Constructing, Capturing, and Commodifying Racialized Disability: Historical Throughlines in post-Brown Virginia Pupil Placement Practices

• In Event: Legal Frameworks and Policy Paradigms: Shaping Disability and Access in Education

Abstract

Under the umbrella of the Discourse Historical Approach, I explore the discursive functions of disability in pupil placement decisions in Virginia, the relationship between disability and race constructed through these moves, and how these relationships surface in conversations with an art teacher at a specialty high school. Using DisCrit, I expose how the language of ability and disability functions to deny Black children educational opportunities and solidify associations between Blackness and lack. I put forward a cycle of construction, capture, and commodification, suggesting that in Massive Resistance and present-day, such discourses construct a racialized understanding of disability that is captured by white parents and commodified to accrue additional resources for their already-privileged children, enacting harm and (re)constructing Black disability.

Author

• Jenna Gabriel, Virginia Commonwealth University