Intersectional Discrimination in Education
Introduction
Hello, my name is Kallie Parrish. This blog entry discusses intersectional discrimination in education. It is intersectional because ableism and racism combine to form huge discrimination. Listed below are sources that examine this intersectional educational discrimination from the perspectives of people who belong to different ethnicities and range in disability status. I am personally invested in this topic because I am a disabled woman in college. I have not faced much racism since I am white, but I have faced some discrimination in school due to my hearing loss. I am majoring in Public Health at Roanoke College, but I have always had a passion for advocating for disabled people since I am part of the community and see things differently than someone who is not disabled would.
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Siuty and Atwood
Sarah, a Black teacher of disabled students, performed transforming teacher resistance by reflecting on her own experiences, according to this study by Siuty and Atwood, which combines DisCrit Classroom Ecology and Positioning Theory as theoretical models. DisCrit Classroom Ecology tries to make functional classroom environments with narratives different from the mainstream narrative about learning styles and the behavior of minority students that are marginalized. Positioning Theory is founded on the idea that not everyone involved in a social occasion has the same access to rights and abilities to execute meaningful acts at that time and with those people. Siuty and Atwood examine the ways that Sarah’s social positioning between racism and ableism introduced her to DisCrit Classroom Ecology. Sarah impacted both black and white spaces as an intersectional disruptor. By validating mental healthcare along with affirming neurodiversity as something to be treated with love and consideration instead of power and paranoia, Sarah challenged ableist stereotypes surrounding mental illness. She urged the school to appreciate her students’ intellectual achievement equally when comparing them to their non-disabled classmates, and she advised her white coworkers to address their prejudges when acknowledging diverse children with disabilities to reduce unequal portrayals of them.
Marie
Liza Malinsky is a disabled Black woman with a traumatic history that is documented in her university records. She had to take a leave of absence during her first year of college due to her trauma. Liza was able to return with Charlie, her service dog, who attends class with her to help with her terrible anxiety. The first week of in-person classes, Professor Matta forced Charlie and Liza to leave class. Professor Matta violated Liza's privacy and attempted to shame her by exposing sensitive information about her accommodations and disability in front of all of Liza's peers, which was both humiliating and prohibited under the Americans with Disabilities Act’s guidelines. Following the Department of Social Service's advice, Charlie and Liza returned to class the following week. Professor Marie Matta had called George Washington Campus Police on Liza, a disabled Black woman. This video depicts the altercations that resulted in Liza being escorted out of class by the campus police on January 25th, 2022. When Liza requested a university employee for assistance in her vulnerable position in this video, the professor, the students in the room, and the employee all laughed at her. The campus police officer then walked out of the room, unconcerned about Liza's condition. Professor Matta has yet to apologize to Liza since she returned to class. Peers of Liza Malinsky, like the creator of this petition Carly Marie, have rallied around her to demand Professor Marie Matta be fired at GW on the grounds of forcing her to leave class with her service dog, as well as for calling the campus police on Liza. Something that surprised me about this source was that Liza’s professor did not face any repercussions after discriminating and traumatizing Liza. It frustrated me that even though we have made so much progress in equity for all, there is still so much left to do. Liza’s experience reminded me that intersectional discrimination is still very, very real. I added this source because it is the intersection of sexist, ableist, and racist discrimination. Marie reminds us that intersectional discrimination is happening all around us.
Abes and Wallace
An association among intersectional ableism and the daily life of physically disabled college students is examined in this disability and intersectional narrative study by Abes and Wallace. Due to disability being defined and examined using an adaptive perspective, and regarded by this idea, participants experienced intersectional oblivion, along with preservation of their school lives mandating they downplay their disability. Since the students’ disabilities were physical and easy to see, they faced more intersectional discrimination due to their visible disability and skin color. They were just viewed as “that kid in the wheelchair,” or “that kid in the crutches.” These students were tolerated instead of embraced and were forced to not talk about their disability while at the same time receiving discrimination after discrimination. Respondents found homes in their bodies and minds and environments to combat intersectional marginalization. Evolving “from accommodation to inclusion,” recognizing “disability as a social identity,” valuing “the socially constructed and physical realities of disabled bodies, and” elevating “disabled students’” defiance “to ableism are” just a few of the researchers’ suggestions. Evolving from accommodation to inclusion looks like accepting and not just tolerating an individual’s disability. Recognizing disability as a social identity means swallowing the hard to swallow pill that no one chooses to be disabled, and we are all going to become disabled in some capacity at some point in our lifetime. Valuing the socially constructed and physical realities of disabled bodies means making space for disabled people to be who they are, and love who they love without non-disabled people telling them what they can and cannot do as a disabled person. Elevating disabled students’ defiance to ableism looks like listening to your students and advocating for them when they are discriminated against. Carly Marie starting a petition for her friend Liza is a modern-day example of elevating disabled students’ defiance of ableism in this age of social media. Abes and Wallace’s suggestions resonated with me, specifically the one that recommends transitioning from accommodation to inclusion. Accommodation is great, but we should live in a society that is already inclusive, to begin with. Then, we would not need accommodations because society would not be hiding disabled people, it would instead be embracing them.
