What's a Black Feminist Doing in a Field Like Special Education?

Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

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13

Special Education Teachers; African Americans; Feminism; Advocacy; Special Education; Intersectionality; Theories; Students with Disabilities; Student Diversity; Minority Groups; Race

10.1080/00405841.2024.2355816

0040-5841
1543-0421

Special educators are increasingly drawing from intersectionality and Black feminist theory to make sense of the disproportionate deleterious outcomes experienced by racialized students labeled with disabilities. While intersectionality gains a stronger hold in special education discourse, agencies like the Florida Department of Education are misrepresenting Black feminist theory and intersectionality as "ranking people" based on their social identities. Audre Lorde--a member of The Combahee River Collective credited for generating an intersectional shift in feminist discourse--called on the creative use of difference to push back on the marginalization of multiply-marginalized women. Lorde asserted that explicitly attending to the diversity within human experiences challenges harmful attitudes that frame differences as markers of inferiority, deviance, or failure. In this article, I draw from Black feminism and Audre Lorde's theorizing about difference to present a framework for educators who advocate for specialized education programming that affirm student differences.

As Provided

2024

EJ1441119