Disability Critical Race Theory: Exploring the Intersectional Lineage, Emergence, and Potential Futures of DisCrit in Education
Subini Ancy Annamma: University of Kansas
Beth a. Ferri: Syracuse University
David j. Connor: Hunter College, City University of New York
This paper exemplifies many things that I believe invalidate much of this sort of research, all in one reasonably handy package.
“In this review, we explore how Intersectionality has been engaged with through the lens of disability critical race theory (DisCrit) to produce new knowledge. In this chapter, we (1) trace the intellectual lineage for developing DisCrit, (2) review the body of interdisciplinary scholarship incorporating DisCrit to date, and (3) propose the future trajectories of DisCrit, noting challenges and tensions that have arisen. Providing new opportunities to investigate how patterns of oppression uniquely intersect to target students at the margins of Whiteness and ability, DisCrit has been taken up by scholars to expose and dismantle entrenched inequities in education.”
“Through the lens of disability critical race theory (DisCrit)”
Almost at the start of the chapter, bias and presupposition are paraded as though they were not an issue. A lens, in this sense, shapes and distorts perceptions. Like a funhouse mirror reflection or the spectacles of the Emerald City, it provides only a distorted view and not an objective one. True objectivity may be impossible, but science is set up to try and compensate for such biases in ways that Intersectionality and Critical Theory have rejected.[1]
An openly embraced and paraded bias does not necessarily invalidate what follows, but it does at least throw it into suspicion, in much the same way as I have previously referenced the problems with fossil fuel sponsored climate research. The validity of Intersectionality as an idea is assumed, the validity of the lens is assumed, targetting (a loaded term, suggesting deliberate prejudice) is assumed. Racist and ableist terminology (Whiteness, ability) is employed, also entering a note of hypocrisy into the endeavour.
“New knowledge.”
The only knowledge being produced here is a collection and collation of the opinions of self-admittedly biased people. That may or may not be helpful to some future socio-political analysis of these issues. It does not help examine the truth of any of the claims or for formulating policy. This ‘knowledge’ is not knowledge in any valid or practicable sense.
Side note:
I don’t think that the base idea of Intersectionality has much validity. As I understand it, the idea of Intersectionality is that multiple vectors of ‘oppression’ are not only additive but that through their intermix, additional oppression is created ex nihilo. To me, these issues seem more to be additive and not to produce additional problems via their intermix. Further, viewing things on an Intersectional basis seems to stymie progress by creating divisions, such as I mentioned in my opening blog.
If we have a black woman suffering (for the sake of argument) oppression on the basis both of being a woman and being black, and we somehow eliminate misogyny and racism, no source of oppression is left. The unquantifiable ‘extra’ oppression also disappears, revealing that it was never there in the first place. Even if we just eliminate misogyny, we will have removed a source of oppression for all women and lifted a burden on this individual. If we centred on helping black women first, rather than all women, or all black people, we reduce solidarity, create unfairness and hobble our chances of progress.
“In 2016, Bresha Meadows, a 14-year-old Black girl, killed her father following years of abuse inflicted on her family.1 Reporter Melissa Jeltsen (2017) wrote of Meadows’s case: According to Bresha’s family, the young girl had started to fall apart in the months leading up to the shooting. Her grades plummeted. She began cutting herself. And she ran away, telling her aunts in Cleveland that she was afraid her father might kill them all. He beat her mother in front of her, she said, and threatened them with a gun. She said she was scared for their lives. (Para 9) Although the average pre-trial length of detention is 22 days (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Program, 2013), by May of 2017, Bresha had been incarcerated for over 250 days and labeled2 with posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety. Bresha’s story is not only about racial or gender-related violence but also about disability. Instead of compassion for the abuse she experienced, Bresha was treated as a dangerous entity, criminalized and punished for being a multiply marginalized3 disabled Black girl in distress. Her story illustrates how race and disability are not only deeply linked with other social locations but also how racism and ableism, intersecting with additional oppressions, often have serious and sometimes deadly implications.”
