Abstract
The Disability Rights Movement is known to have been inspired by and benefitted from the work of the Black Civil Rights Movement and in particular, the NAACP in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and yet, racism in special education continues to persist, which is seen through disproportionality in disability diagnosis, disproportionality in referral to special education, and disproportionality in discipline. This thesis seeks to explore this contradiction by looking at four strategies from Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and how they are reflected and what they reveal about 14 special education legal cases from the 1970s. These strategies are the 14th Amendment strategy, expert testimony, social science research and the psychological damage argument. This thesis seeks to answer the questions: How were these four strategies reflected in this set of 14 cases and to what ends? To what extent were these cases race-avoidant? What does this race-avoidance say about racism in special education and the Disability Rights Movement today? This thesis builds primarily on four literatures: literature on the connections between the political and legal strategies of social movements, literature concerning histories of special education law, literature concerning equity and antiracism in special education and literature about intersectionality theory. The 14 special education cases studied reveal race-avoidance in a majority of the 14 cases both in the avoidance of discussing race when it would have been especially relevant and avoiding race in legal strategy: viewing race and disability as legally separable. This race-avoidant character of the majority of these legal cases masks how racism influenced the situations of the Plaintiffs and helps explain why racism has persisted in special education and thus, a frame of disability justice that rejects race-avoidance and considers race and other social identities in addition to disability must be adopted.