Are Students With Disabilities Being Prepped for College or Confinement?
By Lauren Shallish, Talib Charriez, and LaChan Hannon
This piece is a part of our Spark Series Imagining Abolition and Educational Safety Beyond Policing
College, like prison, is both a place and an idea. This parallel invites us to question the nature of social institutions, and their boundaries and transformative potential. K-12 educational settings have long prepped Black and Brown students (with and without disabilities) for containment by treating them as criminal and/or disordered. Prison appears as a warranted — even (bio)logical — outcome, instead of attending college. This relationship is bolstered by ableism. Writes Talila A. Lewis, ableism is defined as a social oppression that “assigns value to people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness.” Lewis continues, “this systemic oppression leads to people and society determining people’s value based on their culture, age, language, appearance, religion, birth or living place, ‘health/wellness,’ and/or their ability to satisfactorily re/produce, ‘excel,’ and ‘behave.’ You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism.”
Indeed, rather than a definable, bio-medical, individualized characteristic, “Disability can be seen as a lens that crosses all communities and centers on the health implications and infinite creativity of a people subjected to ableism.” K-20 professionals must identify how interlocking systems of supremacy feed the school-to-prison pipeline and maintain carceral logics, harmful sorting practices in ability tracking and behavior management, unjust special education classifications and placements, the criminalization of behavior, and adultification of Black and Brown bodies and minds. Ableism has long determined whose life is worthy of college or confinement.
The determination of a “worthy life” is persistently influenced by perceptions of ability, race, and behavior in educational and clinical contexts. In the United States, people with disabilities represent the largest minoritized group. When coupled with system-impacted populations who disproportionately experience de-abling conditions and compromising health outcomes, such minoritized communities move from representing subsets of the population to enveloping nearly everyone. Today over 70 million people have some kind of legal record, which is the same number of people in the US with college degrees. In this sense, disabled and system-impacted individuals are not just another category to include on the list of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agendas but experiences that are woven into our everyday lives. This is especially salient as the entire world has been immersed in a disabled reality amidst the COVID pandemic and on-going crisis climate.
As scholars of Disability Studies Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) explain, “racism and ableism are normalizing processes that are interconnected and collusive…racism validates and reinforces ableism, and ableism validates and reinforces racism.” Ableism is therefore not just the devaluing of disability, but always colluding alongside and within other social oppressions like white supremacy by targeting non-normative/dominant identities. While significant literature exists on the gendered, racialized, and economic inequities that forcibly track students away from college and fuel the school-to-prison pipeline, there is less public attention paid to the roles of disability and ableism within these sorting mechanisms despite their vast influence. It is no accident, therefore, that disabled and justice-impacted students are underrepresented in college, as they are often framed in opposition to the purported elitism and meritocratic rigor of post-secondary life. The use of merit as an organizing principle continues to function as a gatekeeping strategy to sustain unjust educational and social stratifications. The recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action continues to remind us of this exclusivity.
For purposes of institutional ranking and status, colleges often use determinations of merit to inform admissions and academic program decisions. Perceptions of academic readiness and ability are often believed to exist as innate, natural characteristics within those who “work hard,” even though these concepts more accurately represent harmful beliefs about who has the potential to live a “worthy life,” originating from racialized eugenic histories of IQ tests and related psychometric measures. The very categories of “criminal” and “disabled” can themselves be considered eugenic concepts, just as “high achieving” and “academically inclined” can be understood as examples of positive eugenics. What’s more, the prevailing academic curricula, developed by European colonization and the intricate and enduring legacies of slavery, functions like the walls and corridors in a prison. These corridors dictate a predetermined path.
The traditional definition of ability and merit in post-secondary contexts more accurately represents how much a person’s physical, communicative, and mental characteristics resemble the normed archetype of college education fitness (read: white, cisgender, wealthy, able-bodied/minded, English-speaking). The marginalization of formerly and presently incarcerated and disabled individuals in college education is therefore not arbitrary, but tied to the maintenance of supremacy systems, unjust social factors, for-profit mentalities, and mechanisms of social ordering. Current representation, albeit scarce, is historically tied to how experiences of disability and incarceration are useful to universities in that they can be monetized and researched for purposes of institutional ranking, funding, and academic promotion. But, the disruption of these white and ability supremacist practices, guised as “merit,” alongside the dismantling of legacies of eugenic research, have the potential to reposition college as a life-affirming institution and a leader in the national conversations on reparations.
Indeed, the inclusion of disabled and justice-impacted students reveals a different way of living that colleges can benefit from, including reevaluating responses to harm and (in)difference. New narratives and an expanded set of values make our educational and communal spaces safer, operating from the belief that there are no throw-away lives, rather there are only necessary lives. Writes Chancellor Nancy Cantor of Rutgers-Newark, this means that colleges must commit “to an opportunity and asset-based approach to diversity that sees lived experiences as excellence…Forward-thinking institutions should develop a framework that accounts for the resiliency, drive, determination, and creativity that come from lived experiences and provide an authentic way of recruiting and supporting a diverse student body and professoriate.”
When disabled and justice-impacted students are substantially centered, they disrupt harmful ableist and carceral beliefs about potential and excellence, dismantle societal barriers, and reshape the narrative and understanding of history, social justice, knowledge, and human rights. Furthermore, there are vast financial and long-term community benefits: by centering disabled students through practices of providing legally guaranteed rights and services, and Universal Design for Learning and Trauma-Informed/Healing Centered education, multilingual learners, undocumented students, and justice-impacted populations, among others, also benefit. The majority of these practices cost nothing, just a change in planning and perspective. Studies continue to demonstrate that justice-impacted students also bring a track record of commitment and ability to communicate across different backgrounds and cultures. Writes Sturm and Tae, “These scholars can transform organizations and networks by 1) mobilizing varied forms of knowledge to promote change, 2) developing collaborations in strategic locations, 3) cultivating new organizational catalysts, and 4) maintaining pressure and support for action.”
By embracing the essential and worthy lives of disabled and justice-impacted students, the campus community at-large gains valuable insights and knowledge as well as access to the skills and creativity amongst its members amounting to the creation of “culturally promotive curricula” and the abolishment of deficit-based interpretations of ability and potential. The contributions of disabled and justice-impacted students not only challenge ableism and its many entanglements but make us all better by fostering a more affirming and equitable college community and actualizing life-affirming educational spaces in the most meaningful of ways.
Dr. Lauren Shallish is the Associate Department Chair of Urban Education and Associate Professor of Disability Studies at Rutgers-Newark. Her research examines the role of disability studies in higher education equity work and the hyper-labeling of multiply-minoritized students.
Christopher “Talib” Charriez is the senior program coordinator for New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons (NJSTEP) program and teaching faculty in the Department of Urban Education at Rutgers-Newark. A justice-impacted scholar, his work examines the role of psychology and restorative justice in abolitionist teaching practices.
Dr. LaChan V. Hannon is the Director of Teacher Preparation and Innovation in the Department of Urban Education at Rutgers-Newark. Her scholarly work investigates the intersectionality of race, disability, and parent involvement as they relate to the professional development of school leaders.
