Black Body as Somebody: Disability and Space
Before taking the class Critical Disability Studies I never considered the Black body through a critical disabilities lens. In and outside academia the Black body intersects at gender and class. For the earlier stages of my studies Black bodies were primarily read about and analyzed through a critical race theory or Black feminist lens. Rarely does the conversation intersect with disability. I started to question: Why? Where and when do Black people discuss disabilities in reference to us. I think the answers stem from the reality that Black people have been trying so hard to survive a host of inter and intraracial disparities that are or have been prioritized for decades, that the more nuanced conversations centering disabilities gets overlooked or swept under the rug. How can I think about disabilities when there was a public lynchin a week ago? How can we talk about disabilities when I can’t get employed because I’m Black? How can we talk about disabilities when we have to figure out how to keep the lights on, get nutritious food in our food deserts, avoid drinking this Flint water, navigate through the school to prison pipeline system? The list goes on and on before disability comes into play.
What became evident within the first few weeks of class was that disability was still happening at the same time all these moments of struggle were. Essentially, I agree with the authors of “Developing and Reflecting on a Black Disability Studies Pedagogy: Work from the National Black Disability Coalition” who claim that, “So often, disability within Black communities becomes concealed under the blanket of homelessness, substance abuse, violence, and poverty. Hence, societies and dominant cultures fail to pinpoint markers of disability due to its covert nature” (4). Moreover, as I read more material concerning Black people, disability, and crip of color analysis, I felt uncomfortable with reading Blackness as a disability because it seemed to make it out to be that our Blackness was the abnormality that needed to be fixed or attended to as opposed to the white supremacist ableist society that needed to be dismantled. The authors of “Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability, Race Ethnicity and Education” believe that:
DisCrit recognizes that we cannot conflate race and dis/ability; they are not interchangeable (Ferri and Connor 2006). This is not to say that those of color who are labeled dis/abled should be ashamed of their dis/ability label. Instead, it recognizes that to be of color does not make one dis/abled and to be labeled dis/abeled does not make one of color (20).
What became most intriguing was placing the above statement in conversation with Schalk who sees disability not only as an individual state but structurally as a category of oppression and not as a synonym for disadvantage (Developing and Reflecting 10). Disability studies can then be used as a lens to assess social categories of difference and oppression. As such, I surmised and further argue that a white supremacist society dictates when, where, and how Black people are disabled, and the “curative” prospects does not eliminate the conversation of disability or mitigate the violence and oppression towards Black bodies. In light of this in DisCrit: Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education , the authors forward that “…Oppressive discourses of disability [can] used to justify dehumanization of racialized bodies in ways that support oppressive practices such as slavery, settler colonialism, neocolonialism, educational and residential segregation, employment discrimination, as well as the institutionalization and incarceration of racialized bodies” (134). Depending on the spaces and the discretion of white folks the Black body can be moved in and out of conversation of either being disabled or exceedingly abled. For this essay I plan on focusing on these spaces in application to biographies, history, the educational system, and racialized events and occurrences in society.
Historically in and out of Black Disability
The Black body has and continues to be a site of abuse in America. In Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic in reference to the transportation of slaves to the New World it’s stated that, “…it is precisely at the historical moment when one class of human beings was transformed into cargo to be transported to the New World that black bodies become disabled and disabled bodies become black” (Disability as Becoming 40). In the Atlantic Slave Trade Africans were beaten, starved, raped, and killed. They underwent harsh conditions that changed them physically and mentally. Interestingly, as property, Africans could not arrive to the New World in these conditions and thus within the last stretch of the journey across sea, slave captors would hide any disablement and start to prepare the body to look best for sale. These bodies were also insured through insurance companies that would cover any physical damages. Authors of Insuring the Transatlantic Slave Trade share that, “Underwriters and their clients uniformly classified slaves as perishable goods. In his 1781 digest of English insurance laws and practices, John Weskett placed slaves alongside cattle as class II common hazards” (Pearson and Richardson 423). White people had the power in transit to disable and “repair” these bodies for capitalistic gain.
