What do you identify as? Is that ok in schools?

Whatever the answers maybe to my title question should lead to the acceptance of all no matter how you identify as but unfortunately it is not the case in all schools.



This picture above is from the article “33 states don't protect LGBT students in anti-bullying laws” by German Lopez. The article is from 2014 but the image is still pretty shocking. So often I hear the phrase “It’s 2018, everything is good now” or something along those lines but then I see graphs like this and think it’s not OK.


In, Messy, Butch and Queer: LGBTQ Youth and the school-to-prison pipeline, authors Shannon D. Snapp, Jennifer M. Hoenig, Amanda Fields and Stephen T. Russell discuss issues such as behavioral accusations, bullying, and negatively being stereotype LGBTQ Youth face in school today.


“When students are bullied based on sexual orientation teachers seldom intervene” (Snapp, Hoenig, Fields & Russell 59). It’s a sad idea knowing that some teachers will not step in and help their LBGTQ students. Students look to adults, family, and teachers for support and guidance. In some instances teachers may be culprit when it comes to the bullying. As told by a youth from California, “In my school, some of my security guards are coaches, so when they do see like a more feminine male, they do kind of tease them and they’re like, ‘oh, he’s a fairy.’” (Snapp, Hoenig, Fields & Russell 64). If an adult is essentially bullying or making fun of the student for "being a fairy" how can that student ever feel safe? Who will he go to for guidance? Who can he trust? Who are his allies? LGBTQ students just like any student want to feel safe in school and not have to worried if their classmates and teachers are going to turn on them.



“LGBTQ youth are being either chastised or disciplined for their gender expression, for their appearance, for their behavior, for their mannerisms, or for some sort of affection towards same gender youth. We don’t necessarily see that with students who are straight or are assumed to be straight.” (Snapp, Hoenig, Fields & Russell 65) With all these negative attention many of these youths being force towards this pathway of school-to-prison. If they are seen as delinquent by adults without examining their actual character, it’ll harder for them to feel apart of society. These youths are given detention and are being suspended for things that all students could be doing but are not noticed. Another student interviewed said a heterosexual couple was making out in the hallway unnoticed negatively by administration but the homosexual couple just holding hands gets in trouble. If there is a no PDA rule it needs to be enforced to all not some. It should not be the “favorable” exempted from this. If one doesn’t have that support that they are worth something then who will guide them from going down a path where it doesn’t matter if you have support or not.

The following clip is a scene from the 2018 movie Love, Simon. Where Simon (a white male who identifies as gay) wonders why straight is the “default” and why you only have to come out if you are gay. He wonders what it would look like if his straight friends were the ones who had to come out to their families. I thought about this scene as I thought about support from adults. Some LBGTQ Youth do not have the support. In this film Simon does seem to have a supportive family but how would that support look to a LBGTQ teen, for example from a Hispanic home? I wonder how different the movie would be if the main character was a Hispanic female coming out or any other race that may already have negative attention in the social hierarchy, the theme that appears again and again in our articles.




A similar situation is happening to Latino youths. Being pointed out for unfavorable behavior because they might look that the part of a criminal or a delinquent. In the beginning of Smoking Guns or Smoke & Mirrors?: Schools and the Policing of Latino Boys author Mario Galicia was on his way to a high school when a lock-down was being conducted to due the sighting of a gun used by a group of 4 Latinos boys. Galicia witness and overheard parents calling the boys “Gangsters”, glad they were being taken away and that they should “rot in jail”. After everything settled no guns were involved just a group of boys trying to scare away someone bothering them. This story was twisted and changed by the grape vine. No one in this community knew what was going on but they felt as if they had enough of the story to spread it around and each time the story was told another factor was added or changed. Second author of this article, Victor Rios makes this statement, “misinformation and hysteria delivered by parents to other parents, the school, media, and social media exemplifies how, in an era of mass incarceration, schools, law enforcement, and community members perceive and interact with young Black and Latino boys as culprits and suspects, even before any concrete evidence arises against them”. (Galicia & Rios 55). The boys couldn’t tell their story because someone else has already made it up.

It is this mentally that forces these students to think they are a criminal because of the negative portrayal they have on media or of people who just don’t know them. Having that reputation in the community keeps making them a target for police to stop them. “Some police officers would even go as far as handcuffing the youths in order to search them. The boys said they were embarrassed and humiliated by the cops and by the people from the community center.” Of course they were humiliated, their freedom to walk safely was taken away from them. The police are usually people you go to for safety but these youths probably think of them as the enemy. Who do they go to for help? How will they avoid the path that will lead them to jail or prison time if they do not trust authority? So many questions that should be answered.

As I said above about the LGBTQ youth, how will these Latino boy feel safe if they are considered the threat? Who are their allies? Who can they trust?