Black Special Education Teacher Educators’ Practice of Resistance

Elizabeth

I am a Black, cisgender, middle-class, straight woman without an identified disability. I am a first-generation child of Haitian immigrants and was socialized to prioritize education and to believe that educators were experts. My experiences as a master’s and doctoral student in a private, predominantly White university, shaped my understanding of what it means to be invisible and neglected in the academy. I have since leveraged the power and privilege of my position as a full professor in an R1 university to highlight racial inequities in my institution and in the special education systems I interface with. My experiences as a Black SET educator shaped the questions we posed to our participants and influenced how I interpreted the data patterns and trends.

Nigel

I am Black, cisgender, upper-middle class, straight male. I was raised in a major metropolitan Black community to a single, female-parent household. Throughout my public K-12 education, I never had a Black male teacher. My first encounter with a Black male educator was during my undergraduate degree, while attending a HBCU. It became more evident during my post-baccalaureate studies the way that I was negatively impacted by the lack of exposure to Black male educators and role models. Entering the special education field without ever being defined by my physical or cognitive ability has shaped experiences influencing how I engaged with young children of color diagnosed with autism and developmental disabilities and their families. Identifying as a Black male special educator influences my teaching focus and research agenda and is the foundation of how I examine racism and racial identity that is the central question of this study.

Halle

I am a White, cisgender, straight middle-class female. I graduated with a master’s degree in special education at a predominantly White university. I am a SET working with predominantly Latinx students with special education needs. My predominantly White upbringing juxtaposed with the experiences of my students has made me reflect on my own experiences throughout my education and begin to understand more the racial inequities within the education system.

Closed doors

Several participants described examples where they were denied access to places, positions, programs, and resources. This occurred in the doctoral admission process, in the context of doctoral programs, and in job settings. Sanaa and Jeree, both clinical faculty, and Deondra, a tenured professor, described Black people being consistently given positions in SET education programs as clinical faculty rather than tenure-track positions. Sanaa said “Of about 35 people, there are 3 Black faculty . . . we’re all clinical. None of us are tenure track.”

When providing access to Black people aligned with White interests, when there was interest convergence, the doors magically opened. A positive, mutually beneficial example of this was the provision of funding to support doctoral studies. Toni joined her doctoral program because they provided full funding. She said “They [White, male program directors] didn’t say they were looking for minorities, but when I got in and began to look at the grant and looked at what was going on. I was like, oh, they were looking for Black folks! I told him [my advisor] I wanted to be a full-time student. I was a graduate research assistant. I got scholarships.” Jamal, Evelyn, and Deondra described similar White institutional interests to increase the number of Black students in special education doctoral programs through funding, though not necessary intangible support required for success. Sometimes, financial support was withdrawn after entry was granted. Norman said, “When I first got to my doc program, I was told that there was funding or grants that could fund me the entire time for my doctoral program. Of course, that never came to fruition, so I had to kind of maneuver around to get additional funding with the help of the Black Graduate Student Association.” A more explicit example of potential harm even in the face of some benefit was evident in Maria’s experience with interest convergence, where she was required to capitulate to a White male professor’s need to feel good about aiding someone not viewed as capable enough. This was a difficult ask for her, but she did so for the sake of completing her program in a timely way.

I remember talking to a Black faculty woman, saying that I resented that this White man wanted to be on my dissertation committee, and he doesn’t know anything about my topic area, which was culturally responsive literacy practices. She closed the door, she said, Maria, do you want to get out of this program? She said, well, you have to know how to work with White men. There are two different White men. There are White men that are truly barriers and they’re truly trying to stop you and they will try to hurt you. And then there are the White men who want to help you, but they want you to do it their way and they will take your success as their own. They will attribute your success to their involvement and their guidance and mentorship. He wants to be the one to open the doors for you. He wants to be the one that says, my first graduate was this Black girl and I helped her. You go to him and you say, I really want to graduate and can you help me get there? That was a hard pill for me to swallow. But, as soon as I said that to him, I was on the fast track. He was like, let’s do it, Maria. We’re going to meet your deadline. And I was like, that’s all it took??

Given our current climate where racial equity is currently the buzzword in education, White interests are converging with the interests of many Black people; however, Celeste expressed worry and skepticism when she said “Are we really valued? If the Black lives movement dies down, will we still be highly valued?”

