Disability Critical Race Theory Research Articles

Introduction to the Special Issue-Imagining Possible Futures: Disability Critical Race Theory as a Lever for Praxis in Education

This article provides the introduction to a special issue of the Teachers College Record (TCR) “Imagining Possible Futures: Disability Critical Race Theory as a Lever for Praxis in Education”. We begin by revisiting the seven tenets of DisCrit and citing a truncated intellectual geneology. Next, we trace the importance of a TCR special issue recognizing the mutually constiutive oppressions of racism and ableism. We then briefly describe the powerful premise and substantive contributions of the eight featured articles in this special issue. Each article is featured due to its commitments to link DisCrit theory to practice – engaging praxis through empirical research and/or theoretical engagements examining higher education, teacher education, state standards, k-12 education, carceral education, and international education using a variety of rigorous methods. By taking on racism and ableism across disciplinary boundaries and geographic borders, the contributors to this special issue break open new possibilities.

Seeing the Unseen: Applying Intersectionality and Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) Frameworks in Preservice Teacher Education

Background/Context: This paper explores how intersectionality and DisCrit can be used as analytic tools to scaffold preservice teachers’ ability to see the ways in which referrals to and services within special education reproduce inequities as a function of race and perceptions of ability that are rooted in White, middle-class, able-bodied norms. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This qualitative study analyzes White preservice teachers’ understanding and application of intersectionality and DisCrit. Applying critical theoretical perspectives, preservice teachers engage in identifying instances of oppression in society and schools and naming the resulting harm to Black students and families. This paper focuses on the following research questions: How do White preservice teachers engage with critical frameworks intended to unearth the impacts of racism and ableism on Black students? What do their responses reveal about preservice teachers’ level of critical consciousness? Population/Participants/Subjects: Participants in this study were preservice general education teachers in the last semester of coursework of an intensive 12-month master’s program in secondary education at a large predominantly White Midwestern university. This study focuses on four self-identified White able-bodied and one White (dis)abled preservice teacher who represent exemplars of the types of engagement evidenced by preservice teachers within the course. Intervention/Program/Practice: The course that was the site of this study focused on preparing preservice teachers to teach and support Students Identified with (Dis)abilities in middle and high school classrooms. The first portion of the course focused on analyzing the history of racism and ableism in special education using critical frameworks. These class sessions provided preservice teachers with frameworks they could apply to their experiences at their school sites and language they needed to discuss racism and ableism. Research Design: This article reports on a qualitative case study of general education preservice teacher engagement with the critical frameworks of intersectionality and disability critical race theory (DisCrit) in a predominantly White teacher education program. Data Collection and Analysis: For the duration of the course, video recordings of whole group discussions and audio recordings of small group discussions were collected. Descriptive and in vivo coding were employed during the first level of coding to closely highlight participants’ perspectives that were rooted in their own language. The second level of analysis captured the content of the ideas expressed by preservice teachers when engaging and employing critical frameworks, and the third level of analysis captured preservice teacher engagement in ways that demonstrated either active adoption, quiet adoption, resistant engagement, or resistant deflection of course material. Findings/Results: There is a fluidity in which preservice teachers move through levels of engagement (active adoption, quiet adoption, resistant engagement, or resistant deflection) when explicitly taught critical frameworks to help them identify and disrupt inequity, in this case, racism and ableism in schools. For example, a preservice teacher may experience dissonance when there is misalignment between their previously held assumptions and new learning. At first, they may resist this knowledge and then adopt new perspectives over time. They may also go back and forth between resistance and adoption, or they may remain resistant throughout the course. Additionally, a preservice teacher may actively adopt course content and frameworks that align with their previous orientations and quietly or actively adopt new frameworks over time. Conclusions/Recommendations: Teaching critical frameworks is an important tool to understanding preservice teachers’ orientations toward inequity. Choosing critical frameworks that undergird teacher education courses supports the development of objectives that are antiracist/antiableist. It also provides teacher educators guidance in choosing materials/artifacts that will encourage preservice teachers to discuss the implications of those frameworks. Critical frameworks provide a method of helping preservice teachers see inequity that aspects of their privilege render invisible and provide an assessment tool for teacher educators to analyze preservice teachers’ orientations toward inequity and how this manifests in their orientation toward students of historically marginalized groups.

