Post-Reading Week 8: Race, Education, and Disability

• There are a lot of factors that can intersect in a person's characteristics to be 'misdiagnosed', and some of the factors that plays the role are race and gender. In our reading by Knight, he presented that there are over-representation of African Americans in special education programs during K-12, whereas in college African Americans are under-represented. While whites that are enrolled as LD, they are most likely to get in college. I think for this topic, the power or the heirarchy is still measured, and it also depends on the social construct that individuals believed in. Furthermore, in Navarette's article about Hispanics being tested based on Standard that is written in English-Only. 
• First of all, we define normalcy as being white, able, and well-behaved student in a classroom. The teachers and the school are the ones who developed Learning Disabled, and Learning Disabled is a social construct which means it is made by people. So when they see a slight difference of the student to normalcy, they assume that the student suffers from either Learning Disabled, Emotionally Disturbed, or Mentally Retarded if they can't function as they're told to do in a classroom. I think normalcy is biased because they based it on whites being the normal and a well-behaved student being the normal setting in the class. So if the student doesn't behave well in class, he/she can be labeled as Learning Disable, and can be separated into regular classrooms and regular learning field. 
• As we discussed in class about the diagnosis of the children to be considered as Learning Disable, their are some biased action towards people of color, class, and gender. For example, teachers usually diagnosed people of color or minorities that have first language rather than English. So non-english speakers ended up in special education programs. The root of segregating people of color into a normal classroom setting is that they want to maintain power inside the classroom, and if a not well-behaved student is inside the classroom that usually breaks the power of maintaining normalcy in the regular classroom. Even though teachers are not doctors they use medical terms to show that what they're talking about is legitimate, and for them LD is seen as biological so therefore, treatable with further medication and help. 
• Race as a social construct is when we tend to believe that blacks are good athletes and not so good in academics. Social construct is basically what we belief or a theory. Another race as a social construct example is Asians are always exemplary in academic courses. In disability as a social construct, the society believed that disability is "with-in" the person or the student. So when a student is acting weird in class or slow in learning, then the teachers believed that he/she is suffering a medical condition called Learning Disabled. 
• Teachers that diagnosed students with Learning Disabled are believed to have it "with-in" them. So even though students are not suffering any mental deficiency, they are most likely to end up in the special education programs. For example, in the Hispanic article about students being tested in standardized way written in English-Only. What would Hispanic immigrants feel if they are being tested to the words or sentences that they didn't clearly understand. What would we feel if someone did the same thing. So I think their biased opinion about the problem is "with-in" the students hides their possession of power over the people of color and minorities in general. 
• Medical doctors are on the top of the hierarchy because they're are the ones declaring different kinds of sickness and medical conditions just to maintain normalcy in the society. With that factor racism, classism, and ableism is affected.
• Language barrier. If the student's first language is not english then it reflects to having a hard time understanding English. In class, working class, like having socioeconomic class wouldn't have the time to fight for their children's rights and might think that the school is there to help them. For race, people of color are being placed under special education because they believed that they're not well-behaved and they're not understanding the topic well. So i think we can look at different spheres to clearly understand how intersectionality works and ties in with disability. All in all, I really liked this unit of how disability can be also looked upon intersectionality.

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