Another form of closing doors was the inequitable distribution of resources in education spaces based on intersecting identities including race, gender, and disability, a hallmark indicator of the White supremacy deeply embedded in education systems (Diamond & Lewis, in press; Diamond, 2018). Participants described many ways that they were excluded and marginalized from educationally beneficial experiences, roles, and information. Toni talked about the withholding of critical information about the doctoral comprehensive exam process. Sanaa, Jeree, and Deondra talked about Black people being excluded from more prestigious, secure tenure-track positions and being slotted into lower paying, lower ranking clinical faculty positions instead. Evelyn shared her experience of “benign” neglect in her doctoral program. Professors did not act in overtly racist ways toward Evelyn. Rather, they ignored her to the point that she felt her gifts and talents were invisible. Instead, her professors facilitated access to research opportunities to White students she viewed as less skilled, saying “I literally did not have any faculty experience, any coaching or mentoring experience from a teaching or research standpoint. I did not get the experiences that would lead me to believe that being a university professor was in my trajectory. I was seeing my peers working in their professors’ labs, working on research projects with them and I was just sidelined and ignored.” Despite being at an HBCU, Norman still observed Whiteness in the form of access to resources, perpetuated by Black peers and colleagues. He said, “I experienced Whiteness in an HBCU because my White colleagues in special education were treated differently. They almost could do no wrong. Sometimes, they get preferential treatment over Black faculty members.” Norman gave an example of a Black colleague being given no support after receiving a federal grant requiring course releases to conduct research, while a White colleague was freely assigned course releases and laboratory space. This was an instance of Whiteness and Ability as property, where White colleagues were afforded more resources and privileges than their equally competent Black peers.

When Black faculty “make” it and were recognized for their contributions, it was often a solitary journey. Because Black faculty were viewed as less adept at research and more intellectually limited, resulting in less mentorship from established White researchers and fewer opportunities to write and present with them, they were forced to travel the scholarship journey alone. Celeste carved out her own reputation as a recognized special education scholar. She remarked that White colleagues often expressed surprise that she was successful on her own merit.

Covert racism toward self and students

It was not surprising to hear many stories of microaggressions experienced by participants and observed against both Black faculty and students, as well as students of color in SET preparation programs. The most common example of covert racism perpetuated by students against Black faculty occurred within the context of course evaluations and in classroom interactions. Participants described students as being racially isolated in White home communities and many students’ unwillingness to accept instruction from Black faculty. Lola said,

They grow up super isolated and have no experience. So, the things they say or do that are hurtful, racist, classist, homophobic, most of the time are because they don’t know any better or they’re regurgitating something that their parents or grandparents have said.

Their struggle to acknowledge Black expertise stemmed from deep-seated stereotypes grounded in deficit ideas about Black people. Sanaa explained,

People don’t realize that there are a lot of very small towns where students are coming from, and they have never had a Black teacher, or even seen or had any interactions with Black people. I was challenged quite a bit by students whose single-story of Black people are of what they’d seen on TV. If you’re not an athlete or not in the music industry, then you must be someone who is a criminal.

Tatyana interacted with White students who expected incompetence. She believed problematic interactions were driven by both their implicit biases and her anti-racist stance. She said, “There were definitely micro and macro aggressions because I did approach curricula with thinking about how do we do this in an anti-racist way? How do we dismantle disproportionality and special education and how do we make sure we center the humanity of the students who had inequities?” White students challenged Black faculty by questioning grades on assignments, giving poor ratings on course evaluations, refusing to use the title of Dr. when referring to their Black professors, berating professors during class and sometimes even with physical aggression, among other actions.

Participants faced covert racism from White colleagues in their departments and programs. Incidents took a myriad of forms, including refusal to support Black faculty when faced with racist actions by students, being treated as invisible, and colleagues’ employment of stereotypes like the angry Black woman as Evelyn described “I’ve had my dean refer to me as aggressive to my face because I was strongly advocating for my department in my role as chair. He said people found me to be intimidating, intimating that being a strong advocate is a negative if you are a Black woman.”

Despite calls to increase the number of Black teachers and teacher educators, racist actions counter these attempts, serving to drive out the few Black students who make it through the door. Like the devaluation of ideas faced by Black faculty, Black students’ ideas were discounted and dismissed. Tara described how a student’s concerns about racism from White peers were totally discounted, and how White professors ridiculed and criminalized her rather than believing her concerns. Jada recounted,

I had one Black doc student recently who is very interested in looking at the disparities among Black boys with autism. A professor told her that the topic was too narrow and that she needed to think about something else. Those are the types of microaggressions that students have faced that really challenge their ability to be successful.

