Using Crip Theory to Reimagine Student Development Theory as Disability Justice

Abes, Elisa S.; Wallace, Michelle M.

doi:10.1353/csd.2020.0056

Cited by 16 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…Racist ableist discourses simultaneously positioned non-APIDA Black and Brown students as less intelligent, capable, and productive, while reinforcing the model minority myth for APIDA students. Whereas scholars such as Abes and Wallace (2020) build on crip theory to argue that “compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness are the dominant discourses that push people toward an unobtainable normalcy, determining who is disabled and therefore less worthy” and maintain “the dominant discourses of able-bodiedness and able-mindedness show up as ableist expectations of higher education” (Abes & Wallace, 2020, p. 576), I argue that because ability functioned as a property of whiteness (Annamma et al, 2013), Black and Brown students instead navigated racist ableism in which racialization and racism already positioned them as non-normative. As Annamma et al (2013) explain, “without racialized notions of ability, racial difference would simply be racial difference.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although a growing body of research in higher education has considered how race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, documentation status, and other social positions intersect, dis/ability and ableism remain underemphasized and undertheorized (Abes & Wallace, 2018, 2020; Harris & Patton, 2019; Miller, 2018; Miller & Dika, 2018; Museus & Griffin, 2011; Stapleton, 2015). Intersectionality, a conceptual framework coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw but whose genealogy is deeply tied to social movement activism of Black women (and their alliances with other marginalized Women of Color) in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s, “is a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity of the world, in people, and in human experiences.…”

Section: Multiply-marginalized Black and Brown Students In Higher Edu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[which] can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor” (Collins & Bilge, 2016, p. 2). Although scholars have discussed race and dis/ability within K–12 educational contexts (Annamma, 2016, 2017; Artiles, 2011; Banks, 2015, 2017; Dávila, 2015; Ferri & Connor, 2005; Hines et al, 2018; Zion & Blanchett, 2011), the ways in which ableism intersects with other forms of oppression continues to be understudied in higher education research (Abes & Wallace, 2018, 2020; Miller, 2018; Miller & Dika, 2018).…”

Section: Multiply-marginalized Black and Brown Students In Higher Edu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Theorizing Racist Ableism in Higher Education

Mireles

2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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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.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Multiply-marginalized Black and Brown Students In Higher Edu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Multiply-marginalized Black and Brown Students In Higher Edu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Theorizing Racist Ableism in Higher Education

Mireles

2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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“…Along with the sense of belonging framework above, research focused on student development models in higher education (Abes et al, 2019;Patton et al, 2016) has shown consistently that students whose identities have been minoritized-specifically, LGBTQ+ students, students with disabilities, international students, and students identifying as members of groups that have been racially or ethnically minoritized-have a harder time feeling as if they belong on college campuses in the United States. For many of these students, college campuses are hostile, isolating, and unwelcoming as their individual and collective identities, experiences, and needs are continuously ignored or not taken into consideration at all (Johnson et al, 2007;Ostrove & Long, 2007;Strayhorn, 2012).…”

Section: Minoritized Identities and Sense Of Belonging In Higher Educ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“I Felt Like . . . They Left Me to Fend for Myself”: A Mixed-Method Examination of Sense of Belonging Among Minoritized Groups in Sport Academic Programs

Kluch

Taylor

Wright-Mair

et al. 2023

Sport Management Education Journal

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Drawing from Strayhorn’s model of educational sense of belonging and Vaccaro and Newman’s model of belonging for privileged and minoritized students, this study utilized a mixed-method approach to examine to what extent students from minoritized groups feel like they belong in the sport management classroom. Significant differences in sense of belonging were found based on visible identities such as gender or race. In addition, our qualitative data revealed five higher-order themes that positively or negatively impacted students’ sense of belonging across identity groups: (a) representation, (b) community, (c) support, (d) accomplishments, and (e) academic and professional experience. Limitations, implications, and directions for future research are discussed.

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“…. the normative and normalizing expectations of pace and scheduling’ (Abes and Wallace, 2020: 577), by making them more flexible in relation to a diversity of bodies and minds (Price, 2011).…”

Section: Ecologies Of Knowledges and Disabled Students’ Strategies: N...mentioning

confidence: 99%

A call to rethink the Global North university: Mobilising disabled students’ experiences through the encounter of Critical Disability Studies and Epistemologies of the South

Peruzzo

2021

Journal of Sociology

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In the 1970s, disabled people and other marginalised social groups battled an exclusionary Global North university. Disability Studies emerged from those struggles as epistemologies shaped around a Westernised understanding of disability and inequalities, based on dialectic visions of progress and subjective liberation. Today, the advance of neoliberalism in universities, and its connection with colonial legacies, are embedded in different historical contingencies, and disabled students face new forms of discrimination. By merging analytical approaches from post-structural Critical Disability Studies and Epistemologies of the South, this article draws upon interviews with disabled students conducted in an Italian university to explore how neoliberal and capitalistic practices exclude certain knowledges and modalities of being university students. Through disabled students’ experiences, the article advances epistemologies that encompass processes of decolonisation and de-ableism of the university and argues for the Global North university to be an institution that can democratically reconcile polyhedral subjective possibilities of being.

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Using Crip Theory to Reimagine Student Development Theory as Disability Justice

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

Theorizing Racist Ableism in Higher Education

Theorizing Racist Ableism in Higher Education

“I Felt Like . . . They Left Me to Fend for Myself”: A Mixed-Method Examination of Sense of Belonging Among Minoritized Groups in Sport Academic Programs

A call to rethink the Global North university: Mobilising disabled students’ experiences through the encounter of Critical Disability Studies and Epistemologies of the South

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