Full Description
This edited book reflects a much needed area of scholarship as the voices of African American (AA) or Black students defined by various labels such as learning disability, blindness/visual impairment, cognitive development, speech or language impairment, and hearing impairment are rare within the scholarly literature. Students tagged with those identifiers within the Pk-20 academic system have not only been ignored, and discounted, but have also had their learning framed from a deficit perspective rather than a strength-based perspective. Moreover, it was uncommon to hear first person narratives about how AA students have understood their positions within the general education and special education systems.
Therefore, with a pervasive lack of knowledge when it comes to understanding the experiences of AA with disabilities, this book describes personal experiences, and challenges the idea that AA students with disabilities are substandard. While this book will emphasize successful narratives, it will also provide counter-narratives to demystify the myth that those with disabilities cannot succeed or obtain terminal degrees. Overall, this edited book is a much needed contribution to the scholarly literature and may help teachers across a wide array of academic disciplines in meeting the academic and social needs of AA students with disabilities.
Contents
Foreword: The Narrative Experiences of African Americans With Disabilities: A Call for Critical Reflection.
Introduction: Untold Narratives: African Americans Who Received Special Education Services and Succeeded Beyond Expectations, Shawn Anthony Robinson.
Part I: Setting The Stage.
Historical Policy Analysis of Educational Policies for the Differently Abled in America, Jody A. Fields and Kristie Roberts-Lewis.
Structural Segregation, Disproportionate Representation, and Disabling Assumptions in Special Education: A Black Educator's Narrative, Saran Stewart and David Kennedy.
Part II: Transformative Framework: Stories From African-American Men.
Accessing Special Education: The Lived Experience of a Black Male with Learning Disabilities, Amar Abbott.
A Voice Within: How Private Speech Continues to Propel One Man to Academic Success, Russell Ewell.
Insecurities of Special Education: What It's Like to Be Black, Male, and Learning Disabled, Ronnie Nelson Sidney, II.
Part III: Transformative Framework: Stories From African-American Women.
It Can Be Done, Danyelle Cerillo.
Otosclerosis: The Invisible Disease, Aunye Boone.
Not About the Disability, But the Ability to Succeed, Oluwakemi Elufiede.
Part IV: Cultural Capital Classroom Activity.
Cultural Capital Classroom Activity.
Afterword.
About the Editor.
