Disability Justice Praxis: Sick, Disabled, Deaf Women and Non-Binary Educators of Color Holding Each Other in Radical Love and Accessible Kinship

Abstract

Academic spaces in the United States remain exclusive and toxic for those who embody multiple marginalized identities. There is hope, however, as subversive practices and resistance to systemic oppression and hostility continue to infiltrate academia through the work of socially engaged scholar-activists. In this paper, we—four sick, disabled, and Deaf women and non-binary educators of color—come together to discuss our paths to understanding ourselves and our places within academia. Through the methodology of activist ethnography, we explore the diverse and complex ways we embrace Disability Justice in our teaching, research, scholarship, and activism. Collectively and through interwoven storytelling, we disrupt and challenge ableism, racism, settler colonialism, cis-hetero-sexism, classism, and other intersecting forms of oppression within academia by (re)centering and amplifying our lived experiences and disabled, Deaf, and chronically ill epistemologies. Simultaneously, through a Disability Justice praxis, we work to imagine and create educational spaces that build and support radical love, accessible kinship, and healing.