Emotional Geographies of Exclusion: Whiteness and Ability in Teacher Education Research

Context: Geographies of exclusion (e.g., segregated special education classrooms, school district zoning) are constituted through intersecting oppressive ideologies (e.g., ableism, racism, classism) that co-naturalize notions of “normalcy” and deviance and yield harmful consequences for disabled children of Color. Geographies of exclusion dynamically contribute to and constitute teacher candidates’ feelings about themselves and their social worlds. White teacher candidates’ investment in dominant racial ideologies is well-documented, and recent scholarship has interrogated the role of white emotionality in these processes. However, the extent to which white teacher candidates emotionally ascribe to oppressive constructions of ability have been underexamined. Focus of Study: We sought to uncover how white teacher candidates (TCs) used emotional practices to position themselves in relation to ability within geographies of exclusion as they narrated their educational journeys. Such an examination is necessary to upend ongoing constructions of racial-ability hierarchies in and through teacher education. Using disability critical race theory and emotional geographies, our study was guided by the following question: How do white, nondisabled TCs engage in emotional practices in relation to geographies of exclusion? Research Design: This critical narrative study took place in two teacher education programs in the Pacific Northwest with 42 white, nondisabled teacher candidates. We drew on qualitative mapping as a method for participants to tell stories about themselves and their relationships to places and people over time. All participants generated narratives through written reflections after creating their maps, clarifying aspects of their maps and providing details not captured in their visual representations. Data sources included 42 written narratives and 36 qualitative maps. We analyzed emotional dimensions of TCs’ written narratives and qualitative maps through multiple rounds of both deductive and inductive coding. Conclusions/Recommendations: Our analysis revealed ways white TCs weaponized emotionality to uphold racial-ability hierarchies through emotional geographies of gratitude, ambivalence, and claims to care. By sentimentalizing multiply-marginalized children’s suffering, TCs preserved a façade of being committed to educational justice. We conclude with suggestions for educational researchers, emphasizing that research with white teachers cannot ignore emotional practices that perpetuate harm for multiply-marginalized children. Instead, researchers must surface these engagements head-on, using DisCrit as a driver in teacher education research toward intersectional justice.

Theorizing Racist Ableism in Higher Education

Background/Context: Although research on the experiences of multiply-marginalized Black and Brown students with dis/abilities in higher education is limited, this growing body of work indicates that these students navigate racialized perceptions of ability, which impact their experiences on college and university campuses. This research highlights the need for intersectional frameworks that consider students’ multiple identities and the limitations of single-identity–focused frameworks. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Centering the counternarratives of 10 Black and Brown undergraduate students with dis/abilities across five college and university campuses, this article uses critical race theory (CRT), disability critical race theory (DisCrit), and racist nativism to develop a conceptual framework of racist ableism. Racist ableism bridges CRT, DisCrit, and racist nativism to describe how particular forms of ableism, informed by racist attitudes and beliefs, oppress and dehumanize Black and Brown people based on actual or perceived (or, inversely, lack of perceived) dis/ability, thereby reinforcing the relationship between whiteness and ability. Research Design: I examined the counternarratives of 10 Black and Brown undergraduate students who identified or have the lived experience of dis/ability. Counternarratives allowed me to center the stories of students. I identify three overarching findings: (1) Black and Brown dis/abled students navigated racialized perceptions of intelligence, productivity, and academic capability; (2) Black and Brown dis/abled students were pathologized as lazy and/or deviant, which minimized or erased their access needs; and (3) Black and Brown dis/abled students resisted racist ableist discourses. Conclusions/Recommendations: The counternarratives of students reveal how racialized perceptions of ability shaped their experiences interacting with staff and their ability to access institutional supports such as accommodations. They also reveal the critical raced-disabled epistemologies of Black and Brown students who identify or have been labeled as dis/abled. Their counternarratives highlight the need for: (1) intersectional frameworks that account for the ways in which racism and ableism are interconnected, and (2) race-conscious policies and practices that consider their multidimensional identities.

