Re-imagining Learning Disabilities

35. “Michael’s Story: ‘I Get Into So Much Trouble Just by Walking’: Narrative Knowing and Life at the Intersections of Learning Disability, Race, and Class,” David J. Connor

Connor analyzes the intersections of learning disabilities with race and class through the narrative of Michael, a young, Black working class man with dyslexia. Using Michael’s own personal narrative, Connor applies Collins’ domains of power—structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal—to examine the discourses of disability, race, and class that organize domination and oppression in Michael’s everyday life.

In the structural realm, the interconnected forces of segregated housing patterns, limited schooling options, and restricted opportunities for employment serve to limit and constrain Michael’s experiences.

In the disciplinary realm, the ultra-bureaucratic realm of special education, pervasive criminalization, and labor management practices form a sprawling apparatus that separates, sorts, and manages oppression.

In the hegemonic domain, the dominant achievement ideology justifies a binary classification system that limits Michael’s aspirations.

Finally, the interpersonal domain continually influences and shapes Michael’s consciousness through everyday interactions. Because of the interlocking nature of Michael’s positioning in systems organized around ability, race, and class, the interpersonal domain is one in which he is often unable to determine which aspect of his identity drive the discrimination he experiences.

Connor reminds us that the interconnected domains of power are responsive to human agency, and that the importance of Michael telling his own narrative is that it reveals his situated knowledge of his own positionality, as well as his agency, ingenuity, and resilience in the face of adversity on many fronts.

Here is another important personal narrative below that we might watch in class. If you are looking for augemented participation points, please post a comment that connects the speaker's story to Collins' domains of power.

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Communicating Gender, Race, and Class: 2020

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