There is a lack of intersectional understanding between

disability and race. Disability research that does not

interrogate race creates scholarship that promotes ignorance
of the intersection between disability and race. The best
remedy for this problem would be an interrogation of mental
deficiency.
Ferri10
(Beth Ferri Beth A. Ferri, Ph.D. is a Professor in Disability Studies and
Inclusive Education at Syracuse University. She is also Associate Faculty in
Womens & Gender Studies and coordinates the Doctoral program in Special
Education. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in adapting
instruction for diverse learners and critical issues in dis/ability and inclusion,
as well as several doctoral seminars in Disability Studies. Her research
interests include inclusive education, disability studies in education, and
narrative inquiry. Professor Ferri has published widely on the intersection of
race and disability, including articles in Teachers College Record, the
International Journal of Inclusive Education, Remedial & Special Education,
Journal of Learning Disabilities, Gender & Education, Disability Studies
Quarterly, Disability & Society, and the Journal of African American History.
This article can be found here:
https://www.academia.edu/343849/A_Dialogue_weve_Yet_to_Have_Race_and_
Disability_Studies)

A quick, yet disheartening review of dissertation abstracts

does not bode well for the field. Of the ninety nine
dissertations published in the past five years that include
disability studies in the title, abstract, or as a key term, only
twenty four include analyses of race or ethnicity, and of those
only five are in the field of education. It seems clear that
unless we intervene quickly we will likely produce another
generation of disability studies scholars willfully ignorant
of issues of race. A similar lack of engagement with disability studies is
evident in scholarship focused on racial inequity. It is into this absence
that I writehopeful that this chapter serves as an invitation
for more sustained and meaningful dialogues among my
colleagues in disability studies and race studies.
There
are many difficult dialogues that remain to be explored
between critical race theorists and scholars in disability

studies in education. Working margin to margin, I examine

one potential starting point for building a coalitional politic that
accounts for and works to eradicate multiple ways that students are
othered in schools. Specifically, I focus on the entangled

histories of racism and ableism embedded in the

construction of mental deficiency (and normalcy), as well
as the legacies of this history

Medical authority is deadly for blacks. The medical system has

given blacks diseases and let it fester. Giving power to doctors
over the lives of blacks is tantamount to giving them complete
control over black life again.

King and Wolf98

(A.B., Stanford University, 1988 J.D., Harvard Law School, 1991
M.P.H. Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 1997 Biography
Leslie E. Wolf, professor of law, conducts research in a variety of
areas in health and public health law and ethics, with a particular
focus on research ethics. She has conducted empirical research
on conflicts of interest, research with stored biological materials,
Certificates of Confidentiality, IRB web guidance, and HIV-related
laws and policies. Prior to joining the law school, Wolf taught
medical ethics and research ethics at the University of California,
San Francisco, where she also served on the UCSF institutional
review board and advisory committee regarding stem cell
research. She also previously was selected as a Greenwall Fellow
in Bioethics and Health Policy and as a Greenwall Faculty Scholar.
Wolf teaches courses on human subjects research, public health
law and HIV and the law.)

There is evidence that members of those groups regarded as vulnerable

have different attitudes about end-of-life treatment than do the majority

of Americans who support assisting the terminally ill to die.

Disparities are greatest, however, in attitudes, values, and beliefs
about end-of-life decisionmaking with racial and ethnic minorities.
Studies show that blacks are substantially less likely than whites to
support legalization of PAS. n18 Although the support for legalization
has increased over time in both groups, the gap in support
between blacks and whites persists. n19 There is also evidence
that these differences [*1023] arise in attitudes towards other
end-of-life issues, such as use of life-prolonging treatment,
advance directives, and living wills. n20 Why these substantial gaps
in attitudes about end-of-life decisionmaking exists is not clear
and warrants additional study. The available evidence indicates
that these differences persist even when controlling for education,
age, and socioeconomic status. n21 Possible reasons for this
difference in attitude include religious preferences, n22 blacks'
distrust of physicians, medical institutions, and the health care system
generally, n23 and cultural characteristics like trusting families
more than physicians. n24 Specifically, these differences in attitude
towards PAS may reflect differences in black expression of health
and illness as well as concerns about death. Not only have
African-Americans experienced disrespect for their autonomy,
they have suffered injustice in medicine as well as in the broader
society. As a group, blacks have been abused, neglected, and exploited.
They have reason to believe that their lives are not valued in the same
way as whites, and in their encounters with the health care system they
frequently perceive that they are treated differently solely because of their
race. n25 African-Americans have reason to be suspicious of physicians and
rightly worry about giving them too much authority. In the
[*1024] medical context, physician paternalism builds on and
reenforces race differentials in power and authority that occur in the broader
society. In short, historical and current experiences with American
medicine have made African-Americans acutely aware of the difficulty of
looking after their own interests. Ordinary practices, norms, and habits of
well-intentioned institutions and professions can result in unjust practices
vis-a-vis some groups. n26 Those with power in the society are able
to impose their norms, values, and beliefs on those who lack power. The
dominant group's ideas, beliefs, and judgments serve to stigmatize
and mark other groups as different and deficient. Behaviors and practices

