Race and Disability

This groundbreaking volume brings together major figures in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore some of today’s most important issues in education. Scholars examine the achievement/opportunity gaps from both historical and contemporary perspectives, as well as the overrepresentation of minority students in special education and the school-to-prison pipeline. Chapters also address school reform and the impact on students based on race, class, and dis/ability and the capacity of law and policy to include (and exclude). Readers will discover how some students are included (and excluded) within schools and society, why some citizens are afforded expanded (or limited) opportunities in life, and who moves up in the world and who is trapped at the “bottom of the well.”

As researcher/practitioners who have spent considerable time working, researching, and providing technical assistance (TA) in U.S. schools, we are continuously exposed to concerns about the "achievement gap" between students of color and White students. Indeed, as we work with state and local education agency educators and their community partners to address inequities in relation to race, language, and national origin, academic disparities are often referenced by stakeholders as their rationale for seeking our support. Moreover, our histories as nondisabled individuals who both belong simultaneously to majority and minority demographic groups and who are in professional and personal roles connected to issues of disability have also contributed to our perspective that the framing of the achievement gap is rife with problems. Critiques of the achievement gap framing are not new. Scholars, educators, and community members have criticized the construct because it contributes to deficit thinking and discourses about marginalized students (Leonardo, 2007). Related critiques implicate narrow definitions of learning and equity (Gutiérrez, 2008) and assumptions that Whites are the "norm" group to which all other groups are compared (Foster, 1999). Irvine (2010) noted that many other gaps (including school funding and challenging curriculum) manifest as an achievement gap, but are not part of the dominant discourse. We do not suggest that concerns with eliminating disparities in academic outcomes

This first-of-its kind volume spans the breadth of disability research and practice specifically focusing on the global South. Established and emerging scholars alongside advocates adopt a critical and interdisciplinary stance to probe, challenge and shift common held social understandings of disability in established discourses, epistemologies and practices, including those in prominent areas such as global health, disability studies and international development. Motivated by decolonizing approaches, contributors carefully weave the lived and embodied experiences of disabled people, families and communities through contextual, cultural, spatial, racial, economic, identity and geopolitical complexities and heterogeneities.

Dispatches from Ghana, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Venezuela among many others spotlight the complex uncertainties of modern geopolitics of coloniality; emergent forms of governance including neoliberal globalization, war and conflicts; the interstices of gender, race, ethnicity, space and religion; structural barriers to redistribution and realization of rights; and processes of disability representation. This handbook examines in rigorous depth, established practices and discourses in disability including those on development, rights, policies and practices, opening a space for critical debate on hegemonic and often unquestioned terrains.

Highlights of the coverage include:

•        Critical issues in conceptualizing disability across cultures, time, and space

•        The challenges of disability models, metrics, and statistics

•        Disability, poverty and livelihoods in urban and rural contexts

•        Disability interstices with migration, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality

•        Disability, religion and customary societies and practices

•        The UNCRPD, disability rights orientations and instrumentalities
•        Redistributive systems including budgeting, cash transfer systems and programming

•        Global South–North partnerships: intercultural methodologies in disability research.


This much awaited handbook provides students, academics, practitioners and policymakers with an authoritative framework for critical thinking and debate about disability, while pushing theoretical and practical frontiers in unprecedented ways.