Spatial Dis-locations at the Intersections of Race, Class, and Disability: Exploring Section 504 and Disproportionality

• In Event: Disability Critical Race Theory and Conceptualizations of Place and Space: Working Toward Intersectional Understanding

Abstract

Objectives:
In my local district privileged white students labeled with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) or Emotional Disabilities (ED) are included in regular education under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. On the other hand, African American students with similar labels are often consigned to segregated special education classrooms and alternative schools. Unlike IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) that ensures a free appropriate (not exceptional) education to a disabled student in the least restrictive setting (often segregated), Section 504 is a civil rights statute that requires the needs of students with disabilities to be met as adequately as the needs of students who are non-disabled in the regular classroom.

In this paper, I examine both the material as well as discursive practices of the spatial dis-placement of black disabled bodies in public education who are presumably excluded from protection of Section 504. More specifically, I ask: Why are African American students with labels like ADHD and ED/BD under-utlilizing Section 504? How do school policies support these disproportionalities? What are the implications of these disproportionalities on students at the intersections of race, class, and disability? How do these dis-locations represent spatial injustices that reproduce inequalities at the intersections of race, class, and disability?

Theoretical Framework:
My analytic framework straddles the intersections of Critical Geography in Education(the work of Henri LeFebvre) with Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory (DisCrit). LeFebvre theorizes space as socially produced via “spatial practices (the perceived space of daily realities and routines), representations of practice (the conceptualized space of architects and planners), and representational practice (the experienced space of everyday life and its images)” (Christie, 2013, 776). According to Annamma, Ferri, & Connnor (2013), DisCrit describes “racism and ableism …[as] normalizing processes that are interconnected and collusive” (p. 7). Using the public school as the locus of this analysis, I will examine the spatial practices of dislocation (the overrepresentation of African American students in alternative schools and special education); the representations of the intersections of race and disability in schooling (the ways in which Section 504 is differentially utilized by students on the basis of race) and the everyday day lived experiences of students in these dis-located spaces (the actual implications for African American students).

Data Sources/Evidence/Materials
a) Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
b) Documents Pertaining to the local School Districts interpretation of Sec 504
c) Racial and Class Demographics of students who served under Section 504 in the local schools district.

Methods/Modes of Inquiry
This will be a textual analysis of data sources using the theoretical framework described above.

Conclusions/Scholarly Significance
There has been little literature about how Section 504 plays a role in the dislocation of African American Students to segregated special education classrooms, alternative schools and ultimately to the school-to-prison pipeline. Additionally, this study also contributes to the few studies that use political theorizations of space in the study of schooling at the intersections of race, class, and disability.

Author

• Nirmala Erevelles, The University of Alabama