Solidarity Incarcerated: Building Authentic Relationships With Girls of Color in Youth Prisons

Context: Prison education has often been ignored in discussions of public education. When it has been included, Girls of Color are often eclipsed by larger populations of Boys of Color. Yet the routes disabled Girls of Color take to prisons are different from those of their male peers; Girls of Color become incarcerated for low-level offenses and often end up back in prison due to probation violations, meaning they have been punished more severely for original crimes. Although prison education has offered educational opportunities, such as the chance to get a diploma or GED, most of it has been found to be remedial and irrelevant to the lives of incarcerated disabled Girls of Color. Focus of Study: In this article, we unraveled the complexities and nuances of solidarity within prison education classrooms with disabled Girls of Color. Using a disability critical race theory (DisCrit) Solidarity lens while analyzing a sociocritical literacy course, the empirical research question was: What are the affordances and constraints of DisCrit Solidarity with disabled Girls of Color in a youth prison? Research Design: Our qualitative study took place in a maximum-security youth prison in the Midwestern part of the United States. This study was part of a larger one-year project that included 16 incarcerated disabled girls, mostly Girls of Color, who enrolled in a credit-bearing sociocritical literacy course designed and taught by the principal investigator and teaching team. Our full corpus of data included interviews with the girls (23) and adults in the youth prison (6), classroom observations (25), education journey maps (10), focus groups (4), fieldnotes (20), and classroom artifacts (21). Data for this study focused on the interviews with the girls, observations, fieldnotes, and class materials. Conclusions/Recommendations: Our analysis illustrated the affordances and constraints of solidarity in prison classrooms with incarcerated disabled Girls of Color. The affordances included tangible moves that the girls identified as solidarity, the need for solidarity to make critical pedagogy and curriculum impactful, and the effect of those affordances that the girls described. In youth prisons where tools of learning, such as pencils, were considered weapons, we found two constraints that limited DisCrit Solidarity efforts: the conflation of support with solidarity and the violent context of youth prisons. We conclude with the implication that our solidarity efforts were incarcerated. To move beyond narrowly focused solidarity efforts, we suggest growing out abolitionist geography to consider the multiscalar processes that lead to sustained solidarities with incarcerated disabled Girls of Color. Acknowledgements: We would like to thank Marilyn Ortega and William Proffitt for their roles in both the pedagogical team and data collection on this project. We also appreciate the editors of this special issue, David Connor and Beth Ferri, for their vision and inclusion of our work and the reviewers whose feedback strengthened our work substantially. Finally, the principal investigator would like to thank the Ford Foundation and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which made this research possible through the Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship.

The Construction and Embodiment of Dis/Ability for North Korean Refugees living in South Korea

Background/Context: Every year, an unknown number of North Koreans flee their homeland. As of 2020, 33,752 North Koreans had arrived in South Korea. The political positioning of North Korean refugees in South Korean society is unique from other immigrants, in that they receive immediate South Korean citizenship and are considered members of the same ethnic group as South Koreans. However, North Korean refugees face discrimination in South Korea, including in schools. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This paper extends the use of the intersectional analytical framework, disability critical race theory (DisCrit), outside of western settings to the Korean context. The purpose is to analyze the schooling experiences of North Korean refugees in South Korea. We provide a background about the divide between the nations of North and South Korea and discuss how this divide contributes to North Korean refugees’ position as outsiders. We also situate discrimination faced by North Korean refugees within South Korea as a broader response to changing demographics, by highlighting the experiences of immigrants and South Korean multicultural education policy. Drawing upon the voices of North Korean refugees, we analyze how the discrimination they experience constructs them as less capable and valued than their South Korean peers. Research Design: This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study that analyzes data from semi-structured interviews of North Korean refugees in South Korea. The interviews focus on participants’ schooling experiences in mainstream schools, at an alternative school, and in their transition to postsecondary education. Conclusions/Recommendations: Our analysis demonstrates how North Korean refugee students are positioned as dis/abled and come to embody disabling conditions as a result of discrimination based on their ethnicized North Korean identity in South Korea. The construction of North Korean refugees as dis/abled reflects the dominance of the ideals of South Korean ethnicity and an educational ideology that promotes assimilation for economic growth. We conclude by discussing the impact of normalizing processes of ethnocentrism, racism, and ableism, and the potential future development of multicultural education in South Korea.

Counternarratives as DisCrit Praxis: Disrupting Classroom Master Narratives Through Imagined Composite Stories

