For Colored Kids Who Committed Suicide, Our Outrage Isn't Enough: Queer Youth of Color, Bullying, and the Discursive Limits of Identity and Safety

Abstract

In recent years anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) bullying has been a pervasive discussion in popular and scholarly discourse. While such a discussion has documented the negative impact of bullying on the physical, psychological, social, and emotional lives of young people, it has not had a critical and sustained analysis of the ways that race, ethnicity, class, and other identities complicate discussions of how bullying and bias-motivated violence affects a diversity of queer youth. In this article, Eric Darnell Pritchard begins with a framework that assumes that the intersections of LGBTQ identities with race, ethnicity, and class offer unexplored critical possibilities within current discussions of bullying. He argues that in order to be more creative and effective in responding to the epidemic of bullying, we must expose and deeply engage the limits in the ways identity and safety are taken up in bullying discourse, which have resulted in flattened and less effective antibullying measures. Pritchard concludes with implications for practice in terms of curriculum, policy, and advocacy.