The Wrong Kind of Special? The Black Middle Class and Dis/Ability

• In Event: 31.064 - Disabling Race and Racing Disability: Developing DisCrit

Abstract

1. Objectives
The paper analyses the social construction, and contestation, of dis/ability in the lives of Black middle class parents in England as they reflect on their own educational experiences and support their children as they navigate school.

2. Theoretical framework
The research adopts an intersectional perspective that draws on critical race theory, dis/ability studies and the sociological work of Pierre Bourdieu. In particular, the analysis engages with the emerging tenets of DisCrit (Dis/ability Critical Race Theory) as posited by Annamma, Connor and Ferri (2013).

3. Methods/modes of inquiry
The paper works from a social constructivist position to explore the intersection of race, class and dis/ability in the everyday world of education. Qualitative data are analyzed using the constant comparative method. The analysis asks how, and in whose interests, particular understandings of dis/ability are made, asserted and resisted in schools.

4. Data sources & evidence
Interviews with 62 parents of children aged 8-18 where the parent (a) identifies as Black Caribbean (i.e. family heritage includes migration from the West Indies, usually in the 1950s and 1960s), and (b) is employed in a professional/managerial role within the top two categories of the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (the most commonly used SES scale in British social science research). Around four-fifths of the interviewees are mothers and the sample includes doctors, lawyers, lecturers, social workers and teachers.

5. Results and conclusions
Findings highlight the deeply raced nature of the construction of educational dis/abilities. Black middle class parents often use their greater class capitals (both economic and social) to mobilize expert witnesses and formal assessments to support their case. Nevertheless, they are typically unsuccessful in their attempts to access the additional positive resources that are associated with particular categories of ‘learning dis/ability’ such as dyslexia and autism. These categories are guarded as a property right for the benefit of White middle class students. In addition, the interviewees’ greater class standing offers little or no protection from the negative impact of less-benign ‘special education’ labels that attach to behavioral and emotional categories, which typically lead to segregated and second-class educational provision and pronounced under-achievement.

6. Significance of the study
The paper adds to the literature on the Black middle class (Lacy, 2007) and specifically their positioning at the intersection of race, class and dis/ability in education – an aspect that is absent from previous research in this field (Artiles, Trent & Palmer, 2004). The paper confirms the co-constitutive relation between race and dis/ability (Leonardo & Broderick, 2011) and suggests that in contemporary English education the influence of racism is a stronger determinant of Special Education Needs processing than social class resources. Whiteness works through special needs in specific ways that preserve certain categories to protect White middle class children but re/make deficit categorizations of Black children as intellectually and/or emotional deficient regardless of their class positioning.

Author

• David Gillborn, The University of Birmingham