AERA 2024
Roundtable Session: Awareness and Agency at Intersections of Identity As/Including Disability
Title of Paper: SPEDing the Fairy: Special Education & Queer BIPOC Students in the New York City Public School System
Roundtable Talking Points:
1. Analytical paper that assists developing a lens as I begin my dissertation work. For this paper I am examining the phenomenon of Queer Black and Latine boys in restrictive special education classroom within the NYC public school system through a Foucauldian lens of schools creating disciplined individuals. These students at the nexus of having a minoritized identity and what Foucault writes about having a deviant sexual identity.
2. My background: 15 year special education teacher within the NYC public school system. 8 of those years spent teaching Black and Latine boys in District 75, a citywide special education district
3. Foucault theorized that schools were used as a "mechanism for training" (p. 172) to transform bodies into obedient, docile soldiers. This training targeted those bodies that were deemed immoral, homosexual, and deviant (Foucault, 1995).
4. Additionally, the process of discipline involves categorizing students into distinct groups based on performance, with the highest group deemed exemplary and the lowest group considered abnormal. Foucault (1995) argues that this “hierarchizing penalty” (p. 182) has multiple purposes. It distributes students into groups based on perceived intelligence and behavior, which can be carried outside the school building. The system helps build disciplined and compliant students who turn into disciplined and compliant adults by forcing them to conform to the policies and practices of the institution or remain at the bottom of the hierarchy. The lowest on the hierarchy, the special education student, is left in a state of perpetual penalty. Through this system, discipline becomes engrained and eventually normalized; however, if students fail to assimilate, they face permanent exclusion from their peers (Foucault, 1995).
5. Black & Latine students, caught in a school system designed to specifically punish difference and Queerness (Foucault, 1995), become targets for special education referrals. Queer students are harassed in school and ostracized by peers due to their perceived difference, leading to social-emotional and behavioral concerns (Robinson & Espelage, 2011). According to Russell and Truong (2001), “racial/ethnic minority students who are also sexual minorities are likely to be at greater risk than their peers for problems in school and compromised emotional health. Due to their dual minority status, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender ethnic minorities are doubly oppressed” (p. 113). Using Foucault's (1995) "diagram of power" (p. 171), which emphasizes the use of discipline as a means of enforcing conformity, Queer Black & Latine students face dual forms of marginalization. They are positioned at the bottom of the hierarchy.
6. The student's isolation sets off a harmful cycle where negative behaviors lead to consequences and punishment, which in turn leads to more negative behaviors. This cycle prevents the student from entering a phase of healing and receiving the necessary therapeutic support (Nadeem et al., 2021). If they refuse or cannot transform into the school’s idea of a normalized, disciplined subject, they are expected to remain in SPED classes and eventually disappear. When students are separated from their peers, the resulting isolation can set off a harmful cycle. Negative behaviors lead to consequences, which in turn lead to more negative behaviors, preventing the student from entering a healing cycle which Wehmeyer (1988) refers to as a "one-way street" (p. 3).
7. Adolescents who are doubly marginalized are at significant risk of experiencing emotional and physical trauma as a result of bullying and harassment directed towards their identities. (Russel & Truong, 2001). The referral and placement of Queer Black & Latine students in SPED programs harm their mental and physical well-being as well as their self-perception as members of society. These decisions are made within an educational system that aims to create compliant individuals for societal regulation (Foucault, 1995), resulting in enduring and traumatic consequences for these individuals. Meiners (2017) suggests that categorization can shape a child into an acceptable adult as defined by mainstream society. Foucault's (1995) views on schooling argue that schools aim to produce obedient individuals who can be easily managed within society. It is crucial to reassess the SPED referral process, not only for Queer Black & Latine students but for any student with a minoritized identity, whether based on their sexuality, race, immigrant status, or language.
If you would like to read this paper, please click here
