Taking Over the School: Student Gangs as a Strategy for Dealing with Homophobic Bullying in an Urban Public School District

SUMMARY

This article discusses the African American lesbian gang, DTO (Dykes Taking Over), as an example of a student-initiated strategy for dealing with homophobic bullying in an urban American school district. A series of alleged incidents of same-sex sexual harassment by gang members on heterosexual students illustrate how lesbian/bisexual threat was used by these women to re-establish a power differential after they experienced bullying based on their sexuality and gender expression. A series of alleged incidents of same-sex sexual harassment by gang members on female heterosexual students illustrate how gay/bisexual threat was used by these women to re-establish a power differential after they experienced bullying based on their sexuality and gender expression. This article considers how these students were reacting, perhaps preemptively and in retaliation, to homophobia in their schools, particularly from their peers, forming gangs and using same sex sexual harassment of other students as a weapon against homophobia and a means by which they could assert themselves in their masculinities, not unlike their male peers who experience same sex bullying and/or harassment and use anti-female sexual harassment to assert their masculinity. Intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality frame several major questions that arise from these considerations, including: Might their masculinities be uniquely related to their performances of bullying? (How) could homophobic bullying be framed with sexual harassment in both policy and practice? Would this framing benefit or harm students who are bullied? How would/does that change the way we can handle it in schools (i.e., school policies), if at all? Implications for school-based practitioners are discussed with regard to how these students' behavior might be the result of a lack of programs and services available for LGBTQ and same gender loving youth both in and after school.     

Black adolescents' racial discrimination and suicide behaviors: Testing perceived school safety as a protective moderator

The current study examined associations between Black adolescents' (M_age = 15.55, SD = 1.23) racial discrimination and suicide behaviors (i.e., suicide ideation, suicide plan, and suicide attempts), and whether perceived school safety was a protective moderator. Furthermore, we tested gender differences in relations, which were not significant. Racial discrimination predicted greater suicide behaviors, and school safety informed less suicide behaviors. School safety moderated the relation between discrimination and suicide plan, such that at low school safety, discrimination predicted having a suicide plan but was not significant at high school safety. Furthermore, school safety moderated the relation between discrimination and suicide attempts. At low school safety, discrimination predicted more suicide attempts, but was not significant at high school safety.     

Understanding African American Youth HIV Knowledge

Summary

This article presents the results of a study examining correlates of urban African American youth HIV knowledge. The influence of family level factors (e.g., family communication, parental AIDS knowledge and myths regarding HIV transmission, along with family composition and family income) are examined. In addition, the current study explores the influence of racial socialization processes, specifically the influence of religious/spiritual coping, extended family caring, cultural pride reinforcement and racial awareness teaching (Stevenson, 1994; 1995; 1997) on youth HIV knowledge. Multivariate analyses revealed a significant association between youth HIV knowledge and being reared in a single parent home. Further, in every model, controlling for all types of racial socialization processes, family communication was significantly associated with youth HIV knowledge. Implications are drawn regarding the development of culturally and contextually specific HIV prevention programming for African American youth and their families.