Background/Context: In disability critical race theory (DisCrit) Classroom Ecology, Annamma and Morrison (2018a) offered invaluable direction for teachers by proposing constructs that address racism and ableism within the foundational components of the classroom—curriculum, pedagogy, resistance, and solidarity. These liberatory lenses offered a critical framework to conceptualize and achieve DisCrit-aligned teaching and learning. However, as of yet, critically conscious classroom teachers who seek to make DisCrit live in spaces that serve multiply-marginalized students have no map to operationalize theory into practice. To support the enactment of DisCrit Classroom Ecology, scholarship must authentically partner with classroom teachers who are working with and who have influence over the educational trajectories of multiply-marginalized students. Objective: This article builds on lived practice and imagines liberatory praxis through the use of counternarratives as a methodological process. Presented in the form of three composite stories—a method of Critical Race Theory—practitioner-scholars and teacher-activists explore the potential of DisCrit Classroom Ecology constructs within literacy spaces across grade levels. Rather than asking how DisCrit informs classroom practice, these collaboratively developed composite stories explore how the praxis of teachers aligned with DisCrit can illuminate, operationalize, and expand theory. Participants: The three composite stories were codeveloped by six authors: three white practitioner-scholars and three activist teachers of color. Collectively, the pairs identified master narratives experienced in the teacher-activists’ actual classrooms, which each serve multiply-marginalized students. Research Design: This article applies counternarratives as both research methodology and a professional learning tool. Specifically, the coauthors developed three composite stories, based on participants’ lived experiences and relevant theory, to operationalize the constructs of DisCrit Classroom Ecology and interrogate master narratives surfacing in their classrooms. The six coauthors used the collaborative generation of composite stories to explore counternarratives as a tool for critically conscious praxis. Conclusions and Policy Recommendations: DisCrit affirmed actions rooted in solidarity and resistance that the teacher-activists hadn’t yet named as such and empowered them to apply the lens to more aspects of their practice. Teacher education and professional learning should include exploration of DisCrit and encourage the operationalization of DisCrit Classroom Ecology. Additionally, schools must resist the narrowing of curriculum and pedagogical rigidity that undermine solidarity with students served and reproduces deficit-oriented master narratives. Finally, education scholars need to reposition their research to not just include, but also actively learn from teachers, especially teachers of color whose lived experiences more often mirror the lived experiences of students with multiply-marginalized identities.

Performing color-evasiveness: A DisCrit analysis of educators’ discourse in the U.S.

This study explores how an ideology of color-evasive racism (i.e., color evasiveness; Annamma et al., 2017) imbued white educators' discourse surrounding intersectional inequities in schools for Girls of Color in the U.S. Our analysis of interview and focus group data addresses a gap in educational research identifying color-evasive racism in discourse by in-service educators, specifically for white educators making sense of inequities in schools. We draw from Bonilla-Silva's (2018) application of color-blindness to discourse to identify three specific discursive frames that white educators employ, namely 1) centering self, 2) claiming white racial innocence, and 3) employing progressive notions, and the discursive tools within each. This focus on white educators' discourse expands understandings of how color-evasivene racism is employed, (re)producing intersectional inequities in education. Given that each of these educators was nominated because of their strengths working with Girls of Color, we believe this paper's significance captures the complexities of teaching in a system of white supremacy and identifies underlying ideologies animating discourse that can be disrupted through a Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) lens.

DisCrit Literacies: Early Childhood Teachers Critically Reading School as Text and Imagining an Otherwise

AbstractIn this participatory case study, we explored the critical literacy practices of early‐career early childhood teachers in a year‐long inquiry group, examining how they collectively read school as text through DisCrit literacies. Bridging literature from Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) and critical literacies scholarship, DisCrit literacies involve practices of critically reading school itself as text and uncovering intersecting systems of ableism and racism. We describe teachers’ collective engagement in DisCrit literacies, in which they: (a) deconstructed literacy practices and broader schooling mechanisms through repeated shared readings; (b) implicated themselves through critical readings of literacy classroom artifacts; and (c) identified and designed spaces of subversion and refusal in their literacy classrooms. Across each of these practices, early career early childhood teachers in our study used critical reading practices rooted in interdependence and presumptions of competence to redesign literacy routines. Ultimately, DisCrit literacies supported teachers in dismantling systems of regulation and classification in their early literacy classrooms, and—in solidarity with multiply‐marginalized children— imagining otherwise possibilities. We conclude with implications for teacher education and research, exploring how we might use DisCrit literacies to move toward humanizing early literacy spaces with and for multiply‐marginalized young children.

A Disability Critical Race Theory Solidarity Approach to Transform Pedagogy and Classroom Culture in TESOL

AbstractUntil very recently, ability and whiteness as relational systems have been uninterrogated by TESOL research, policy, practice, and teacher education. Consequently, monolingual teachers often use students’ proximity to whiteness and nondisabled status as a metric for ascertaining their ability or belonging in certain language learning spaces. Similarly, English language teachers’ uncritical and unsupported engagement with policy and professional learning around race and whiteness contributes to the unwarranted subjection of multilingual students to the special education referral process. In this contribution, we aim to analyze the nuances of ableism and racism in the field of TESOL, and offer TESOL educators practical examples to dismantle it. Drawing from the critical intersectional framework of DisCrit, this contribution presents two DisCrit solidarity‐oriented practical examples for the language classroom: cultural reciprocity and translanguaging. We argue that these support TESOL educators in understanding the relationship between whiteness and ability, as well as valuing the importance of multilingualism in school settings.