When arrived in the New World Africans were made into slaves where they were either disabled or exceedingly abled to white people depending on the demands of white society. Their Blackness made them too dumb to be educated – disabled—while also making them beings perfect for extraneous labor—exceedingly abled—that white people in comparison would not do. The right to determine these states allowed white people to justify using Black people for racists science and experimentation and even freak show displays. The Black body was determined to not be able to feel pain thus, making them the perfect candidate for these harmful practices. This power to assess and impose ability—more specifically super ability-- on Black bodies still resonates in today’s society. The term super predators mark Black men as super humans that have the power to engage in excessive violence. This imposing of super ability or strength is what causes white people to believe that Black people can survive circumstances such as poor housing, and environmental racism while dually keeping them out of good schools by racist zoning because they believe they’re not as able to succeed, thus resources should be allocated to white kids. This power is used to justify abuse.
A. Racism causes Black Disability-Mutilation
Vertus Hardiman
There are pictures and historical documents that account for the fact that Black people have been the victims of racist attacks that have left them physically mutilated and disabled. From slaves that have ran away from the plantation and have lost an extremity in order to be punished, to experimentation on Black children living in rural parts of the country. For instance, the U.S government radiation experiment of 1928 that targeted Black children living in Negro settlements. At the time the U.S government officials went into those settlements and told parents that their children were going to receive treatment to cure scalp fungus, all the while it was a cover up for human radiation experiments funded by the Department of Defense and United States Atomic Energy. A black boy that suffered from this specific experimentation was Vertus Hardiman. Born in 1922, at five years old Hardiman was taken to a local hospital under the guise of treatment. The treatment left Hardiman with progressive necrosis that caused half his skull to be exposed. Hardiman details this in the 2009 documentary titled, Hole in the Head: A Life Revealed. To note, the government also made it a priority to experiment on 19 mentally disabled boys, who not to their knowledge was fed radioactive food.
B. Racism Contributes to Black Disability: Health
This year with a global pandemic, and the rising of Black Lives Matter with the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, U.S states, through their local health departments, have validated what we as Black people already knew. Racism is a public health crisis. Racism makes black people more susceptible to an array of neurological and physical disorders (Depression, anxiety, asthma, hypertension, hyper morbidity, chronic seizures etc.). In the article Racism and Health: Evidence and Needed Research the authors show a connection of these conditions as it relates to segregation, stereotyping, and discrimination. When Black people know they are being stereotyped it “can lead to increased anxiety reduced self- regulation, and impaired decision making, which can lead to unhealthy behaviors, poor patient– provider communication, lower levels of adherence to medical advice, increased blood pressure, and weight gain among stigmatized groups” (111). The authors present a study of Black teens whom at ages 16, 17, and 18 reported high levels of discrimination and showed elated levels of cortisol, norepinephrine, epinephrine, inflammation, BMI, and blood pressure.
In Application to biographical readings
Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany is the autobiography of Afro-German author and activist Ika Hügel-Marshall. In her autobiography she shares the lackluster childhood she experiences as the child of a white German mother and an African American father that she did not know/meet until late adulthood. Ika lived in Germany and did not see another Black person until her mid 30’s. She was the only Black person in her community. During that time the society within Germany was deeply rooted in anti-blackness. Moreover, the German governement tried hard to have Black WWII soldiers stationed from Germany isolated from them in order to prevent miscegenation. However, that was to no avail as mixed children started to appear. The German government sent someone from Youth Services to Ika’s home to institutionalize her and keep her away from white society. I analyze Ika’s life in her childhood stages especially while institutionalized.
In, “Shadow Play DisCrit, Dis/respectability and Carceral Logics” D.L Adams, and Nirmala Erevelles argues:
Disability Studies scholars working at the intersections of race and disability have all described how oppressive discourses of disability have historically been used to justify the dehumanization of racialized bodies in ways that support oppressive practices such as slavery, settler colonialism, neocolonialism, educational and residential segregation, employment discrimination, as well as the institutionalization and incarceration of racialized bodies (134).
As aforementioned before, being Black does not equate to being disabled. However, applying a disability lens as a mode to convey oppression that treats Ika’s blackness the same way people with mental or physical disabilities are treated, one can observe that the practices that other her are very similar and work as metaphor. Ika’s Blackness acts as justification for the treatment she succumbs to while institutionalized.