In 2016, Bresha Meadows…
This example is an anecdote; it is a single data point; it does not tell us anything useful whatsoever. It is a helpful narrative for activism, but in and of itself, it has no utility in understanding the situation or whether racism, ableism or misogyny has any bearing on Bresha’s treatment or that of people in similar circumstances.
Although the average pre-trial length of detention is 22 days…
The framing here suggests that this is an example of prejudice, but there may be other reasons for a more extended pre-trial period. This case is a more serious crime (murder); diminished responsibility might have to be considered regarding experts (circumstance and disability). The average is not the whole of the story. There will be outliers in both directions – shorter pre-trial periods and more protracted ones. The median pre-trial period can extend over 200 days, particularly for complicated crimes to prosecute. The pre-trial period for people who cannot afford bail is also extended, a poverty axis that accounts for much of what people consider racial bias. [2]
We begin by locating the foundations of DisCrit in Black and critical race feminist scholarship and activism.
Activist scholarship is not scholarship at all. Activism can follow scholarship, where objective scholarship reveals genuine issues that demand action. The scholarship, objective, distanced, supported by evidence, needs to come first. Both ‘feminist scholarship’ and ‘activism’ are loaded.
“A century later, Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) further revealed how the law subjugated Black women as they could neither claim discrimination based on race (because Black men were being promoted) nor gender (because
White women were also being promoted).”
Revealed…
Asserted, claimed, suggested, not revealed. Revelation, perhaps not coincidentally, is a religious and not a scientific ‘form of knowledge’ that isn’t knowledge at all – but faith.
Could neither claim…
If racial bias has been eliminated and gender bias has been eliminated, there seem no safe grounds upon which to claim black women are being discriminated against. There remain other potential issues, particularly historically, around poverty, education and so forth that have not been eliminated nor accounted for here. In more recent years, black women have been doing exceptionally well in education (mirroring how women generally are doing better in education than men), and this is reflected in the employment rate – a factor often left out in these analyses and one that speaks against these assumptions.[3]
“CRT recognizes racism as central to creating group (dis) advantage, highlights knowledge claims forged in the experiences of communities of color, rejects ahistoric accounts of entrenched inequities, and promotes interdisciplinary research that aims to eliminate racial (and intersecting) forms of oppression (Matsuda, 1993).”
CRT recognizes…
It claims. It does not recognise.
Has this been the case historically?
Certainly.
Is it the case currently in WEIRD nations with anti-discrimination laws, employment laws and enshrined equality legislation?
Is it the case in these nations that have equality laws and conventions and practice ‘positive discrimination’?
I would argue not, and I would centre class/wealth, which is often mistaken for racial bias and prejudice.
Knowledge claims forged in the experiences…
Subjectivity again, which is worthless without objective analysis. People’s feelings are not wholly irrelevant, but it matters a lot less than the truth. You might feel discriminated against, but are you? You might think it is because of racism, but is it? These are the questions that need to be asked, examined and reassessed as things change over time.
Research that aims to eliminate…
This research is activism, not research—laudable, of course, but not science and not helpful in expanding knowledge. Indeed, CRT’s output is increasingly shown to be useless or even corrosive to racial tolerance and acceptance rather than helping.[4][5]
“By centring race within interlocking and oppressive structures of society, CRT provides a means to understand how racism and White supremacy function in education, while seeking to disrupt them (Leonardo, 2004; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002; Yosso, 2002).”
White supremacy…
Another misdefined term. Most people understand this to mean the racist belief that the ‘white race’ is somehow superior to other races. The kind of ideology espoused by Nazis, and that is espoused by the people we identify as White Supremacists today.
Here they mean:
“In academic usage, particularly in critical race theory or intersectionality, “white supremacy” can also refer to a social system in which white people enjoy structural advantages (privilege) over other ethnic groups, on both a collective and individual level, despite formal legal equality.”