Participants also described differential treatment where Black students were harshly punished for mistakes, while White students were given the benefit of the doubt or not disciplined, when a negative consequence was clearly warranted. Deondra summarized examples of disparate treatment below.

One of my Black students did not appropriately document something she wrote for a class. She put her sources at the end of the page instead of embedding it into the paragraph. Her professor immediately, without notification, sent it to the university committee for plagiarism. Later on, there was an Asian student in another program who did plagiarize. That same professor said to me “do you think that we should just talk to her about it and give her a second chance?” And in the meantime, this Black student, her whole life is crushed. She didn’t pass the certification exam because she was so devastated.

Whiteness-centered program structures and practices

Participants gave many examples of the ways in which programs were designed to reinforce Whiteness, how admissions and evaluation practices maintained Whiteness even when there were explicit goals to increase diversity, and how the content of programs demonstrated a resistance to directly confronting racial inequity. Sanaa described how the structure of her program privileged full-time, traditional, typically White female students. The cohort model did not cater to working parents and anyone needing flexibility to attend school. Jamal, Jada, and Tatyana talked about advocating for the admission of Black students, pushing back on rigid entry requirements. Jada talked about the impact of admissions practices centering White racial values. Strict reliance on stringent grade point average requirements often limited the entry of Black people into special education certification programs, unless Black faculty were present to advocate on their behalf.

Even when students were provided some level of flexibility and allowed into the institution, they often risked dismissal when they did not embody White racial norms in language, dress, etc. Evelyn’s institution designed programs to recruit nontraditional students who were more likely to be Black and other students of color. Despite this commitment to increasing diversity, their behaviors belied a different stance. She said “With these Black non-traditional students, there is always a problem. Their writing. Their timeliness. Their speech. There’s always some kind of a problem with these students and they come up as at risk of not completing their certification program.”

Whiteness showed up in program, curriculum, and assessment. A consistent issue was the lack of representation of multiple, diverse perspectives in the curriculum, from textbooks, to articles, to assignments. Jamal raised a lack of recognition of intersectionality across identities. Professional disposition was a common area addressed in SET preparation programs and included values, attitudes, beliefs, and actions that come through in interactions, communication, and professional relationships. Jeree described how these “professional” dispositions standards were used as a weapon against Black students.

We have a professional dispositions framework, and Whiteness permeates what is considered a professional disposition and exemplars. When we talk about professional dress and what professional dress looks like, the examples negate or leave out the individuality of what may be recognized as cultural or ethnic or outside of White American culture. Also, professional language and communication have been used and weaponized against Black students.

Centering Whiteness in professional dispositions reinforced the ideal that Black people’s cultural ways of being were not adequate, were more limited, and were less appropriate. Unless they exemplified White cultural norms, they were not viewed as intellectually capable and professional enough to teach even students who looked like them.

The content of the curriculum provided little interrogation into whose voices were being represented. People of color in general and Black scholars were absent from the curriculum. Preservice special educators were not exposed to different perspectives through the content and materials they were given. The exception was the “diversity” course and courses taught by participants themselves. Yet, when participants did center race, they did not do so unscathed.

Strategic resistance

Black SET educators did not sit back and silently endure in the face of demoralizing and marginalizing attitudes and actions. They made intentional choices about when, if and how to directly engage with White colleagues when faced with deficit-oriented attitudes. Lola refused to confront every microaggression as a form of self-care. She made exceptions for White colleagues with whom she had strong relationships. She explained,

One of the ways we condition ourselves to just survive and make it through is to ignore people. It is still a survival instinct and not worth my time. We make those on the fly assessments about whether or not there’s worth spending all of this emotional energy to. My friend calls it “diversity double duty” in her scholarship. I’m not trying to educate educators. Educate yourself! Sometimes it’s worth it, but I spend energy doing it with my students. I don’t want to do it with my colleagues.

Another example of practicing strategic resistance showed up in response to institutional over-reliance on the labor of Black and other people of color to lead diversity initiatives. Several participants refused to assume the emotional toll that came from fighting diversity wars in all spaces of professional and personal life, particularly in the context of the racial awakening and reckoning following George Floyd’s murder in the hands of police in May 2020. Sanaa made strategic decisions about what to lead and what not to engage in based on the return on her emotional investment, that is, institutional impact.

I think a part of self-care for me is that I am not going to do this work if it is not a part of my load, or I am not getting paid for it. In regard to my sanity . . . I’m being very protective of my time and the people that I work closely with. However, with that being said, I was asked to be on the president’s task force for antiracism and equity and inclusion. I agreed to serve on that particular task force because that’s where some institutional level impacts can happen. It is a choice and I didn’t always realize that I could make the choice. I always thought that I had to do it [diversity and equity work] all the time, every time.