Propositions for Race-Based Research in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Abstract A nuanced understanding of disparities impacting racialized people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) requires scholars employ research methods that make visible the structural factors that influence outcomes. Following the work of Tukufu Zuberi and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, we explore race-based methodological considerations for disparities research with Black people with IDD. Specifically, we discuss (a) structural racism in research methods, employing disability critical race theory as a framework, (b) the absence of Black voices and Black scholarship, (c) the abstraction and misuse of race as a variable, and (d) mapping race as a point of discussion in the IDD discourse. Implications for research are discussed and recommendations for contextualizing race, ensuring equity in representation and dissemination, and amplifying the voices of Black scholars are provided.

Black families’ resistance to deficit positioning: addressing the paradox of black parent involvement

ABSTRACT Traditional conceptualizations of parent involvement are applied in paradoxical ways to Black families – schools ostensibly seek families’ participation in schooling, while positioning multiply-marginalized Black families as deficient and disregarding their contributions. This article explores the experiences of Black families of Black girls using a Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) framing. Our exploration reveals how Black families experience and resist racism and ableism imbued in traditional conceptualizations of parent involvement grounded in white, middle-class families' norms. We describe ways Black families (1) relocated the problem from Black girls’ behavior to schools’ expectations and actions; (2) shifted schools’ priorities from a focus on disciplining dis/abled Black girls to a focus on their support needs; (3) initiated dialogue to support Black girls; and, (4) assisted Black girls in recognizing, processing, and responding to racism and ableism. Through this discussion, we address ways to reconceptualize parent involvement to center multiply-marginalized Black families’ priorities and contributions.

Global conversations: recovery and detection of Global South multiply-marginalized bodies

ABSTRACT This paper problematizes, in the spirit of loving critique, the paucity of global intersectional dis/ability politics in the fields of Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory. In this paper, we attempt to account for a more global and humane, liberatory theoretical positioning of Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) by analyzing the human rights discourses employed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD). DisCrit scholars emphasize ‘the social construction of race and ability … which sets one outside of the western cultural norms’. We push DisCrit further to (a) account for the impact of these western cultural norms and ideals in global and local contexts, and (b) problematize how the binary between the Global South-Global North gives impetus for and further reifies the global racist and ableist hegemony of western cultural norms, domination, and violence identified within human rights discourses.

From the Personal to the Global: Engaging with and Enacting DisCrit Theory Across Multiple Spaces

ABSTRACT This article serves as the introduction to a special edition of the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Education (REE) dedicated to Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit). We begin by sharing the seven tenets of in DisCrit, acknowledging our indebtedness to scholars of color who originally developed theories of intersectionality. Next, we discuss ways in which, from its original publication in REE (2013), DisCrit has gained traction as a theoretical tool that is increasingly used in research and practice. Then, we briefly summarize and comment upon the eight featured articles in this special edition. Each article has been purposefully selected to reflect a broad scope of interests – from empirical research to theoretical papers seeking changes within schools, communities, teacher education programs, research practices, and global connections. All contributions are from the USA as a way to consider ways in which DisCrit is being utilized in one country, while encouraging further intra-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and global conversations.

Bringing DisCrit theory to practice in the development of an action for equity collaborative network: passion projects

ABSTRACT Disability Critical Race Theory (Dis/Crit) was useful as a tool and a lens for the development of a collaborative network of educators, community providers, and community stakeholders including educators, community members, parents, and individuals. Initially I engaged these stakeholders in action research sessions to inform planning for developing contextualized cultural competence among pre-service special education teachers. Examining equity and inequity in educational and community experiences for people representing minoritized identities including disability, race, ethnicity, language, immigrant status, gender, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status broadened our focus and passion for change. Expanding the process of building collective narrative inquiry, our network built projects to disrupt inequities at the intersections of disability and race in schools and community spaces. I discuss the utility of finding common ground in the theoretical framing lens Dis/Crit provides for planning action and collaboration among stakeholders. Finally, I share projects developed through our process to illustrate the influence of specific tenets of DisCrit theory in practical collaborative action.