With formal legal equality, you cannot correctly be said to have privilege, which is where this falls down. Instead, this seems to be an obscurantist way of perpetuating the idea of a continuance of structural and institutional racism where it can no longer properly be said to exist. In this way of thinking, you could claim a democracy, where the demography happens to be majority white, is ‘white supremacist’, simply because more white people vote for more white candidates as a result of that demography. This analysis assumes and centres racial identity and assumes widespread white identitarianism that doesn’t seem to exist.
Similarly, democracies are often characterised as patriarchal by certain groups of feminists because most representatives and leaders are male, despite the equal ability of women to both stand for office and vote. If, however, more women were returned to parliament, they would not then recognise the country or system as a matriarchy.
“As scholars who began our professional lives working in special education, we recognized how youth of color fared far less well than their White counterparts in schools. We were also aware of the ways that disability functioned to “other” students whose differences were envisaged from a deficit lens. Moreover, we recognized that disability was a political identity, socially constructed in tandem with race and class, rather than an objective medical condition.“
We recognized how youth of color…
Is it their ethnic minority status, or is it other factors often, especially in American thought, confused for it? Most especially poverty? If poverty rates are higher amongst African-American students, with all the attendant effects that this has, could that not account for it? After all, we see the same problems in impoverished students, regardless of colour, and we also see minority students succeed. There may also be internal, racialised, cultural differences in behaviour related to education and its value – which this racialised analysis only feeds.
In the United Kingdom, those doing worst at school are white, working-class boys.[6] Despite this, there is no focus on aiding them, no focus on encouraging them into higher education. Despite ethnic minorities doing better than them, there is no urgency to address their problems, just as there is no urgency to address men’s issues, such as much higher rates of suicide. This inaction is the inverse of what we would expect if the Intersectionality approach was valid.
“Although there is room to more fully develop the potential power of explicitly integrating both frameworks, some DS scholars have engaged in work about race and disability. Reid and Knight (2006), for instance, used a DS perspective to look at racial disparities in the increased number of college students with learning disabilities, illustrating how some disability labels leveraged access for wealthy White students, while serving as a barrier for Black students. Erevelles (2002) also revealed how citizenship is a form of struggle in which dis/ability and race are implicated. In addition, Mitchell (2006, 2007) has explored ways in which gender, race, and dis/ability involve a life-long negotiation.”
Used a DS perspective…
Again with the embrace of bias, which renders it virtually useless as objective research. In the same section, bias is made clear, comparing ‘wealthy White students’ (why these terms are capitalised, I do not know) to simply ‘Black students’ – not like for like. Wealth would seem to be the meaningful point here and fits my analysis.
“Artists and activists, beyond the ones listed above, were also deeply influential in our shifting commitment to an intersectional framing of race and dis/ability. Patti Berne, Anita Cameron, Mia Mingus, Leroy Moore, and Alice Wong, to name a few, have led the conversation, naming how interlocking systems of oppression have affected the lives of disabled people of color. They have created essential organizations led by disabled people of color, such as Sins Invalid and Krip Hop Nation“
As a disabled artist, personally, and speaking subjectively for a moment:
My subjective personal experiences make my analysis suspect when addressing my issues. I strive for objectivity, but I should be under more, not less, scrutiny when I talk about mental health. Also, speaking as a disabled artist, I don’t want that to be my identity. The artist part, yes, the disabled part, no. I wouldn’t want to be part of such an organisation. Instead, I want to be taken seriously within organisations and communities that already exist. Being mentally ill isn’t a substitute for talent or graft. I don’t want to be treated differently because of my disabilities (outside of what is necessitated by them). It is insulting and patronising to be sought out, for example, based on my disability rather than my talent. I want to be included in an anthology for my stories, not my disability, for example.
“Finally, DisCrit has helped lay bare some of the contradictions between language and epistemological commitments, such as Leonardo’s (2015) reconsideration of discussing Whiteness as racial dyslexia.“
Racial Dyslexia
Virtually impenetrable jargon. The most I could find was a meme image of a black man waving a confederate flag while engaged in an argument with a white BLM supporter waving a placard. If the meme is accurate (big if), that would suggest that ‘racial dyslexia’ is stepping outside the expectations and stereotypes associated with your identity category. So the black ‘patriot’ with a love of his state is outside the CRT expectation of what he should be, as is the white BLM activist, save the black ‘patriot’ will be condemned for his self-identification, and the white activist will never be able to overcome the ‘sin’ of being white.
