Community Ethos and the Core Identity of People of Color: Critical Narrative Reflections About Dis/ability and Other Intersections

• In Event: 52.064 - Disability Studies in Education: Promoting Justice Through Critical Narratives and Lived Experiences

Abstract

There is a gap in theory, research and praxis literature about how people of color, labeled with a disability, experience educational contexts that are told from their source of knowledge acquired from critical synthesis of literature and their lived experiences. In this autobiographical and autoethnographical paper, two authors of color—one El Salvadorian and Palestinian male and one African American female—share their critical narrative reflections about their disability labels in order to critique the affective, emotional and power-ladenness of labels that effect social and emotional development. This empirical paper is imperative since our interdisciplinary repertoire serves to deconstruct peoples of color with disability labels experiences in order to inform theory, research, and praxis in a new way.

Authors

• David Isaac Hernandez-Saca, University of Northern Iowa

• Mercedes Adell Cannon, Indiana University - Indianapolis