3277 - Disability, Intersectionality, and Microaggressions

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

We propose a special session to examine the ways in which race and racism, gender and sexism, sexuality and heterosexism, class and classism, and disability and ableism are built in to the interactions, practices, discourses, and institutions of society. Recent research in education has suggested that students of color with disabilities encounter different classroom experiences than white students with disabilities, which constrain their ability to use support resources. Feminist disability scholars have also found that women with disabilities have unique experiences within doctors’ offices compared to men that ultimately limit the medical treatments available to them. Using these examples as our starting point, we would like to focus in on how individuals with disabilities – who also represent and identify with particular race, gender, class, and sexuality statuses that might affect their interactions as well as their access to opportunities – experience microaggressions on a daily basis. In other words, what strategies are used to keep different groups of “disabled” individuals in their “place,” and how are these strategies similar or different across intersectional categories? How do microaggressions that are based in both disability and other intersectional identities “feel” to the targeted individual and how are the outcomes of microaggressions that are based at least in part on disability similar or different depending on individuals’ intersecting locations? We aim to flush out how various “isms” and microaggressions work through multiple dimensions of inequality and argue that an analysis of everyday experiences of disability and ableism will help us to also see how other intersectional identities and statuses “feel” as well. Finally, and importantly, there are still glaring gaps in opportunities (and the ability of individuals to use opportunities theoretically available to them) caused by race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability that are all based in varying ways on the combined and intertwined macro forces of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and ableism (among others), and we should aim to understand the exact nature of how these complex gaps are experienced on the micro level so that we can better see, feel, and reduce the impact of social injustices.

Sub Unit

• Special Sessions

Session Organizers

• Heather E. Dillaway, Wayne State University

• Nancy A. Naples, University of Connecticut

• Laura Mauldin, University of Connecticut

Panelists

• Alan Santinele Martino, McMaster University

• Nirmala Erevelles, University of Alabama

• Rachel Elizabeth Fish, New York University

• Alexis A. Bender, Emory University

• Angel Love Miles, University of Illinois at Chicago