Decolonizing the Safety Discourse in Education: A Shift Toward Healing Pedagogies Using an Intersectional Approach

• In Event: Race, Family, and Politics of Educational Opportunity: (Re)Conceptualizing Space

Abstract

Schools adopt a safety discourse as a means to sustain white comfort and functions as a form of symbolic violence for students of color (Leonardo & Porter, 2010). After-school programs serve as ‘safe’ spaces to counter mainstream education. Thus, the goal of this ethnographic pilot study is to understand how after-school programs follow a safety discourse that originates from a legacy of colonialism in U.S. society. Adopting a decolonial lens, I analyze interviews of after-school program instructors, who serve a predominantly girls of color and gender non-conforming population. One preliminary finding confirms the notion that after-school program’s safety discourse is a subtle form of colonial violence. Intersectionality theory guides the shift from a ‘safe’ space to a ‘healing’ pedagogical approach.

Author

• Gema Cardona, Berkeley University of California