I had to interrupt my hiatus to write about this issue which has really been gnawing at me.

(Crossposted at Daily Kos)

Let me start by saying that I am always in favor finding ways to support young people; particularly young people who are targeted by oppression and bullying.  Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better Project” seems to be a well-intentioned effort.  I do, however, want to register another perspective about this effort.  I believe that it actually obscures structural and institutional oppression and this is very problematic.

The truth is that for many marginalized youth (especially queer youth of color), “it” will not get better without a massive social movement that transforms current social inequality and oppression.  The fact that the “it” is unnamed is a serious flaw in the effort.

Just yesterday, I read a staggering article about the plight of African American youth with respect to unemployment.

The article explained:

It’s possible that I just didn’t see it but one of the most significant and alarming statistic in the nation’s September employment report seems to have gone mostly unnoticed. So here it is. The unemployment rate for each of the major demographic groups remained about the same last month, some even declined a tad. However, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for African Americans between the ages of 16 and 19 reached 49 percent, up from 45.4 percent in August and 41.7 percent for the same period last year.

So 50% of black youth were unemployed in September.  This is a recipe for social disaster.  How exactly is it going to “get better” for these young people?  By individualizing the message of his campaign, Dan Savage actually makes it palatable to the powers that be.  The message of the campaign is non-threatening and provides an outlet for even Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to film videos to post on youtube. I want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with putting out such videos.  What I worry about is that they are not being accompanied by a broader interrogation of the root causes of the violence that young people are experiencing.

Where are the structural critiques about the everyday violence that young people of color are facing across the U.S.?  And more importantly, where are the calls for large scale social mobilization for addressing the root causes of this violence?  Pairing the individual testimonials with an actual analysis and call to mass mobilization would be more conducive to actual social transformation.

A group of queer youth in Chicago put out a statement late last week about the recent coverage about LGBTQGNC suicides across the country.  I am going to share the entire statement because these young people make the case much better than I ever could.

Over the past few weeks, there has been increased reporting on violence directed towards queer youth. As an organization of queer and transgender youth of color, working specifically to make Chicago schools safe and affirming for all students, Gender JUST has drafted the below response to the current discourse around bullying, school violence, and LGBT youth.

First off, we would like to note that what we have seen of late is an increase in the reporting and discussion of school violence – not an increase in the violence itself. Young people of color face violence consistently. As queer and transgender youth of color in public schools, violence is a reality we live daily in our schools, on our streets, in our communities, and in our lives. Whether the violence is self-inflicted, gang-based, based on pure hate and ignorance, or the systemic violence perpetrated by the state and our institutions such as our schools, police, welfare system, non-profits, and hospitals, we need to have an ongoing analysis of violence that lasts longer than our brief memory of the deaths of a select grouping of queer youth.

It is critical to remember that we face violence as youth, as people of color, as people living in poverty, as queers, as trans and gender non conforming young people. We can’t separate our identities and any approach to preventing violence must be holistic and incorporate our whole selves. We have seen an overly simplistic and unneuanced reaction to the recent violence; from Dan Savage telling young people to wait it out until “it gets better” and from Kathy Griffin declaring that passing Gay Marriage and overturning Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would somehow stop the violence in our lives, we have found this response to be as misguided, irrelevant, and offensive as the conservative LGBT Movement itself.

While youth violence is a very serious issue, the real bullies we face in our schools take the form of systemic violence perpetrated by the school system itself: sex education that ignores queer youth and a curriculum that denies our history, a militarized school district with cops in our schools, a process of privatization which displaces us, increasing class sizes which undermine our education and safety. The national calls to end the violence against queer youth completely ignore the most violent nature of our educational experience.

Our greatest concern is that there is a resounding demand for increased violence as a reaction, in the form of Hate Crime penalties which bolster the Prison-Industrial-Complex and Anti-bullying measures which open the door to zero-tolerance polices and reinforce the school-to-prison pipeline.  At Gender JUST, we call for a transformative and restorative response that seeks solutions to the underlying issues, takes into account the circumstances surrounding violence, and works to change the very culture of our schools and communities.

Gender JUST had a momentous victory towards this end in early 2010.  Through grassroots youth-led organizing, Gender JUST developed a Grievance Procedure based on the principles of Restorative Justice for Chicago Public Schools.  But there is still significant work to be done.  You can help reduce violence against queer youth by supporting Gender JUST’s work to develop leadership and build power among queer youth of color!

For more information about Gender JUST and to find out how you can support our work, contact [email protected].

I’d like to see the Gender Just statement getting just as much coverage as the “It Gets Better Project” but somehow I doubt that this will be the case.  What the youth from Gender Just are articulating is a critique of structural and institutional violence that has a much bigger impact on many more young people than the actions of individual bullies. This is the conversation that should be being engaged across this country.  The rest is just cosmetic.

Watch Gender Just organizer Benjamin Perry talking about school pushout and their work to address this. Benjamin participated on the youth activist panel that I organized a couple of weeks ago.