They don’t owe you their story: conceptualizing racialized queer care through protective spaces

Abstract

Guided by a love politic and centrifugal intersectionality we demonstrate how whiteness, homonormative whiteness, and white heteronormativity alienates racialized queer students in both 2SLGBTQ + and racialized counterspaces within the university. The tensions experienced by racialized queer students, do not stem from the existence of these spaces, rather they are rooted within institutional notions of diversity. It is through this examination that we present our conceptualization of protective space. Protective space builds from the reconceptualization of safe spaces as defined by the Roestone Collective. Protective spaces are rooted in a love politic and involves moving forward from guilt to meaningful action embedded in accountability to create love-centered solutions. These principles can be used in both individual action and collective organizing. The conceptualization mainly builds on the experiences of sexually diverse identities; therefore, we encourage researchers and practitioners to expand and build upon this work.

Keywords:

• Whiteness
• racialization
• higher education
• counterspaces
• homonormativity
• identity disclosure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While we recognize, within Canada, it is now best practice to refer to these spaces as 2SLGBTQ+, the visibility and inclusion of Indigenous people within these spaces at large requires examination as they continue to be erased despite their inclusion within the acronym (Greensmith, 2018).

2 We would like to acknowledge that the term ‘respectability politics’ was initially conceptualized in Black theoretical spaces, but we are using it in application to all racialized bodies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christina B. Arayata

Christina B. Arayata, MA. is a Ph.D. student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She is a 2022 Canadian Society of Higher Education Master’s Thesis Award recipient. Her research draws on her experience in campus-based equity work and advocacy. Christina’s research interests include critical race theory, QuantCrit theory, survey methods, admissions/access, and student identity development.

Vanessa Vigneswaramoorthy

Vanessa Vigneswaramoorthy is a Tamil writer, artist, and researcher. She has previously developed content and/or programming for the Tamil Archive Project, Tam Fam Lit Jam, and Heritage Toronto, and her writing has been published in Living Hyphen and NO NIIN. She is currently completing an MA in Adult Education and Community Development at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her work mainly explores different facets of BIPOC, particularly Tamil/South Asian, community organizing in what is now called the Greater Toronto Area.