Abstract: The philosophical study of the role of schooling in preparing democratic citizens has tended to presume an able-minded learner. Dominant philosophical and theoretical models of democratic education consider neither the civic preparation of individuals with perceived intellectual disabilities in particular, nor the presumptions of able-mindedness that are built into theorizing about democracy and citizenship. As a result, democratic citizenship aims are frequently conceptualized according to an unevaluated assumption that civic preparation requires a particular level and display of intellectual ability, communicative competence, social independence, and behaviour. This unevaluated assumption parallels the presumed incompetence of individuals with perceived intellectual disabilities in other areas of education, a phenomenon that has been well documented by scholars of disability studies. This chapter builds on theory and research in Disability Studies in Education (DSE) and other areas of critical educational studies to challenge this assumption. In particular, I take up what Kliewer, Biklen, and Peterson refer to as the “metaphor” of intellectual disability, the sense in which “We do not literally see mental retardation; we infer its existence” (Kliewer et al. 2015, p. 22). I argue that this metaphor emerges within the context of citizenship education in particular and troubling ways. Intellectual ability—and disability—is actively constructed by and through gendered and racialized attachments to the notion of the ideal citizen. Individuals who are perceived to manifest undesirable differences in cognition, behaviour, communication, or performance appear to threaten notions of civic well-being, of nationhood, and of social reciprocity. In this sense, intellectual disability becomes a metaphor for civic threat. Consequently, educational theorizing around democratic citizenship education advances the metaphor of intellectual disability through a process of negation: the citizen is that which the person with intellectual disability is not or intellectual disability is that which is not citizenship. We do not see intellectual disability; we infer its existence through manifestations of non-citizenship.
Abstract: This article argues that there is incomplete acknowledgment of the historically racist and ableist meaning of merit in the promotion of higher education equity. Consequently, a masquerade of merit positions mechanisms of standardization – including physical environment, classroom norms, and co-curricular activities in addition to admissions criteria – as seemingly neutral practices in the academy because they construct able-bodiedness/mindedness as naturally occurring and empirically measurable. Thus, merit-based decisions are afforded the status of simply making sense. Individuals are understood to succeed because of their natural talents and hard work, rather than because they resemble the normed archetype of higher education fitness. We call this the logic of bio-meritocracy, and argue that it operates pervasively, yet paradoxically, within systems of higher education. The continual marginalization of individuals labeled with disabilities within the academy is therefore not arbitrary, unintended, or accidental, but rather tied to the maintenance of able-bodied/minded supremacy.
Abstract: The growing field of feminist disability studies explores how human bodies are interpreted through cultural values and expectations surrounding physical and mental ability. This paper contributes to and expands upon this conversation by examining how the ideal of “able‐mindedness” functions to maintain racial divisions and inequalities through attributions of cognitive and psychiatric disability to bodies of color. Drawing upon contemporary examples from popular social media, public policy, and academic discourse, the author shows how racialized and nonnormatively gendered bodies are identified and interpreted through norms of able‐mindedness and used as markers against which the ideal of the able mind is upheld. This “discourse of pathology” operates insidiously within academic theorizing by remaining largely invisible because it tracks our deeply ingrained assumptions about the undesirability of cognitive and psychiatric disability. The author argues that because of the entanglement of race with disability, so long as the normalizing and privileging of the ideal of able‐mindedness goes unchallenged and we maintain the myth that there exists a normal mental state, both racism and ableism remain very much alive, including within the academy.