Ika’s institutionalization and isolation becomes justifiable in the eyes of white people because she is Black. While institutionalized because her Blackness gets treated as a disability the people that run the institution have already determined the extent of her ability. In the work Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitionalization and Prison Abolition crip of color theory threads together Liat Ben Moshe’s term race ability. She states:
I am referring to the ways race and disability, and racism, sanism, and ableism as intersecting oppressions, are mutually constitutive and cannot be separated, in their genealogy (eugenics, for example), current iterations of resistance (in the form of disability justice, for example) or oppression (incarceration for example).
These oppressions connect when it was surmised at a young age that Ika’s Blackness would be a disability that would cause her to lack in development and societal achievement thus, her only hope would be if she was sent to a home (Pentecostal Society and the Independent Protestant Association). She recalls that this served, “As grounds for my institutionalization” (7). Herr Siebert from Youth Services tells Ika’s grandmother:
Frau Pop, it is for the best. She’s got no future in this town. When she’s older, she may become emotionally unstable, and she’ll certainly be considered free game for the men. She’ll end up having children out of wedlock, become an alcoholic, and God knows what else. Is that what you really want? And please don’t forget, Frau Pop, that you have another daughter. If you keep Erika here, you’ll be endangering her development, too (8).
Here, Ika as disabled is othered and is to be kept away from the abled, in this case white society, and even her own white German family. Ben-Moshe posits, “Even if they are already disabled, conditions of confinement may cause further mental breakdown for those entering the system with diagnoses...” (Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitionalization and Prison Abolition 8). In this case as the diagnoses is Blackness and thus is the reasoning for Ika to be taken away and “treated,” they’re not taking into consideration the fact that institutionalization is what will cause Ika to become emotionally unstable. She is treated as if her Blackness is a contaminate that can infect and disable her white sister. When Ika does begin life at the home she is beaten severely, put in bondage, and sent to “solitary confinement” (39). The nuns in the institution feel that they need to tame and change Ika as they are uncomfortable with her being Black. In disability studies it’s argued that treatment is not always cure. Unfortunately, in application to Ika while institutionalized the nuns that work at the home take her to see an exorcist in order to cure her of Blackness (27). This is a state that is inescapable for her. When taken to the white male priest she is tied to a chair and made to repeat, “purify my Black soul.” Her Black skin is interpreted as demonic and has thus corrupted what should have been a pure white soul.
Another part of the process of curing her was supposed to be in the form of going to the school. The school and its practices didn’t treat the effects of Blackness; it did not cure her. Ika suffered from racism in the form of beatings, the lack of job availability for a while after leaving the home, the stares, and the constant negotiation of space. Later on, when Ika works at one of these homes as an older woman she uses language that denotes this isolation and separation because of difference. She refers to the home as a “detention center” not a “home” (56).
Using DisCrit theory as a way to understand racism and ableism as boundary work --whites as abled and Blacks as disabled-- Kathleen Collins in her work, “A Discrit Perspective on the State of Florida v. George Zimmerman: Racism, Ableism, and Youth Out of Place in Community and School” describes her experience as a single white mother to a half black son being labeled disabled in school. Although, her testimony is is U.S based, the experience is still applicable and mirrors that of Ika. Her son’s teacher used race to mark him deficient, ability profiled him, and segregated him within the classroom to keep him from impacting the other white kids. He was the only Black kid in the class. Her son, Wade, underwent a process of isolation. His teachers would make his assigned seating next to no one in the class. His treatment from other white students obviously differed and became a punishment for being Black. Wade would be made to clean lunch tables. He would be excluded from the main learning community by having to stand outside of class. This treatment that can be likened to Ika’s displays that in an institutionalized setting white people can treat Blacks in an oppressive way and feel justified because they think they are isolating the contaminate and dealing with “the problem” effectively. School is a space where ability profiling becomes a way to be racist. Ika states that any difficulties she would have in school would be blamed as a function of her blackness (37). To the white people around her, her bad behavior was because of her blackness (37). Subsequently, when Ika tries to create autonomy for herself and rise above