On "Safe Spaces"

There are some debates around the notion of "safe spaces" and here are a few of my thoughts:

A space cannot be safe for oppressed people and, to some lesser degree, their supporters if it does not have a general atmosphere and understanding of working towards not engaging in oppression against them.  A safe space for a queer person must be a non-homophobic space, a safe space for a trans person must be a non-transphobic space, a safe space for a black person must be a non-racist space.

Can any place with privileged people (especially with them in the majority) be a completely non-oppressive space?  We all internalize and participate in oppressions, but this is especially true for privileged people, as they benefit from the oppression.  Yes, there are privileged people who work on trying to stop engaging in oppression/combat oppressive systems, but this is often a hard issue with a lot of struggle.

However, if you make it an exclusive space, you end up risking having to police the boundaries of the oppressed class.  Also, it's obvious that even without that issue, you can't just set aside issues of making safe groups which will be mixed by their nature, as well as the issue of multiple axis of oppression.  If I can only have a group of low income (or low income raised), disabled, queer, genderqueer, atheist, etc. people for any activity, that's going to make it really hard to organize any groups at all.

That's not to say that I think there's never any value in exclusive spaces, I just don't think they are an ideal solution in many situations.

I tend to feel that "safe space" like coalition, is something that you build as a part of an ongoing process.  You can't just declare that something is safe, or tell someone something is safe if they express concerns about things going on. 

Maybe it would be better to try and work on building safer spaces rather than declaring safe spaces.