"The Story Is the Point”: Hospicing Carceral Logics and Nurturing Interdependence in Early Childhood

• In Event: Imprisoning Disability: (Re)Conceptualizing the Role of Disability in the Criminalization of Youth of Color

Abstract

Purpose: In early childhood, Black and Brown children are subjected to processes of hyper-labeling, hyper-surveillance, and hyper-punishment (Beneke et al., 2022; Kulkarni et al., 2021; Yeh et al., 2023). Ableism naturalizes these harmful processes, upholding racialized myths of meritocracy (Annamma, 2018; Au, 2016; Yancy, 2023). Vanessa Machade de Oliviera (2021) argued that undoing desires to cause harm requires that we divest from--- and indeed hospice--- manifestations of power in our everyday lives. In the context of mentorship (Author 1), mothering (Author 2), and classroom teaching (Author 3), we asked: How might we hospice carceral logics in early childhood, creating space for relationality to thrive?

Theoretical Framework: We drew on DisCrit and perspectives from disability justice organizers. DisCrit exposes how ableism and racism co-define normalcy (Annamma et al., 2013); we examined how ableism and racism animate hyper-individualism in early childhood (Love & Beneke, 2021) and prioritized the knowledge, needs, and experiences of those young children targeted for increased regulation. Disability justice organizers honor interdependence– the recognition that each of us relies on one another (Mingus, 2017; Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018). We considered what early learning might look like when self-sufficiency is not the primary goal.

Methods: To refuse individualistic qualitative research approaches (Museus & Wang, 2022), we deepened relationships through collaborative auto-ethnographic writing (Chang et al., 2016). Through analytic discussion and memoing (Saldaña, 2016), we generated patterns, noting both what content was foregrounded and how our stories were told (Riessman, 2008). The writing of this paper was also an analytic tool as we reflected on our lived experiences in relation to our research question, literature, and theory (Esposito & Evans-Winters, 2022).

Data Sources: We told stories to fight for the future (and freedom) of Black and Brown disabled children (see Hayes, 2020). Data sources included: digital compositions (n=24), transcripts from communal recollections (n=12); and child-created artifacts (i.e., writing/drawings).

Findings: Three interrelated processes connect our stories: practicing forgiveness, valuing slowness, and orienting toward joy. Author 1 stories how she supported an educational mentor whose young Asian American granddaughter received an Autism label; Author 1 practiced forgiveness as she negotiated her mentor’s distress and urge to fix her. Author 2 narrates how she valued slowness by orienting toward her young Black child’s resistance to constant intervention and removing him from applied behavior analysis therapy; slowing down allowed him to position himself as abundantly whole. Author 3 reflects on how she oriented toward a Brown disabled child’s joy playing with marbles in her public kindergarten classroom; doing so created space for children to play together on their own terms.

Significance: June Jordan (2003) wrote, “To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify” (p. 283). We argue that there are otherwise possibilities for cultivating mutuality and care in early learning spaces; doing so requires we hospice carceral logics in our everyday interactions, trusting the very difference young Black and Brown children with disabilities personify.

Authors

• Maggie Beneke, University of Washington

• Shayla Collins, University of Washington

• Jordan Taitingfong, University of Washington