the ability profiling of others, she realizes the detrimental affects of this treatment. Ika tries to take a qualifying exam and fails. She shares with the person she is reporting to that it is because her teachers treated her differently than the white kids and never provided an opportunity to engage in the classroom, ask questions, and learn. Ableist critique (in this case the world being the ableist) normalizes what can and cannot be done from their perspective. Erevelles argued that “…‘othering’ is the process of disablement in which notions of unsuitability are conflated with gender, race, and class. When ‘others’ are deemed unable or unworthy to participate in the knowledge economy – in the case of poor school achievement, for example – their dispossession in the capitalist ideology is justified” (Toward Unity in School Reform 169). Ika was shut out of participating in this knowledge economy like her white peers. Her intellect was never the problem. The problem came from teachers that isolated, ignored, and overlooked her because she was Black. Based on her Blackness they determined her level of ability and denied her adequate education. Qualifying exams were not in her favor because she, like many other Black kids, are not provided the tools or resources in order to pass them. The system is designed to continually benefit the abled and keep out the disabled. Susan Baglieri speaks to this in “Toward Unity in School Reform”:
School reform discourses reify co-constructions of race, class, and abilities that naturalize inequity in education and society as well. The wide reporting of comparative measures on education assessments among groups serves to affirm ableist and racist ideologies. Thus, the tools that are proffered to illustrate inequity in opportunity simultaneously perpetuate determinist narratives about difference and diversity that underscore inequality between children (170).
Entrance exams/qualifying exams have historically proven to be unfair because Black people do not have the same resources, accommodations, or privilege to come in with the same tools needed to pass these tests. Often, Black kids in school that aspire for more are conditioned to not strive for it because of a projection of ability based on race. In the case of Ika, she wanted to be a teacher, but the nuns kept saying she can’t and instead should go into childcare- work. Ika as a disabled Black body has a set of limitations put on her.
Ika’s relation to home, space, and nation mirrors the disabled body’s extension of the political economy of flesh and the nation’s investment in curative violence. Eunjung Kim speaks to this in “Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea” where cure becomes a nation spectacle, so the country doesn’t appear weak. In effect, disabled people are targeted for curative practices that are violent. He states:
The cure is to properly govern the body and its social relations... Disability has long been connected to the imaginary of the colonial Korean body politic during Japanese rule. After Independence, the division, and the Korean War, rehabilitation of the disabled nation, largely tied to capitalist economic development, emerged as the primary goal of postcolonial South Korea (3).
Ika’s body is a symbol of a violation to German racial purity and the government’s isolation of her is symbolic of rehabilitating the image of the nation especially during a time in the aftermath of the War. Her father being a Black U.S soldier makes Ika not only a threat to racial purity, but it can be read as a further weakening (disablement) of Germany by having her a part of the thousands of “occupation babies” (pgs. 4 and 5). In effect, Ika becomes a part of Germany trying to cure itself. A process that becomes violent for mixed Black raced babies that are put in foster cares and other institutions. Being attuned to this political fixing Ika shares, “There are times, when we’re away, that I wish we would never return to Germany. I never learned to love my country…” (74). Ika’s feelings are valid as I’m sure that it is hard to love a country to which you’ve never felt wanted or truly belonged.
Black Disability and Police Brutality
The documentary “In His Own Home” about University of Florida graduate student Kofi Adu-Brempong shed light on a subject that does not get discussed on mainstream media often which is Black disability and police brutality. Admittedly, when these incidents of police brutality happen to Black people I have never stopped to question if they had a disability. As someone suffering from a mental condition and episode when the police attacked him important questions started to arise for me: Are officers trained to handle people with disabilities? What is their protocol? How often do Black people with disabilities get brutalized by police?
This documentary reflected that there was/is no type of tailored care or protocol when it comes to Black people with disabilities. It is not surprising. With the history of police brutality in relation to Black people the interaction does not get past being Black in order to inquire about mental or physical disability. The documentary also reflects that even if the police do know they don’t care. Kofi was shot in the face in less than a minute after forced entry.
