‘I was the special ed. girl’: urban working‐class young women of colour

Abstract

Recent criticism of the over‐representation of minority students in special education do not adequately account for gender, despite the fact that urban special education classrooms in the USA are largely populated by young men of colour. In fact, we know very little about how being female shapes the experiences and understandings of young women of colour labelled disabled in schools. Using an interdisciplinary framework informed by Black feminist studies, disability studies, and class studies, we analyse autobiographical portraits of five young women of colour who received special education services. Focusing on their perspectives of life in and out of school, we examine how they understand and negotiate multiple subject positions and actively and creatively work to resist these constraints.