Prison should be the last thing on a young LGBTQ person’s mind. Unfortunately, there are approximately 300,000 LGBTQ youth arrested or detained each year in America. Out of those 300,000 arrested, 60 percent are youth of color. LGBTQ youth of color have to learn how to live in a heteronormative society where their culture and identity are oppressed.
Even inside their schools, their well-being is never a primary subject of discussion in academic circles. This is shown by the numerous zero-tolerance policies districts have created, and budget cuts in urban school districts across the country that have been limiting their mental, emotional and academic support. For example, the School District of Philadelphia has cut nearly $500 million in teachers, support staff, nurses and counselors while closing 24 schools in the last three years.
Increased budget cuts to academic and emotional support for LGBTQ youth have strengthened the school-to-prison pipeline. This pipeline is a combination of school policies, including zero-tolerance policies and budget cuts, that push students out of school and into the juvenile detention centers and, later, prison.
“A lot of LGBTQI young people were pushed out [of school] because of the zero-tolerance policies,” said Saeda, a gender-nonconforming female organizer at Youth United for Change. YUC is a youth-led organization with the goal of improving the quality of education in Philadelphia by ending the school-to-prison pipeline. “For example, when the school says, ‘Don’t violate the uniform policy,’ and if I’m a boy and want to wear a skirt, I would be technically violating that policy as it stood before. Before the policy change, there was no safety net for students.”
Many school districts including the School District of Philadelphia have zero-tolerance policies, meaning students are severely punished for minor infractions such as not wearing uniforms, cutting class or school, arguing with teachers or administrative staff, etc.
“When I was in West Philly [High], there were a lot of no-tolerance policies. They were focused on rules. It wasn’t focused on building for real life,” said Keith Southerland, a senior at CHAD High School. “It was focused too much on punishment rather than building us up.”
LGBTQ youth of color are most vulnerable to zero-tolerance policies. These youth are 4.9 times more likely than heterosexual students to be expelled from school. Many LGBTQ youth of color encounter many psychological and emotional setbacks when coming to terms with their sexuality.
“In middle school we had a counselor that came on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So if something did happen, you couldn’t go Tuesday or Thursday to the counselor,” said Tyler Mason, a junior at Mastery Charter Gratz High School and youth leader at YUC. “For LGBTQ youth, many situations can’t wait ’til tomorrow. Without emotional support for LGBTQ youth, they are more likely to drop out because many young LGBTQ youth don’t feel comfortable in school.”
Creating a climate that supports a loving and supportive school environment is always a challenge for schools. Unfortunately, too many youth of color do not have that environment in their schools. According to the National Bullying Prevention Center, 81 percent of LGBTQ youth have been bullied in school. When people think of bullying, they think of student-to-student bullying, but for LGBTQ youth bullying can also come from teachers.
“When I was in eighth grade, I was really close to a guy. We always sat with each other during graduation practice. During a graduation practice, the teacher said, ‘Why are you always sitting next to each other? Are you gay or something?’” Southerland said. “Of course I said no ’cause it was an awkward situation. That put distance between me and my friend. It made it seem what we had was wrong.”
Too many times teachers are unaware of how to handle the challenges of supporting an LGBTQ youth, thus why sensitivity training and training on how to support LGBTQ youth are essential. If Southerland wasn’t confident in who he was, the situation could have caused an emotional setback, which many times can lead to poor academic work. Once a student has poor academic performance and an emotional setback, they become more vulnerable.
“The school-to-prison pipeline creates victims of a system,” said Christa Rivera, an alumni of YUC and a West Chester University freshman. “These victims are forever more vulnerable to falling back into the claws of the system. LGBTQA youth are arrested for fighting back against a bully, or wearing the uniform that is most comfortable for them. This vulnerability will be taken with them to college. That vulnerability could potentially make the transition from high school to college that much more difficult.”
LGBTQ youth of color are more vulnerable to the school-to-prison pipeline because they have to struggle with being comfortable with who they are in a heteronormative society, where they are a double minority.
“Being black and gay is a double minor. Being black you already have a high chance of going prison, and then you add a poor education system and someone is ostracized,” said Southerland.
Many of them have to cope with the risk of being homeless, bullied and treated like second-class citizens. Once these things happen to an LGBTQ youth, they could start looking to the streets to find emotional and financial support. And the majority of the time, this leads to selling drugs and sex working.
Read more on the school-to-prison pipeline in the January LGBTQ Youth Supplement.
William E. Shelton II graduated from St. Joseph’s University with a master of arts in writing studies.