The Intersection of Racism and Ableism in Disability Support Services

Description

The websites of disability resource centers at six universities are used in a discourse analysis to forefront ways in which the Whiteness of disability is upheld. The main research question, built using a DisCrit (Disability/Critical Race theory) lens, is: how do the institutional discourses of disability resource centers reproduce or challenge particular identities for college students with disabilities? The research sub-question explored in this dissertation that built off of this wider scope is: how are the politics of intersectionality addressed in such discourses? Then, in the second analysis chapter, two more analytical categories are discussed that were generated from my discourse analysis: problematizing disability as only a social construct and the politics of naming disability support services offices. Overall, this dissertation aims to generate conversations about how race and disability are constructed via the discourses presented on the university websites and the potential consequences of such presentations.