Disability, Race, and Immigration Intersectionality: Disempowering the Disabled through Institutionalized Ableism in American Higher Education

Abstract

A systematic and comparative review of the literature and lived experience of a disabled Black African immigrant scholar in America reveals institutionalized ableism as a form of today’s immigration restrictions. As long as the perspectives of immigrant disabled scholars remain outside universities, scholars are likely to continue with “academic incest” and higher education is unlikely to achieve its purposes of decentering the individual and democratizing the society.

Keywords:

• Ableism
• disability
• faculty incivility
• higher education