A Queer of Color Critique of Policy Supporting LGBTQ Students

• In Event: Research as Repair: Advancing Educational Justice Through the Critical Study of Policy Implementation

Abstract

While humanizing educational contexts (Gayles, 2023) and policy implementation conversations continue to emerge (Felix & Nienhusser, 2023), an area that remains scarce is the need to examine the social construction of gender, sexuality, and binaries in policy contexts. Such assumed normalcy in educational policy results in pursuits of technocratic solutions to what are more complex multifaceted realities where conceptualizations of words create meanings and materialize into reproductions of either a certain dominant knowledge base without understanding the embedded binary and assumed cis heterosexism (Gonzalez, 2021, 2022). Educational policy scholars note that while some policies can serve as a tool to advance equity efforts in higher education, in particular community colleges, but not without critical implementation (Felix, 2021; Gonzalez et al., 2021; Leonardi & Moses, 2021). In 2021, California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom approved Assembly Bill (AB) 132 (known as the Postsecondary education trailer bill) which noted 39 changes to postsecondary environments with the intention to close equity gaps for students pursuing college. Through AB 132 Sec.89, the first ever appropriations for LGBTQ+ community colleges was made in the amount of $10 million one-time funds to support the LGBTQ+ students (Postsecondary education trailer bill, 2021). While drafted to support LGBTQ+ students and communities, AB 132 Sec.89 might once again inadvertently result in queer and/or trans students of color (QTSoC) at the margins.
Most recently Gonzalez and Duran (2023) examined the scholarship for BIQTPoC at community colleges. Their work found that over the last three decades, the minimal research on QT students still failed to center QTSoC (Gonzalez & Duran, 2023). This race-neutral approach to QT higher education research has been noted by other scholars. For example, Jackson and colleagues (2021) also note the void in naming racism and whiteness as mechanisms of oppression that shape LGBTQ+ realities in higher education. Other work in community college has quared policy conversations related to how servingness structures within designated Hispanic Serving Community Colleges (HSCCs) are or not expanding notions of servingness within their funding to QT Latinxs students, noting the interconnectedness of race, gender, and sexuality (Catano & Gonzalez, 2021; Gonzalez & Catano, 2020; 2022).
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to interrogate AB 132 Sec. 89 through a queer of color critique (QOCC) (Duran et al., 2022; Gonzalez & Duran, 2023) as a way to explicitly focus on intersecting axes of power and on normativity along multiple and intersecting lines of oppression and identity (Anzaldúa, 2001; Brockenbrough, 2015). Employing QOCC can have significant impacts on disrupting dangerous normative systems. Therefore, in continuing the conversation of centering queer and/or trans voces (Brockenbrough, 2015; Duran et al., 2022; Ferguson, 2004; González et al., 2023; Jackson et al., 2021; Salas-SantaCruz, 2021) This study explores how current implementation of AB 132 Sec. 89 advance QTSoC existence at community colleges or hinder their presence and perpetuate their in/visibility.

Authors

• Angel D. Gonzalez, California State University - Fresno

• Nathen Ortiz, University of San Diego