Organized Disinvestment in the Futures of Black Youth with Intellectual Disability Labels through Racialized Transition Mechanisms
This study explores how Black young adults labeled with intellectual disability, and their families, experienced schooling and connects those experiences to transition to adulthood planning. Through qualitative analysis and a theoretical combination of Disability Critical Race Theory and a socio-spatial dialectic, this project addresses the lack of literature centering the voices of Black young adults with intellectual disability labels and their families. The multiple case study design accounts for the intersectional experiences across three distinct family cases. Findings indicate an organized disinvestment in the education and futures of Black students with intellectual disability through the denial of curricular and instructional support and focalize how transition planning is impacted across spatial and temporal dimensions, both of which are permeated with anti-Black messages about student capacity and possible futures. The field of transition can learn from these findings to re-imagine Black student futures and reckon with a cumulation of educational disinvestment.ABSTRACT
Contributor Notes
Author Bio
Courtney L. Wilt, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater (UWW). Courtney’s research examines how minoritized youth with disability labels, and their families, experience and counter-interacting oppressions, such as racism and ableism, particularly during the transition from k-12 schooling to adult life. She is concerned with building frameworks and practices that disrupt educational inequities in ways that lead to desired and sustained student outcomes.
