A Mother-Son Dialogue on Anti-Blackness, Racism, Ableism, Special Education, and the Dangling Carrot of Giftedness

• In Event: Anti-Racist Critical Perspectives Diversifying Special Education Research: Challenging Traditional Narratives of Objectivity, Neutrality, and Science

Abstract

Objectives

Despite its eugenic underpinnings and pseudoscientific construction, intelligence quotient (I.Q.) testing continues to be utilized throughout the educational landscape. Subjective assessments, testing culture, and other means of interpreting students’ abilities contribute to the hierarchical ways in which schools operate. A deep chasm exists between special education and gifted education, experienced profoundly experienced by dis/abled Students of Color. Integrating duoethnographic storytelling with historical literature, we explore the deep-rooted source of so-called underachieving gifted students alongside the equally complex and haunting reality of racism in the education system. While the education system’s failure in this area is often examined in isolation, we offer insight into being both a gifted student and a Student of Color. Furthermore, through our lived experiences as a Black mother-son dyad, we flesh out what it means to navigate racially hostile climates, ableist views, within-classroom threats, and the “dangling carrot” of gifted education.

Theoretical Framework

Our theoretical framings offer an understanding of how socio-historical constructions of intelligence have created the dichotomy between special education and gifted education. We use Black feminist framings of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989; Collins, 1990) to recognize the educational systems’ failures to recognize the multiple axes of oppression experienced by Black mother and son. Integrated into our theoretical lens is how anti-Blackness is deeply embedded within explicit and implicit educational practices (Dumas & Ross, 2016). We also draw from Disability Critical Theory (Annamma et al., 2013), recognizing the interdependent forces of ableism and racism within the educational system, yet we intentionally privilege the voices of people who have traditionally been excluded in research. Finally, we employ Collins’ (2016) theorization of Motherwork, recognizing how while out positioning at the margin space serves as the site of lived experience of compounding oppression, it is also the site of resistance (hooks, 1989).

Modes of Inquiry

We employed critical duoethnographic storytelling, integrated within the historical special education and gifted literature. Storytelling is rooted in Afro-Indigenous onto-epistemologies as a means of capturing and learning from the rich testimonies of people’s realities. Using critical duoethnography we took a discursive, cultural, intergenerational, and reflexive approach to narrative based qualitative methodology (Banks-Wallace, 2002; Winfield et al., 2024). Finally, our critical lens is one identifying inequities while also seeking to enact social change.

Data Sources

By addressing the psychological impacts of societal and practitioner failures, we hope to provide a deeper understanding of how students in similar situations can not only overcome the obstacles that have been placed but thrive and excel in environments that were not at all built for them. We also provide testimony of the navigation that Mothers of Color must often endure to advocate for their children.

Results and/or Substantiated Conclusions

This paper serves as both an analysis of the injustice and a guide for resilience, self-advocacy, and success in the face of adversity. This presentation has important implications for policy and practice in in both special and gifted education, particularly for Students of Color. Furthermore, this presentation highlights the critical importance of incorporating diverse methodologies in educational research, uplifting the voices of Black youth narrating their own lives.

Authors

• Elijah Stoutenburg, Pennsylvania State University

• Lydia L Ocasio-Stoutenburg, Pennsylvania State University