Using an anti-racism lens in teaching and research as a form of resistance was often a risky proposition. Faculty tenure and promotion decisions were influenced by several factors including annual performance evaluations and student course evaluations. Despite the potential backlash, Tatyana worked to decenter Whiteness in every aspect of her work, particularly in her preparation of majority White preservice special educators.

There are equities around who’s identified for special education. There’s socioeconomic status and disproportionality issues and poor graduation outcomes. I did not want to hide any of those things. So, by centering those things, the reaction from Whiteness was, what am I doing to the curricula? There was push back from peers to be like, just stick to the script. No one ever told me to stop, never in writing. They were saying verbally, chill . . . because maybe you’re considered to be too much of an activist or are advocating too much that we have to think about the students that we pushed to the margins and special education. That we have to think about the inequities that exist.

This level of commitment and resistance required stamina and courage. Evelyn went into more detail about the courage needed for authentic change as an issue of social justice rather than for White racial benefit.

White people believe when we center racial, ethnic and linguistic minorities, that we are somehow ignoring the White students that are out there. I don’t know if they need to hear how it benefits White teachers and White students to feel like it makes sense for them to make the change because they don’t have the courage to go against White standards. That whole idea of interest convergence, if I’m going to see benefit for my [emphasis added] people then I’ll do it. I can’t be motivated by just seeing the benefit for this group of marginalized people or I’m too scared to go against the White supremacist establishment because I don’t want to lose my privilege.

Many participants embodied a strong commitment to racial equity and the courage to directly confront racially inequitable systems at great risk to themselves and their security. They saw it as a duty to challenge their students’ limited and racist mindsets. Encouraging predominantly White students to share varying opinions, to dissent and disagree, and to challenge themselves and their peers promoted growth in thinking and a greater ability to recognize when ableism and racism were present in schools. Cultivating courage in White students to directly confront racism in special education was an essential component of resistance.

Cultivating critical anti-racist practices

When talking about quality in special educators, most participants prioritized dispositional and less technical skills that were difficult to assess in an objective way. A key skill was the ability to engage in self-examination of racialized values, beliefs, and attitudes and how they affected practice. Jeree challenged the tendency in the field to emphasize content over critical reflection on biases saying, “We make sure our students know their content and we’re so proud of that. What’s missing is being able to teach our pre-service teachers to inquire and interrogate their own privilege and selves.” Deondra gave an example of this when she described how “it comes down to teachers’ perceptions about what inappropriate behavior is and their misidentification of behavioral problems resulting in the huge problem of Black and Hispanic kids being disproportionately placed in special education.” Toya acknowledged the importance of being knowledgeable about content and disability characteristics while raising reflective practices on how racism infiltrates educational institutions as a critical and necessary skill.

Rather than just focusing on technical skills, such as how to write an individualized education plan and implement behavioral interventions and evidence-based practices, special educators with a critical anti-racist gaze recognized systemic inequities embedded in special education practices and policies. Through their work with SETs, the participants identified special educators with a critical anti-racist gaze as those who challenged themselves to recognize how they subconsciously reinforce racist systems through their actions and beliefs. They challenged the ways traditional special education competencies, such as disability eligibility determination and evidence-based practices, centered Whiteness and reinforced the marginalization of Black and other children of color identified with special needs.

Quality special educators acted on their critical anti-racist gaze by going beyond “Bloom’s taxonomy . . . developing supportive and nurturing relationships with students grounded in rigor and high expectations” according to Tatyana. These educators “. . . teach with an anti-racist agenda, using culturally responsive teaching practices,” Sanaa said. Anti-racist teaching practices required a deep understanding of intersectionality, moving beyond disability identity as Jada described below.

A quality special educator is someone who can identify the critical components of intersectionality that students with disabilities bring. Everything from disability, to gender, sexuality, religious backgrounds, cultural background, geographic background—but also with how does that intersect with thinking about their education from a broader perspective? How are their parents contributing to that? That they’re able to apply evidence-based strategies in the classroom to support the needs of students across disability categories and identities.

Several participants critiqued the cultural validity of evidence-based practices, the perceived gold standard when it comes to best practice interventions and instructional strategies. Maria captured this contradiction in the quote below.

