Census-Taking and Theater-Making: Real and Imagined Perceptions and Experiences of School and Neighborhood Safety for Racialized and White Youth

This article explores the unexpected discovery of a significant divergence between the strong feelings of safety and belonging reported in a school and neighborhood safety survey, and the discursive, contradictory, and complex narratives about safety revealed by students' storytelling through theater and narratives shared with researchers in a Toronto classroom. The authors highlight how institutionalized definitions of safety most often reflect normative, white experiences, while reproducing patterns of oppression in the lives of racialized students (and teachers) by sending clear messages about the kinds of safety narratives that do, and do not, belong. Our analysis opens a line of inquiry between what the pursuit of being a 'safe school' is meant to do, what it does, and what it may fail to do, with implications for how school boards might differently evaluate student safety, endeavor to create "safe spaces" within schools, and enact school policies better able to improve the lives of racialized and white youth.