The hypocrisy in invalidating people’s self-identification seems obvious enough not to need pointing out, but it is worth picking out a particular aspect here. Intersectionality fails to recognise minorities within minorities, such as the black ‘patriot’, the ‘gay conservative’. They are stripped of their membership in the group, which is also a consequence of treating immutable characteristics as social constructs.
“Indeed, a concern about the overrepresentation of Black, Latinx, and Native American students receiving special education labels, being placed in the most restrictive and segregated placements, receiving harsh disciplinary sanctions, and being funnelled into jails motivated our own scholarly work and provided the impetus to develop DisCrit as an explicitly intersectional theoretical framework to explore the collusive nature of race and disability.”
Overrepresentation…
How does this look if you control for wealth? Poverty, again, is associated with elevated levels of all these problems as both a cause and an effect.[7] So is it down entirely to race, or is it down to relative wealth levels and access to earlier support and specialist help?
“…leading scholar within CRT, Gillborn (2008) has been long troubled by historical hierarchies of racial dis/abilities. Gillborn (2016) expresses concerns about how “crude and dangerous ideas about the genetic heritability of intelligence, and the supposed biological basis for the Black/White achievement gap are alive and well within the education policy process but [are] taking new and more subtle forms”
Crude and dangerous…
Dangerous or not, is it true? It isn’t, as it happens, not on a racial basis, but intelligence is quite heritable, though it trends to the mean. If it were true, we should know and grapple with it. We discover that it is not true and can then disarm it by studying it. Banning the study of the issue does not help, and it creates a mystique of ‘truth telling’ similar to that around vaccines and autism (there’s no link). People in the right lose the capability to argue back and re-defeat these ideas through lack of contact. The best arguments against these racial IQ claims also tend to be my arguments, that the explanation for these differentials are primarily poverty-related, which is why they are diminishing so rapidly as equality advances.
“(T)he concept of disability has been used to justify discrimination against other groups by attributing disability to them. . . . When categories of citizenship were questioned, challenged, and disrupted, disability was called on to clarify and define who deserved, and who was deservedly excluded from, citizenship. (p. 33, italics in original)”
When categories…
To be subjective again, while I wish I could escape this country as it slides into depressingly familiar conservatism, I understand perfectly why other countries wouldn’t want someone who was a burden rather than a contributor. I don’t like it, but I understand it. I also understand why mentally incompetent people might be excluded from the full measure of citizenship the rest of us enjoy. Disability isn’t attributed, it’s not a social construct, it’s diagnosed.
“Working against master narratives that position Black male students as uninterested in education and simultaneously aggressive in their behavior, this student navigated these intersecting oppressions by explicitly discussing his learning needs as a way to ensure success and teacher cooperation.”
Black male students…
The same characterisations are made of white working-class boys who are failing in education. These are issues of poverty and a culture of anti-intellectualism, not race.
“Tenet 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.“
To Uphold Notions…
A norm is not a judgement. It is a description of a majority or average. If something is invisible, indetectable, how is it falsifiable?
“Tenet 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.”
Troubles singular notions…
Moreover, in my considered estimation, thereby scuppers the ability of activism, rooted in this analysis, to accomplish progress.
“Tenet 3: DisCrit emphasizes the social constructions of race and ability and yet recognizes the material and psychological impacts of being labelled as raced or dis/abled, which sets one outside of the western cultural norms.”
Social constructions…
Ethnicity is recognisable and biological; for all it is meaningless in these kinds of considerations (outside medical edge cases etc.); it is recognisable and not a social construction. Disability is a material reality, not a social construct. When you are disabled, you do lack something available to people who are not. To pretend this isn’t so is simply silly. Disability also has little to do with ‘western cultural norms’. Most cultures have taboos and prejudices regarding physical and mental disabilities, and western culture, with its embrace of science, was one of the first to move beyond such superstitious concerns, albeit in fits and starts.