of the stigmatized group are often considered unworthy of study

or respect. The myth of white superiority persists and has
profoundly affected both whites and blacks. As Professor Charles
Lawrence notes, "We do not recognize the ways in which our
[shared] cultural experience has influenced our beliefs about race
or the occasions on which those beliefs affect our actions." n27
Stereotypes that capture and reflect negative attitudes towards AfricanAmericans flourish and become embedded in the culture to the point where
they may not be consciously noticed. Thus, injury frequently is inflicted on
blacks without the actor being consciously aware of racial motivation. n28 It
is not only the dominant group, however, that is affected. The
negative messages are also absorbed by blacks. Feelings of
inferiority and unworthiness are among the psychic injuries inflicted on
blacks. As a result, in addition to all the disadvantages that blacks
suffer, they carry the additional burden of not always appreciating
their own worth as human beings. As Herbert Nickens points out,
"such stigma is never far from consciousness for minorities and is
one of the lenses through which life is perceived." n29 [*1025]
Although other racial and ethnic groups have separate and
distinct experiences with American medicine, an additional reason
for examining the African-American experience is that in some
real sense African-Americans are the paradigmatic minority group in this
country. They constitute approximately twelve percent of the
population. Although they were not willing immigrants and
endured slavery and its aftermath of rigid segregation, as people
of color they have not been easily assimilated and do not share
the western European heritage and culture of some immigrants.
Features of black health experience such as persistent poverty,
limited access to health care, different health status, and low
numbers of health care professionals are common to other
minorities as well.

Thus the altReject the AFF as a form of disability education that centers
around the white and excludes the black.
Instead center our discussion on the primordial nexus of
disability and racism the notions of mental deficiency and
mental normalcy.
Ferri10
(Beth Ferri Beth A. Ferri, Ph.D. is a Professor in Disability Studies and
Inclusive Education at Syracuse University. She is also Associate Faculty in
Womens & Gender Studies and coordinates the Doctoral program in Special
Education. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in adapting
instruction for diverse learners and critical issues in dis/ability and inclusion,
as well as several doctoral seminars in Disability Studies. Her research
interests include inclusive education, disability studies in education, and
narrative inquiry. Professor Ferri has published widely on the intersection of
race and disability, including articles in Teachers College Record, the
International Journal of Inclusive Education, Remedial & Special Education,
Journal of Learning Disabilities, Gender & Education, Disability Studies
Quarterly, Disability & Society, and the Journal of African American History.
This article can be found here:
https://www.academia.edu/343849/A_Dialogue_weve_Yet_to_Have_Race_and_
Disability_Studies)

Historically, disability (and particularly mental or cognitive

disability), according to Baynton (2001), proved to be an effective
tool in justifying discrimination and inequality not just of
people with disabilities, but also women and racial
minorities as well. Mental retardation and all of its related terms is a
construction whose changing meaning is shaped both by
individualsand by the social context to which these
individuals are responding (Trent, 1994, p. 2). At their core,
however, cultural meanings of mental deficiency are
saturated with eugenic- based racism , which gave the
concept the traction it needed in order to be seen as a
social and political cause for concern (Danforth, 2009). This
explains why mental deficiency only became a crisis once
it was associated with a host of social ills such as crime,
unemployment, prostitution, and alcohol abuse (Danforth,