Kofi’s case exhibited the same neglect and brutality of the highly circulated case of Elijah McClain. Last summer (August 2019) Elijah was walking home from a convenience store in Aurora, Colorado when someone called 911 because they thought he looked sketchy because he was wearing a ski mask and flailing his arms. Police pulled up on him as he was still walking, detained him, and handcuffed him. Elijah was trying to explain to the officers that he is autistic. In the video you can hear him telling the police that he is an introvert that does not like to be touched; traits relative to people with autism. Instead of listening the officer placed him in a chokehold although Elijah weighed no more than 140 pounds, was already in handcuffs, and posed no immediate threat. Paramedics arrived on scene and to subdue someone already in bondage they injected him with two doses of tranquilizers to which he began to vomit. Elijah then later died at the hospital. Later it was revealed that not only was Elijah McClain an autistic 23-year-old that played violin for abandon cats in shelters, Elijah had an underlying blood condition. Thus, the mask he wore on his face frequently to keep warm. His difference was interpreted as aggression. His disability was used as a tool in the construction of criminalization and deviance. In McClain’s mother’s statement she shares that she had did her best with preparing her son for police interaction by telling him to memorize her phone number, and to share with officers he has a disability. She also shared her fear of officers not being able to see his “invisible” disability. McClain and Kofi’s stories are two of many black disabled people murdered by police.
· Sandra Bland: A 28-year-old Black woman that was taken into custody July 10th, 2015 in Walter County, Texas after a white male police officer, Brian Encina, pulled her over for switching lanes without signaling. The officer slammed her head into the ground and continued to manhandle her even after she disclosed, she had epilepsy. The officers on site conducting the arrest replied to Bland, “Good. Good. You should have thought about that before resisting arrest.” In the intake forms Bland wrote that she was also on antiseizure medication. She went three days without her medication while in custody. Although many people believed that she did not commit suicide while in jail and the officers murdered her, this is a part of the narrative that has circulated that those in the disabled community find damaging and ableist. Danielle Stevens the editor at "This Bridge Called Our Health" (A Trans-Inclusive, Intersectional, Sex-Positive Health & Healing Blog by & for Women and Femmes of Color of all Genders.) states:
I think some of the discourse emerging from these #IfIDieInPoliceCustody &#WhatHappenedToSandraBland conversations are dangerously limited. Folks are saying “Sandra Bland was mentally sound” and “Black women like her would never commit suicide”, etc. Not only are we upholding precarious and dehumanizing ‘strong black woman’ archetypes that neglect to hold Black women in the fullness and breadth that we embody, but our failure to operate within a mental health & disability justice framework by making the assertion that Sandra Bland was ‘mentallly sound’ in order to prove that she did not commit suicide is a dangerous narrative that both devalues black people who navigate mental health difficulties and trauma and also erases their/our narratives from the conversation.
· Eric Garner: In July 2014 a 43 year old African American man was killed by a white Police officer in New York after the officer performed an illegal chokehold on Garner. Garner was not resisting arrest and cried out “I can’t breathe.” Republican Representative Peter King weaponized Garner’s weight against him and argued that, “If he had not had asthma and a heart condition and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died.” Garner had diabetes and a heart condition.
· Tanisha Anderson: Anderson’s family called 911, June 2015, for help while she was having a mental health crisis. Instead of an ambulance arriving for the mental health assistance the family originally called for, police officers appeared at the home instead. They took her out of her home and the 37-year-old mother died on the pavement outside of her house while handcuffed and restrained by police. Anderson had, ischemic heart disease and bipolar disorder
· Deborah Danner: In 2016, 66- year- old Danner was shot dead by police in her New York apartment in the Bronx. Her neighbor called 911 and told officers that she was “emotionally disturbed.” Danner’s sister, who was at the apartment when the police arrived, thought the officers , like numerous times before, would help take her to the hospital to help with her schizophrenic episode. Instead, Officer Hugh Barry shot her twice. He said she tried to charge after him with a baseball bat to which made him fear for his life.
· Ezell Ford: LAPD officers shot and killed Ford August 2014 after seeing him sitting on a sidewalk in Los Angeles, profiled him, and followed him after they just released him to go. They suspected he had drugs, without any proof. They got out of their vehicles, tackled him, started beating him, and then shot him three times while he was handcuffed. Ford had bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia.