“Tenet 4: DisCrit privileges voices of marginalized populations, traditionally not acknowledged within research.”
Privileges voices…
Embrace of subjectivity again. This approach is just an inversion of hierarchy, which recreates the self-same problems around hierarchy in reverse, while also wounding sympathy and solidarity and being explicitly bigoted, rather than the assumed implicit bigotry assumed to exist otherwise.
The facts matter. Dispassionate, empirical, testable, confirmable facts. Not who is claiming them or their personal story.
“Tenet 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.”
Historical aspects…
Valid as historical analysis, less applicable in modernity.
“Tenet 6: DisCrit recognizes Whiteness and ability as property and that gains for people labelled with dis/abilities have largely been made as the result of interest convergence of White, middle-class citizens.”
Whiteness
Explicitly racist.
“Tenet 7: DisCrit requires activism and supports all forms of resistance.”
Activism…
Again, the embrace of subjectivity renders the source of the material suspect and must be considered in assessing its claims.
“However, Black and Latinx parents on the ground reported fewer options of schools that served disabled children. Waitoller and Super (2017) documented how closing neighborhood schools and opening charter schools directly decreases school options for Black and Latinx students who require more extensive supports to be included in schools. . . . So, while White students with dis/abilities enjoy the benefits of Whiteness as they lived in areas of the city benefited by the neoliberal restructuring of urban space, and while some Black and Latinx students may enjoy the benefits of claiming smartness and goodness as property (i.e., being considered integrateable to charter schools or
selective enrollments), Black and Latinx students with dis/abilities cannot claim neither Whiteness, smartness, nor goodness, and are oppressed by the intersections of these three ideologies. (pp. 10–11)”
Latinx
Side note, I can’t say I’ve met or interacted with any Latin people who like ‘latinx’; they – ironically enough – seem to regard it as ‘gringo cultural imperialism’, not dissimilar to the contempt the Chinese have for ‘baizuo’, performative white ‘wokeness’.
Reported fewer options of schools…
This would seem to be a wealth/class issue confusion again.
“Using DisCrit as an intersectional framework, scholars have exposed the social processes that contribute to entrenched inequities and traced how racism and ableism are interdependent in the search for equity.”
Equity
Equity is not, or should not, be the goal. Equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity is a horrorshow of Harrison Bergeron, not a utopia. People are different. We should establish a societal baseline and maximise opportunity but not dictate a homogenous outcome for all. [8]
“In sum, Bresha Meadows is a disabled Black girl who faced dangers in her life and in the educational system that failed her at every turn. This failure positioned Bresha as a dangerous Black girl, erasing her other identities while highlighting her criminality (Annamma, 2018). We believe that DisCrit was created to better understand what disabled girls of color like Bresha, who are multiply marginalized, face. We believe DisCrit can help us #SayHerName as a Black girl who has been #SurvivedandPunished, and recognize ways Bresha’s disability calls for intersectional analysis of #DisabilityJustice.”
Bresha Meadows
Bresha Meadows is an anecdotal case, by itself useless to determine the truth of anything. She is also objectively a murderer, whose issues seem far more likely to stem from poverty as much as anything else. She is advantaged by being a woman when it comes to facing justice, not disadvantaged.[9] She might also be advantaged by creating a sympathetic character through her disability and civil rights optics, things that would not be available to others. The domestic violence issue seems to give license to women who murder their tormentors in a way that does not occur for men in the same circumstances.
There are many factors at play, and the Intersectional analysis is presumptive, surface-level and fails to control for factors and take a more holistic view. Class/wealth accounts for all these factors on a societal scale, even the seeming racial disparities.
Also, pragmatically, an argument for special treatment is not an argument for fairness or equality, which is something all people – and even monkeys – seem keyed to want.[10]
I think my class/wealth/power analysis is more accurate that a biased, intersectional approach. I also believe it to be more pragmatic and have more chance at creating positive change by building solidarity across identity lines, rather than endlessly dividing people.
The AtheFist 