and vulnerabilities. It concludes theorizing the nature, scope and curricular responses to sexual civic empowerment, and the related sexual civic empowerment gap, with an emphasis on urban students.

Author

• Ashley Nicole Woodson, University of Pittsburgh