Through space into the flesh: Mapping inscriptions of anti-black racist and ableist schooling on young people’s bodies

Abstract

This article responds to the deadly consequences of the ongoing anti-Black racist and ableist educational settings in the United States, including the continuous historical trauma they create in the lives of targeted youth (dis/abled, Black, non-white, gender-variant, poor, immigrant). By way of sampling individual body maps of a New York City-based youth participatory action research study (YPAR), the author frames socially constituted impairments to describe the chronic violence caused by anti-Black racism and ableism. Grounded in critical disability and embodiment studies, the author applies an “ocular ethic” framework to this YPAR study to name some of the injurious effects that pervasive anti-Black racist and ableist schooling practices have on the lives and bodies of Black students. Informed by youth-driven visions of fugitivity, the author argues that critical body mapping disrupts ongoing anti-Black racist and ableist narratives about racialized youth that continue to frame them as helpless, immobilized, and insensate.