Seeing Sue's Point of View

This weeks reading titled Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability by Subini Ancy Annamma, David Connor and Beth Ferri places a realistic twist on a very familiar noun, disability, defined as a physical or mental condition that limits a person’s movements, senses, or activities.  This article speaks specifically about race and disability and their interdependence in education. Isn’t this another layer of the onion that this whole class is based on. Racial injustices have been part of our history since the Civil War. Since then, “policies continue to be put in place that are interlocking and interdependent that routinely advantage whites while producing cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color,” according to Tricia Rose in How Structural Racism Works .                      The article proposes the idea of c...

  The film we watched this week, Precious Knowledge , was very moving. The year is 2011 in Tucson, Arizona. The up and coming issue is in the Tucson Unified School District. They are being told to shut down their Ethnic Studies Program. This is Crystal. She is rallying for this program at her high school.  Crystal is one of many Mexican Americans who attend school because they are "supposed to", not because they want to. This program is one that actually gave these students the "hope" they were looking for, or needed. The Arizona State Superintendent, Tom Horne, made a public announcement which called on the "Tucson Unified School District to shut down the Ethnic Studies Program and start teaching kids to treat each other as individuals, not on the basis of what race they were born into. The chanting behind us illustrates the rudeness they teach to their kids." When a person of power gets up to address the public before him, I believe it is respect that fo...