Haley's Classroom Research Blog

Intersectionality is an idea that I was only introduced to a little under two years ago. Like with a lot of social justice issues, my first real exposure and exploration came when I joined TFA. But watching the video of Kimberle Crenshaw's TED talk brought up a lot of issues that have been given much more meaning to me as I have been exposed to this idea. The exercise she did with the audience was really powerful, especially because I was similarly unaware of the four women she brought up despite knowing who all four men were. Intersectionality, especially the intersection of race and gender, has very much been a topic of conversation with how big the Black Lives Matter and Women's Rights Movements have become in the last few years. Black Lives Matter, despite being run and led by many women, has rallied around the injustices black men have faced. Similarly, the Women's movement has been criticized for its perceived singular "white middle-class woman" narrati...

In  Dis/ability Critical Race Studies: Theorizing at the intersections of Race + Dis/ability By Subini, Connor, Beth Ferri, the authors argue through a series of tenets that race and dis/ability are strongly connected in the way that people are segregated and discriminated against. They combine "aspects of Critical Race Theory and Disability Studies" in what they call "DisCrit." The rest of the article goes into detail about each of seven tenets of DisCrit the authors propose: DisCrit focuses on ways that the forces of racism and ableism circulate interdependently, often in neutralized and invisible ways, to uphold notions of normalcy DisCrit values multidimensional identities and troubles singular notions of identity such as race or dis/ability or class or gender or sexuality, and so on DisCrit emphasizes the social constructions of race and ability and yet recognizes the material and psychological impacts of being labeled as raced or dis/abled, which sets o...