Who May Be Competent? Mothering Young Children of Color with Disabilities and the Politics of Care

ABSTRACT In this critical, qualitative study, we utilized Disability Critical Race Theory and revolutionary mothering to understand how Mothers of Color who have young children with disabilities made meaning of underlying constitutions of competence within schools, and how they conceptualized possibility for justice in early childhood. Findings reveal how Mothers enacted political clarity regarding ableism and racism as they mothered for respect and care. Specifically, Mothers challenged dominant notions of competence in early childhood and strategically resisted early educational practices that positioned their children as unworthy of childhood. Simultaneously, Mothers dreamed beyond the status quo, imagining early childhood systems that decentered educator expertise, and recentered multiply-marginalized children’s (and their families’) agency. We conclude with implications for teaching and learning in early childhood.

Epilepsy at the intersection of disability, gender, and culture: A duoethnography

Epilepsy is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects millions of adults and children. Several different types of seizures, ranging from generalized which affect both sides of the brain to focal seizures that are rooted in one location of the brain. In addition to the physical impact of epilepsy, there are many emotional and identity consequences of living with epilepsy. An area that is not yet explored is the impact of epilepsy on the lives of women of color. In this paper, we fill this gap by exploring the experiences of two women of color who have had epilepsy beginning in early childhood through motherhood. One of the women is Mexican-American and an early career faculty in social work. The other identifies as a Chinese immigrant doctoral student in disability studies. Together, these stories bring to the literature voices that have not been actively engaged by epilepsy research or academia. We use a duoethnographic approach in this work given that this method provides an opportunity to explore identity and intersectionality and juxtapose our narratives surrounding epilepsy. By applying disability critical race theory (DisCrit) to our narratives, we identified how fluctuating epileptic symptoms, gender, and culture, interact with the layers of our epileptic identities. Furthermore, we discuss how our experiences with epilepsy exposes the lack of accommodative efforts in both the healthcare and education systems for individuals with invisible neurodevelopmental disabilities. This duoethnography has important implications for engaging youth with epilepsy and other invisible disabilities. By showcasing our journey of “coming to terms” with epilepsy, our dialog provides insights into how to support youth in building a positive disability identity. Our experiences in academia set up a basis to discuss accommodations for students with epilepsy and other invisible disabilities.

Pursuing Justice-Driven Inclusive Education Research: Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) in Early Childhood

Multiple scholars have argued that early childhood inclusive education research and practice has often retained racialized, ableist notions of normal development, which can undermine efforts to advance justice and contribute to biased educational processes and practices. Racism and ableism intersect through the positioning of young children of Color as “at risk,” the use of normalizing practices to “fix” disability, and the exclusion of multiply marginalized young children from educational spaces and opportunities. Justice-driven inclusive education research is necessary to challenge such assumptions and reduce exclusionary practices. Disability Critical Race Theory extends inclusive education research by facilitating examinations of the ways racism and ableism interdependently uphold notions of normalcy and centering the perspectives of multiply marginalized children and families. We discuss constructions of normalcy in early childhood, define justice-driven inclusive education research and its potential contributions, and discuss DisCrit’s affordances for justice-driven inclusive education research with and for multiply marginalized young children and families.

Investigating Young Children’s Conceptualizations of Disability and Race: An Intersectional, Multiplane Critique

Education researchers have extensively documented young children’s capacity to exhibit “bias” in relation to disability or race. By and large, data generation has focused on children’s awareness and attitudes about disability or race, rather than how interactions and structures construct and reinforce them. Bridging disability critical race theory (DisCrit) and sociocultural perspectives, this essay proposes the need for intersectional, multiplane qualitative data generation in studying young children’s disability and race conceptualizations to account for the ways intersecting, oppressive ideologies are perpetuated in young children’s worlds. In this essay, I briefly describe and critique extant data generation practices, concluding with possibilities for future investigations.

Policy as Punishment and Distraction: The Double Helix of Racialized Sexual Harassment of Black Girls

Black girls’ experiences with sexual harassment in schools remain critically understudied. To mediate this void, this study explored the role of educators and school policy as disrupting or perpetuating racialized sexual harassment toward them. Using a disability critical race theory (DisCrit) framework, we argue educator response and education policy create a nexus of subjugation that makes Black girls increasingly vulnerable to experience racialized sexual harassment at the hands of adults and peers, while largely failing to provide protection from or recourse for such harassment.