· Freddie Gray: 25-year-old Gray was arrested April 2015 for illegal possession of a switchblade. He was put in the back of a police van shackled but not secured as officers drove on rode bumps. At the end of the ride he was found unresponsive. He died of a detrimental spinal injury. Gray had mental disorders from his exposure to lead poisoning at a young age. Zosia Zaks, (a certified rehabilitation counselor, professor of Disability studies and manager of programs and education at Towson University's Hussman Center for Adults with Autism) explains:
Gray’s murder led to the historical month-long Baltimore city protests.
· George Floyd: May 25, 2020, 46-year-old Floyd was publically killed in Minneapolis, MN by white police officers over a suspected $20 counterfeit bill. Officer Derek Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 15 seconds while Officers Thomas Lane Lou, J.Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane assisted. Floyd had a heart condition, sickle cell, and hypertension.
These deaths show a cruel pattern when it comes to the mishandling and treatment of Black people with disabilities and their interactions with police. A study by the Ruderman Family Foundation reports that based upon collected data that, “33 to 50 percent of all use-of-force incident involve a person who is disabled.” Thankfully, movements such as #BlackDisabledLivesMatter is making sure that there isn’t an erasure when it comes to brutality against Black disabled people. This movement has regained traction since the killing of George Floyd because of the joined forces of a visually impaired Black woman named Justine “Justice” Shorter (Disaster Protection Advisor for the Disability Rights Network) and another Black woman with disabilities named Keri Gray (the Senior Director of Stakeholder Engagement and Strategic Communications at the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD)). They gathered disability activists across the country to actively voice Black disability narratives under the National Alliance of Multicultural Disabled (NAMD) Advocates.
Wanting Difference, Wanting Disability, and Care
This class has shown that because we reside in an ableist society everything outside the standard is not wanted, accounted for, considered, and actively worked against. No one really considers the cruelness of that until they are affected in some way by disability. Considering the intersection of race and disability, these systems of oppression work hand in hand and not simply parallel to one another. To subvert a society that creates an erasure of a certain sect of people there needs to be an openness to not only accommodating people with disabilities, but actively wanting people with disabilities to be a part of society. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in her book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice made it a point that the survival and full acceptance of disabled people into this society isn’t going to be sustained by obligation and threat of legality. Only love will be sustainable. For disabled people of color, I think that process starts with changing the racial codes we associate with Blackness and disability. Schalk poses critical question to engage with this needed shift in discourse. She poses “If ableism is the discrimination against people with disabilities and the valuing and privileging of nondisabled bodies, what do we make of discourses around Black bodies which use metaphors of disease, illness, dying, curing, and healing? How are these discourses racist and how are they also deeply ableist?” (Developing and Reflecting 11). If white, cis-gender, heteronormative, and ableist society stopped associating Black skin with “super-predators” that are dumb, deficient, and inherently dangerous maybe humanization can begin. Maybe if this society stops using Black people as test subjects, target practice, and establish equity in housing, schooling, and medicine we can begin the conversation of long-term love, care, and support that allows Black people to exist no matter the space.
Works Cited
“A DisCrit Perspective on The State of Florida v. George Zimmerman: Racism, Ableism, and Youth Out of Place in Community and School.” DisCrit:Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education, by David J. Connor et al., Teachers College Press, 2016.
Connor, David J., et al. DisCrit: Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education. Teachers College Press, 2016.
Dunham, Jane, et al. “‘Developing and Reflecting on a Black Disability Studies Pedagogy: Work from the National Black Disability Coalition.’” Disability Studies Quartley, vol. 35, no. 2, 2015, doi:https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/4637/3933.
Erevelles, Nirmala. Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Hügel-Marshall Ika, and Elizabeth Gaffney. Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany. Peter Lang, 2008.
Pearson, Robin, and David Richardson. “Insuring the Transatlantic Slave Trade.”Journal of Economic History, vol. 79, no. 2, June 2019, pp. 417–446.EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,uid&db=ecn&AN=1789401&site=eds-live.
Subini Ancy Annamma , David Connor & Beth Ferri (2013) Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability, Race Ethnicity and Education, 16:1, 1-31, DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2012.730511