Intersectional Inquiries with LGBTQ and Gender Nonconforming Youth of Color: Participatory Research on Discipline Disparities at the Race/Sexuality/Gender Nexus

Just methods in revolting times

“…We met young people who entered the foster care system, in Arizona, and became "foster by gay" because their undocumented families feared the attention that their gender "variance" brought into their homes. We heard from Black LGBTQ youth who attended underresourced and overpoliced schools, stories that confirmed the research by Jennifer Chmielewski et al (2015) that gender nonconforming girls of color have the highest rates of school suspension in New York City. We spoke with deaf lesbians often denied the sexual and reproductive health care they deserve, and with transyouth still struggling for bathrooms in high schools that insist upon gender binaries.…”

Bullied and Punished: Exploring the Links between Bullying and Discipline for Sexual and Gender Minority Youth

“…Given our small sample size, this diversity limited our ability to systematically investigate patterns that may be unique to subpopulations of SGMY. To more fully understand students' experiences, future research should investigate the salience of an array of intersectional identities in relation to bullying and punishment (Bellinger, et al, 2016;Chmielewski, et al, 2016;Snapp et al, 2015).…”

“…SGMY are three times more likely than their heterosexual and gender conforming peers to experience punitive discipline at school and gender nonconforming youth, particularly girls, are at increased risk for such discipline (Carter, Fine, & Russell, 2014;Himmelstein & Bruckner, 2011;Poteat, Scheer, & Chong, 2016a). Documented school discipline disparities also exist for adolescents of color (Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010) and adolescents with disabilities (Skiba et al, 2006), and evidence is emerging that race and ability status lead to more severe disparities for SGMY of color or SGMY with disabilities (Chmielewski et al, 2016;Skiba, 2016). This research provides evidence that disparities in school discipline result when school administrators impose different consequences for the same or similar punishable behaviors, not because particular students engage more often in these behaviors (Losen & Haynes, 2016;Poteat et al, 2016a), suggesting that issues related to bias and discrimination may contribute to discipline disparities in the United States (Snapp, Hoenig, Fields, & Russell, 2015;Mediratta & Rausch, 2016;Skiba, 2016).…”

“…In one of the few studies to look at models to explain factors for discipline disparities for SGMY, Poteat et al (2016a) found that these disparities resulted when adults imposed differential consequences for misbehavior, rather than from higher rates of punishable behaviors among certain groups of students. Despite this growing body of literature on the links between bullying and punishment for SGMY, few studies have focused on the lived disciplinary experiences of diverse SGMY (Bellinger, et al, 2016;Chmielewski, Belmonte, Stoudt, & Fine, 2016;Snapp et al, 2015) in examining the potential factors that contribute to links between victimization and punishment for SGMY (Gordon, 2018). This paper presents our efforts to address this gap by conducting one-on-one interviews with a diverse group of young people who were likely to be at risk for bullying as well as punitive discipline related to their gender identity and/or sexual orientation.…”

Addressing racial inequalities within schools: Exploring the potential of teacher education

“…In conducting ethnographic research at a public middle school, Morris () found that teachers commonly condemned African‐American girls for being too loud and assertive in the classroom and generally emphasized the cultivation of Black girls' social decorum more than their academic progress. Relatedly, although research on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in school disciplinary inequalities is limited, studies suggest that LGBTQ and gender nonconforming youth of color may experience intensified disciplinary inequalities (Chmielewski, Belmonte, Stoudt, & Fine, ; Himmelstein & Brückner, ).…”