2009, p. 20). Conveniently, these and other social problems

were blamed on the inherited defectiveness of individuals,

who were variously characterized as mentally defective,
feebleminded, and subnormal. But when did the idea of
feeblemindedness get entangled with race, in particular, and why, despite
scientific evidence to the contrary, does this supposed relationship
between race and ability remain so ingrained? How can
retracing this history help us to locate where and when notions of race
figured into ideas about dis/ability? And, finally, how does challenging

the legacy of this shared history of ableism and racism

necessitate a coalitional politic? The concept of mental deficiency
arose as a responseto serious disruptions and dislocations that resulted
from the nations transformation into an urban, industrial society (Franklin,
1987, p. 190). The historical context would most likely include two World
Wars, the Great Depression, the largest wave of immigration into the U.S.,
and the vast migration of African Americans from the rural south to the
burgeoning urban centers of the north. To say these were tumultuous times
would be an understatement. It is against this historical backdrop that we
see the earliest facilities designed for individuals who were considered
feebleminded which, despite efforts to the contrary, were more custodial
than educational, as well as the first college textbook focusing on special
education (Franklin, 1987), and the first teacher training programs (Osgood,
1999).She Continues if we pay close attention to the history

of special education, what we see is a series of attempts

to deal with diversity by creating ever more specific
categories of otherness, categories which have always been (and
continue to be) associated with race, class, and culture/ethnicity. We

should not be surprised that todays special education

classrooms continue to be over populated with students of
color, particular in those categories that are more
subjective (and less obvious, like the high grade mentally defective
category), that patterns of school disciplinary referrals and placements are
disproportionately applied to students of color, or that the achievement gap
continues to mirror racial inequalities. What we should be surprised at is the
lack of real engagement with these inequities. Does our collective

silence, as disability studies scholars, reveal a complicity

in this historyare we not surprised because we expect to see these
differences? If we link the history of categories, such as mental
retardation, and special education more broadly with

racist ideologies, do we stop at critiquing only the

overrepresentation of students of color or do we insist on
dismantling the whole enterprise? If we, as critical race
scholars, take our kids out, who do we think still
belongs in there? What then justifies our current state of
affairs and how do we collectively dismantle it

Ableism and race are intermingled modes of oppression. It is

important to start any truly liberatory analysis from the nexus
of these two forms of oppression. For the Negative that
conversation begins with a rejection of the notions of normalcy
and mental defiency.
Ferri10
(Beth Ferri Beth A. Ferri, Ph.D. is a Professor in Disability Studies and
Inclusive Education at Syracuse University. She is also Associate Faculty in
Womens & Gender Studies and coordinates the Doctoral program in Special
Education. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in adapting
instruction for diverse learners and critical issues in dis/ability and inclusion,
as well as several doctoral seminars in Disability Studies. Her research
interests include inclusive education, disability studies in education, and
narrative inquiry. Professor Ferri has published widely on the intersection of
race and disability, including articles in Teachers College Record, the
International Journal of Inclusive Education, Remedial & Special Education,
Journal of Learning Disabilities, Gender & Education, Disability Studies
Quarterly, Disability & Society, and the Journal of African American History.
This article can be found here:
https://www.academia.edu/343849/A_Dialogue_weve_Yet_to_Have_Race_and_
Disability_Studies)
Thus, what is needed is not simply a cursory attending to

race or ethnicity, but a sustained and careful analysis of

the ways racism and ableism are interdependent.
Unfortunately, too often, when scholars or activists do
attempt to combine analyses of race and disability or
gender and disability, they do so by analogizing between
the two or placing these systems of oppression in a
hierarchy (May & Ferri, 2005). This amounts to placing one type

of oppression as overarching or as foundational to all

others. A common claim is that disability cuts across all the
other forms of oppression. Moreover, because anyone can acquire
disability it is therefore thought to be more universal, as opposed to the
particular interests of race or gender, I suppose. I admit to being puzzled by
these assumptions. Dont race, gender, and sexuality, for
example, cut across social class? Moreover, what is universal
about disability experienceIs there really one disability experience
or isnt it mediated by the particular social, historical, and
political context?
A slightly different approach attempts

to garner attention to one type of oppression by linking it

to another, usually through analogy. Consider a bumper sticker
that reads something like, Black people had to fight for the right to ride in
the front of the bus, but we cant even get on the bus. Other examples use
terms like being shackled by ableism or crippled by racism. These

analyses ignore the ways that racism and ableism are

dissimilarways that they cannot or should not be seen as
interchangeable or analogous. Moreover, they all but erase
those who experience racism and ableism simultaneously
a point cogently raised in the germinal collection of essays, All the Women
Are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Womens
Studies (Hull, Scott, & Smith, 1982).