Making Space for Queer of Color Analysis

• In Event: Celebrating 15 Years of "Making Space": Reflections and New Trajectories of Race, Sexuality, and Justice in Education

Abstract

As one of the first book-length studies to focus on young Black men who identify as gay and/or gender nonconforming in schools, Lance T. McCready’s Making Space for Diverse Masculinities broke new grounds in studies of difference and intersectionality in education when it was published in 2010.The author had the privilege of seeing McCready develop and workshop his book in its preliminary stages when they were both tenure-track assistant professors at OISE University of Toronto. Fifteen years later, it serves as a foundational text in queer studies in education, and continues to offer three central contributions to theoretical, empirical, and conceptual inquiry in educational research.

Theoretically, Making Space draws heavily from Black feminist thought, especially in its application of intersectionality, to address the interconnectedness of race, class, gender, and sexuality as foundational in queer and masculinity studies. By explicitly marking its intellectual genealogy as intimately tied to Black feminist scholarship, it emphasizes the centrality of analyzing racism and patriarchy in studies of sexuality and masculinity. It departs from many research that primarily employs white and/or male theorists in examining LGBTQ+ cultures and experiences. Empirically, Making Space exemplifies institutional ethnography that grapples with the sociological complexities of structure and agency in school settings. Grounded in McCready’s background as a community based educator and activist, it investigates both institutional barriers that delimit Black gay joy and expression as well as young Black students’ navigation and resistance against racism and homophobia. McCready closely documents and interrogates how power and resistance constrain and enable embodied possibilities for Black gay and/or gender nonconforming youth. Conceptually, Making Space opens up new lines of research in queer studies in education. Instead of addressing formal curriculum, it pays attention to co-curricular spaces of student organization and dance programs. Although these spaces could be inclusive of gay and gender nonconforming students, for Black youth participants their race or gender complicates their sense of belonging and acceptance. Hence, McCready urges educational researchers to examine the ways youth “disrupt the social and cultural norms of school programs and organizations to create spaces that affirm diverse masculine identities'' (McCready, 2010, p. 17).

Since the publication of Making Space for Diverse Masculinities, McCready (2013) has advanced what he terms “queer of color analysis” to enact “a form of critique designed to unsettle the dominant discourses, key questions and normative beliefs … that marginalize queer people of color in educational studies” (p. 512; also, McCready, 2019). By doing so, he aims to “expand, more generally, the possibilities for anti-oppressive equity and social justice work in a range of learning spaces, formal and informal” (ibid). Through Making Space and queer of color analysis, McCready charts significant research agendas and trajectories that brings the margins to the center.

Author

• Roland Sintos Coloma, Wayne State University