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Snow Day Work (ACCIDENTALLY POSTED ON WRONG BLOG)

Hi all,

I just realized I posted this to my other class' blog (as I just posted this week's blog post to the other one as well) but I included a screenshot to prove I posted it last Tuesday!

In Dis/ability Critical Race Studies: Theorizing at the intersections of Race + Dis/ability By Subini, Connor, Beth Ferri, the authors argue through a series of tenets that race and dis/ability are strongly connected in the way that people are segregated and discriminated against. They combine "aspects of Critical Race Theory and Disability Studies" in what they call "DisCrit." The rest of the article goes into detail about each of seven tenets of DisCrit the authors propose:


  1. DisCrit focuses on ways that the forces of racism and ableism circulate interdependently, often in neutralized and invisible ways, to uphold notions of normalcy
  2. DisCrit values multidimensional identities and troubles singular notions of identity such as race or dis/ability or class or gender or sexuality, and so on
  3. DisCrit emphasizes the social constructions of race and ability and yet recognizes the material and psychological impacts of being labeled as raced or dis/abled, which sets one outside of the western cultural norms
  4. DisCrit privileges voices of marginalized populations, traditionally not acknowledged within research
  5. DisCrit considers legal and historical aspects of dis/ability and race and how both have been used separately and together to deny the rights of some citizens
  6.  DisCrit recognizes whiteness and ability as property and that gains for people labeled with dis/abillties have largely been made as the result of interest convergence of white, middle-class citizens
  7. DisCrit requires activism and supports all forms of resistance

Something that really stuck out to me throughout this reading was thinking about the historical relationship race and dis/ability have with one another. In some trainings I participated in before I became a teacher, I learned that students of color, particularly male students of color, were disproportionately labeled as LD (learning disability) and/or BD (behavior disability). And while the reading brought up points about the history of discriminatory practices against "disabled" people, it really pieced together a puzzle that wasn't fully formed in my brain yet.

A powerful quote from the reading stated that segregating students or people in general because of race is illegal, but when we do it by dis/ability, we can get away with it. And one of the main objectives of this article was to emphasize that neither institutional racism nor institutional ableism can alone explain the disproportionate amount of students of color labeled as disabled. We need to critically look at both and how they interact with one another to fully understand it.




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