Through space into the flesh: Mapping inscriptions of anti-black racist and ableist schooling on young people’s bodies

Abstract

This article responds to the deadly consequences of the ongoing anti-Black racist and ableist educational settings in the United States, including the continuous historical trauma they create in the lives of targeted youth (dis/abled, Black, non-white, gender-variant, poor, immigrant). By way of sampling individual body maps of a New York City-based youth participatory action research study (YPAR), the author frames socially constituted impairments to describe the chronic violence caused by anti-Black racism and ableism. Grounded in critical disability and embodiment studies, the author applies an “ocular ethic” framework to this YPAR study to name some of the injurious effects that pervasive anti-Black racist and ableist schooling practices have on the lives and bodies of Black students. Informed by youth-driven visions of fugitivity, the author argues that critical body mapping disrupts ongoing anti-Black racist and ableist narratives about racialized youth that continue to frame them as helpless, immobilized, and insensate.

Keywords:

• Youth participatory action research
• critical body mapping
• ocular ethic
• anti-Black racist and ableist education
• impairments caused by social structures

Notes

1 “Ableism” and “ableist” refer to institutionalized structural oppression leveled against disabled bodies.

2 All names of people are fictitious.

3 This YPAR study fulfilled the dissertation research requirement of my doctoral degree. I discussed ethical tensions between an individually awarded academic degree and co-ownership and -authorship of participatory and collaborative research processes elsewhere (Krueger-Henney, 2011).

4 Ritalin, an addictive stimulant with severe side-effects, commonly given to children with high levels of activity or with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. According to D’Agostino (2014), “6.4 million children between the ages of four and seventeen have been diagnosed with ADHD. By high school, nearly 20% of all boys will have been diagnosed with ADHD—a 37% increase since 2003.”

5 The ACS is the New York City Administration for Children's Services, a governmental agency that provides welfare services to children and their families in the City of New York.