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Steverson
The Darkest Child (2004) by Delores Phillips has received little critical attention even though it is one of the few novels in African American literature that portrays deafness. Phillips’ portrayal of Martha Jean defies a long-held stereotype “of deaf characters and deaf imagery as negative.” As Steverson demonstrates, Martha Jean is a complicated figure that challenges stereotypes of African-Americans and hard-of-hearing people as a deadweight on society. Martha Jean is not the disabled side character or the inspiring disabled person. Martha Jean is Martha Jean. I loved reading Martha Jean’s story, of how she was so resilient, and how this literary character broke society’s stereotypes of black and deaf individuals. Books really do start literary (or societal) revolutions. The preservation of African American literature like The Darkest Child on public school reading lists is crucial for achieving true equity for all. With classic books that break stereotypes authored by white men being censored and removed from reading lists, it is only a matter of time until books that challenge stereotypes written by people of color are pulled from the shelves and dumped into intersectional oblivion.
Singh
Singh reviews the vulnerabilities of young women with disabilities found in Canadian and Australian studies. She discusses educational discrimination and higher rates of violence inflicted upon young women with disabilities, resulting in lower mental health. Limited educational achievement is attributed to inaccessible buildings, sparse accommodations, bullying, and attitudinal barriers on the part of teachers. According to various global research, disabled girls and young women are more vulnerable to violence due to their disability, gender, and susceptible age. Singh also discussed that girls with disabilities are more prone to eating disorders, which I found shocking. This is something that I never thought about before. Singh highlights the necessity to include disabled girls and young women with disabilities in research. I was shocked at this because I did not know that people in Canada were raising concerns about this topic. I was somewhat but not really shocked when Alimi said, “Even with disability activism, children tend to be ignored and girls with disabilities are particularly devalued.” With systemic racism and sexism in our institutions, women of color with disabilities (Liza) are at even more risk of being devalued. As my research with Dr. Rapp has found, and as Singh mentions, this intersectional discrimination blocking women from education has negative outcomes on their mental health.
Harris and Leonardo
Harris and Leonardo unpack intersectionality as an analytical framework. They state that the educational institution is a “point” of intersection. Harris and Leonardo discuss how gutting one type of inequality demands a counter-offensive strategy against other types of injustices. Harris and Leonardo also touch on the academic history of intersectionality and why this (the term intersectionality) is preferred over more negative terms. Intersectionality originated from the struggles of black women in the 1960s or 1970s. Today the term has become popularized, used in the academic and political realms as well as on social media. Bilge argued that White feminists have tried to make the term their own and whitewash it. Harris and Leonardo maintain that the term intersectionality has been taken over by white feminists ignoring its racial roots. This chapter also challenged me to see the connections between the Black Lives Matter movement and the intersectional discrimination disabled women of color encounter (once again, our friend Liza).
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References
1. Siuty, Molly Baustien, and Alexis Atwood. “Intersectional Disruptor: A Special Educator of Color Living and Teaching in the Intersections.” Teacher Education and Special Education: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children, vol. 45, no. 1, Feb. 2022, pp. 61–76., https://doi.org/10.1177/08884064211062872.
2. Marie, Carly. “Demand of Professor Marie Matta to Be Fired on the Basis of Discrimination.” Change.org, Feb. 2022, https://www.change.org/p/demand-of-professor-marie-matta-to-be-fired-on-the-basis-of-discrimination.
3. Abes, Elisa S., and Michelle M. Wallace. “‘People See Me, but They Don’t See Me’: An Intersectional Study of College Students with Physical Disabilities.” Journal of College Student Development, vol. 59, no. 5, 2018, pp. 545–562., https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2018.0052.
4. Steverson, Delia. “‘Where’s the Dummy?’ Deafness, Race, and Labor in Delores Phillips’s The Darkest Child.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies: Volume 15, Issue 2 https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=9040934a-c7e3-4e70-9e4f-c2f61a9837ee%40redis.
5. SINGH, SANDHYA. “Needs of Young Women With Disabilities Overlooked.” Herizons, vol. 34, no. 1, Spring 2020, pp. 7–8. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=142656179&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
6. Harris, Angela, and Zeus Leonardo. “Intersectionality, Race-Gender Subordination, and Education.” Review of Research in Education, vol. 42, no. 1, Mar. 2018, pp. 1–27, doi:10.3102/0091732X18759071.
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