I wanted teachers to assess students and assess their performance and use evidence-based practices, but I questioned the evidence. They have to be familiar with them, but they have to have the skills to critique those standards when they don’t align with what’s happening in your classroom or what your goals are for your kids. Evidence-based for whom? Have they been used effectively with Black students? I really wanted to prepare critical special educators who didn’t just go along with what was happening. I wanted them to question and to seek new understanding. I wanted them to develop relationships with communities and families that did not look like them, that didn’t speak the same language as them.

They believed that quality special educators were those who recognized practices that have harmed students of color, recognized the Whiteness and the racism in the explicit and hidden curricula, and interrogated identification, assessment, and discipline processes. According to Jeree, “these special educators examine who is being affirmed and who is historically and continually being harmed, left out, minimized, or aggressed against.”

Designing anti-racist special education programs

Programs decentering Whiteness in curriculum, standards, assessments, and other practices have the potential of increasing the number of special educators who can directly affect racial inequity in K-12 settings. Using race-specific talk rather than hiding behind what Sanaa called “. . . code words like urban, inner city, diverse,” allowed for the explicit naming of racist conditions and unjust practices. All aspects of special education curriculum including disability categories and concepts like accommodations, continuum of services, legal definitions, differentiation, and universal design for learning, should be put under the microscope to disrupt White racial norms embedded within. Jamal explained,

We need to acknowledge that we are teaching from a limited, faulty, harmful curriculum. Whatever we evaluate and assess in our pre-service teachers, they’re going to value. If we value racial equity and we assess them according to that, then they’re going to value racial equity. It must be acknowledged that our American education system and our preparation system has been rooted in Whiteness and perpetuates the values of White American standards. We have to acknowledge and change the way we are preparing teachers because they bring biases within their interactions within the classrooms, and they over-identify and underserve and perpetuate disparities and that’s not what we want to be about.

Not only does the SET preparation curriculum need to change but we also need to directly confront the mindsets of professors who prepare preservice special educators. It is not sufficient to say a program is anti-racist and culturally responsive. SET educators need to address their own privilege related to race and ability, otherwise, they risk perpetuating racist practices.

The normativity and influence of Whiteness and ability were maintained through centering White ideas, images, stories, and beliefs in the content of teacher preparation programs. Whiteness was perpetuated when deficit-oriented narratives framed the lived experiences of Black students with disabilities and their families. One approach to decentering Whiteness in special education described by participants included learning about the wealth of Black communities and the resources and assets they possessed. Some participants incorporated historical perspectives missing from the canon of history of special education. Rather than starting with P.L. 94-142 of 1975, they started with stories of the impact of Brown v. Board of Education of 1954. They included the narratives of Black families and their authentic stories of the pain of their exclusion and their fight for justice. To Jada, anti-racist pedagogy looked like,

. . . having the voices of people of color of our marginalized communities be reflected in assignments, everything from conducting interviews with people of color, watching videos of families that I worked with in the past. Even using names in scenarios that are diverse. I wanted to shift the narrative that many of my students had about Black parents not being involved in their child’s IEP process or not being responsive to teachers’ communication, etc. I’m constantly trying to think of ways to strengthen my students’ cultural reciprocity. I’m constantly getting them to identify their Whiteness and identify how that Whiteness influences their pedagogy.

Relationships with communities of color were a core aspect of the racially equitable SET preparation program and content. Being able “to walk among the people” demonstrated an understanding of the communities their students came from, their challenges and assets, all of which could be leveraged in the teaching and learning process.

Voice also came from increased Black presence in White spaces, in both K-12 special education settings and in higher education teacher preparation programs. Toni raised the need to recruit special educators who reflected the diversity of students in special education. She decried “. . . the great mismatch between the racial and ethnic demographics of special education teachers and representation of Black and Brown children in special ed” affecting our ability to effectively meet the needs of these students in nurturing and supportive ways. Although not a guarantee, increased representation in both teacher preparation programs and K-12 settings of Black and other teachers of color, increases the likelihood that Black and other students of color will be valued in the curriculum and have teaching experiences resulting in more positive academic and behavioral outcomes (Redding, 2019). The impact of being a powerbroker with decision-making authority was clear in Maria’s case. She had a strong racial justice lens and used her power as a dean to make strategic hiring decisions with long-term impacts. She said,

As Dean, I made hiring decisions that really impacted the future of the special education teacher program. I hired faculty who changed the perspectives of the programs, shifting to a more inclusive education program with neurodiversity, disability and race studies as a focus. I was able to transform the special education program at that institution through these strategic hires and these new folks are reimagining how they prepare quality special education teachers.

Unless we have the power to increase our representation in these White dominated spaces, we will continue to be invisible.