David J. Connor - DisCrit—Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education (Disability, Culture, and Equity Series)

Introduction: A Truncated Genealogy of DisCrit
Subini A. Annamma, David J. Connor, and Beth A. Ferri

Touchstone Text: Dis/ability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit): Theorizing at the Intersections of Race and Dis/ability
Subini A. Annamma, David J. Connor, and Beth A. Ferri

1.The Black Middle Classes, Education, Racism, and Dis/ability: An Intersectional Analysis
David Gillborn, Nicola Rollock, Carol Vincent, and Stephen J. Ball

2.What a Good Boy: The Deployment and Distribution of Goodness as Ideological Property in Schools
Alicia A. Broderick and Zeus Leonardo

3.Understanding the Intersection of Race and Dis/ability: Common Sense Notions of Learning and Culture
Elizabeth Mendoza, Christina Paguyo, and Kris Gutirrez

4.Expanding Analysis of Educational Debt: Considering Intersections of Race and Ability
Kathleen A. King Thorius and Paulo Tan

5.Reifying Categories: Measurement in Search of Understanding
Elizabeth B. Kozleski

6.Social Reproduction Ideologies: Teacher Beliefs About Race and Culture
Edward Fergus

7.Shadow Play: DisCrit, Dis/respectability, and Carceral Logics
D. L. Adams and Nirmala Erevelles

8.The Overrepresentation of Students of Color with Learning Disabilities: How Working Identity Plays a Role in the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Claustina Mahon-Reynolds and Laurence Parker

9.Race, Class, Ability, and School Reform
Sally Tomlinson

10.Toward Unity in School Reform: What DisCrit Contributes to Multicultural and Inclusive Education
Susan Baglieri

11.A DisCrit Perspective on The State of Florida v. George Zimmerman : Racism, Ableism, and Youth Out of Place in Community and School
Kathleen M. Collins

12.Disability Does Not Discriminate: Toward a Theory of Multiple Identity Through Coalition
Zanita E. Fenton

Conclusion: Critical Conversations Across Race and Ability
Beth A. Ferri, Subini A. Annamma, and David J. Connor

INTRODUCTION

DisCritDisability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education , edited by David J. Connor, Beth A. Ferri, and Subini A. Annamma. Copyright 2016 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved. To reprint any portion of this chapter, please request permission from Teachers College Press via Copyright Clearance Center, http://www.copyright.com

The genesis of DisCrit, a dynamic framework through which to simultaneously engage with Disability Studies (DS) and Critical Race Theory (CRT), can be traced through an academic lineage of boundary pushing. This work is rooted in the work of intellectual ancestors such as James Baldwin, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, W. E. B. Du Bois, Yuri Kochiyama, and Bayard Rustin. In naming these people in particular, the goal is not to create an exhaustive list but to trace the ancestry back far before the development of either Critical Race Theory or Disability Studies, to recognize those whose work made these critical theories possible. These theoretical frameworks were forged by people of color and people with dis/abilities respectively, each grassroots perspective purposefully designed to counter hegemonic knowledge-claims about the meaning of race and disability in society. (We utilize the term dis/ability to 1: counter the emphasis on having a whole person be represented by what he or she cannot do, rather than what he or she can, and 2: disrupt notions of the fixity and permanency of the concept of disability, seeking rather to analyze the entire context in which a person functions.) Our epistemological lineage exists outside and within the academy, built from the foundational work of activists, artists, and academics. There are many more whose work laid a foundation for DisCrits beginnings, which is why the title of this introduction claims only a truncated genealogy. However, what is more important to our thinking than naming every contributor is that we were following a path laid by scholars of color, those with disabilities, those with intersecting marginalized identities, and their allies who were teaching us to move past simplistic and unidimensional notions of identity. Instead, to recognize humanity in a richer, nuanced, and more accurate sense, we acknowledge how the works of those before us broke open existing boundaries allowing us to recognize the multiple dimensions of individuals and the systems of oppression and marginalization in which they survive, resist, and thrive.