Cultivating Positive Racial-Disability Identity: Opportunities in Education for Culturally Sustaining Practices and the Intersection of Race and Disability

• In Event: Disability Identities and Cultural Repertoires in Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the educators’ opportunities to cultivate and affirm positive racial-disability identity development for disabled students of Color (DSOC). Using my own childhood experience as a Black student with a disability, I examine how my racial and disability identities were sustained and marginalized in school, and critique missed opportunities where the racial-disability identity of DSOC could have been affirmed and centered. Lastly, I reflect on current educators’ practices in supporting racial-disability identity development of DSOC.
Theoretical Frame
Studies demonstrate that for students of Color, racial-ethnic backgrounds are important aspects of their identities (Charmaraman & Grossman, 2010), and link racial centrality with positive outcomes for students of Color (Fuligni et al., 2005, Chavous et al., 2008). Disability studies scholars theorize disability culture and examine the importance of disability-identity development for people with disabilities (Forber-Pratt at al., 2017; Brewer et al., 2012).
Asset pedagogies can have a positive effect on the cultivation of racial identity as well as the academic performance youth of Color (Sleeter, 2011). Disability scholars have called for the extension of asset pedagogies, such as culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) (Paris & Alim, 2014) to view disability culture, as content worthy to be taught in school curricula (Banks & Hughes, 2013; Waitoller & Thorius, 2016) to DSOC.
I apply theoretical constructs from the model of psychosocial identity development for individuals with disabilities (Forber-Pratt & Zape, 2017) and CSP (Paris & Alim, 2014) to (re)conceptualize teaching opportunities in which the cultural histories, practices and knowledges of disabled communities of Color are centered to nurture positive racial-disability identity development for DSOC.
Methods/Data Sources
I employ autoethnographic data in the form of a personal narrative of my own past and present lived experiences at the center of “cultural analysis and interpretation” (Chang, 2008, p. 43). Utilizing the theoretical frameworks above, I examine my own experiences as well as observed experiences of DSOC peers to reflect upon, analyze, and illustrate the treatment of disability at the intersection of race curricula. Additionally, I comparatively reflect on current interaction with educators to illustrate changes in how students’ racial and disability identities are acknowledged and sustained through present-day curricular decisions.
Conclusions
My analysis led to the identification of three themes related to educators’ treatment of disability at the intersection of race in curricular choices. These themes include: (1) exposure to perspectives that countered beliefs of white and abled-bodied superiority (2) acknowledgement and expansion of disabled people and disabled people of Color shared cultural histories and repertoires, (3) recognition of dynamic and evolving cultural identities in relation to race and disability.
Significance
Disabled youth of Color are confronted with and must learn to negotiate interlocking systems of ableism and racism. As research has demonstrated the impact of positive racial and disability identity development respectively on youth resilience (Noblit & Hanley, 2009), I theorize the utility of leveraging curricular opportunities afforded by including disability culture in asset pedagogies in supporting positive racial-disability identity development for students of Color with disabilities.

Author

• Seena M. Skelton, Great Lakes Equity Center