Toward a Theory of Black Deaf Feminism: The Quiet Invisibility of a Population

Abstract

This article considers ways to enhance the conceptualization of Black deaf women’s lived experiences through an intersectional lens. An intersectional framework places emphasis on how social constructions of blackness, gender, and deafness shape the identity and experiences of Black deaf women. To outline the need for such a theory, this article first examines social constructions of Black deaf women in the intersections of race, gender, and deafness in comparison to current research. Second, I discuss the relevancy of social theories (i.e., critical race feminism, feminist disability theory, and theoretical approaches prominent in critical deaf studies) in providing a conceptual framework for an analysis of identity in relation to race, gender, and disability. Finally, I introduce the tenants of Black Deaf feminism and discuss the ways Black Deaf feminism enhances intersectionality by centering the lived experience from the standpoint of Black deaf women.

Keywords

Black/African American women Black feminist deaf intersectionality micro research categories social work history social work practice theory/womanism women with disabilities

Women who are Black and D/deaf¹ are a largely understudied group and are nearly invisible in all areas of scholarship. Overwhelmingly, research conducted on Black deaf women is focused on exploratory and descriptive research highlighting experiences on singular axes. For Black deaf women, issues like the permanence of racism, sexism, classism, and audism play pivotal roles in their identity construction. Nonetheless, in scholarship, race, gender, and class are often seen as separate research issues (Cole, 2009; Glenn, 1998; Johnson-Bailey, 1999), with disability frequently being ignored all together (Olkin & Pledger, 2003).

This article considers ways in which intersectionality can be employed to provide insight into lived experiences of Black deaf women. Intersectionality addresses the ways that marginalized identities interact to shape multiple dimensions of personhood and social location (Crenshaw, 1991; Hancock, 2007; Hulko, 2009). As an analytical framework, intersectionality is used to conceptualize how intersecting identities such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability manifest simultaneously in the lives of marginalized groups. This framework treats these identities as independent, interlocking, and mutually exclusive (Crenshaw, 1989; Collins, 1991). An intersectional analysis is more than merely adding up the discrimination associated with each marginalized identity, it seeks to understand how the embodiment of each identity collectively shapes the individual (Yuval-Davis, 2006). K. Davis (2008) states, “It is not at all clear whether intersectionality should be limited to understanding individual experiences, to theorizing identity, or whether it should be taken as a property of social structures and cultural discourse” (p. 68). With this broad view in mind, it is important to recognize that positionality and identity fluidity are critical components of intersectionality. While a cultural view of discourse and social structure must consider the compounding effects of marginalized facets of identity (such as being Black, female, and deaf, for example), for individuals, one aspect of identity may be more central than others at any moment in space, place, and time. This article will approach intersectionality as an analytical lens that is directed from the standpoint and current location of the individual.

This framework places emphasis on how negative social constructions of blackness, womanness, and deafness can negatively affect the identity of Black deaf women. To outline the need for such a theory, this article first examines societal constructions of Black deaf women using the intersections of race, gender, and deafness. Second, I discuss the relevancy of social theories (i.e., critical race feminism, feminist disability theory, and theoretical approaches prominent in critical deaf studies) in constructing a conceptual framework for analyzing identity located at the crossroads of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability. Lastly, I introduce the tenants of Black Deaf feminism (BDF) and discuss the possibilities for BDF by centering the lived experience from the standpoint of Black deaf women.

My Introduction to Black Deaf Women

My interest in researching Black deaf women is 2-fold from the position of a social work scholar who recognizes the invisibility of Black deaf women in research and from the position of a Black mother with a daughter who was born deaf. In the spring of 1993, I gave birth to my first daughter, a healthy baby girl named Arabelle (a pseudonym). She was six pounds and seven ounces at birth with skin that resembled a milk chocolate.

I should have known that my life with Arabelle would be interesting because on the day she was born a white nurse working on the nursery became concerned that Arabelle was in cardiac arrest. The nurse indicted that Arabelle who had been sleeping in a bassinette under a warming lamp appeared to be “blue” in color. We later learned that the nurse had not seen a new born Black baby before and was confused by her complexion. Although there were no complications at birth and she achieved every developmental milestone, a brief visit to the audiologist at the age 8 months confirmed my suspicions that Arabelle has a severe to profound bilateral hearing loss. In other words, my perfect baby was deaf and not just deaf, she was a Black deaf female.

This news sent me into a tailspin, not because I was worried about raising a disabled child, but because as a Black woman, I understood the challenges she already would face as a Black woman, and her disability was an additional form of oppression in our society. Fortunately, I was referred to a social worker who helped me make sense of the myriad of decisions that I needed to make over the next several years. The knowledge I gained from those meetings with the social worker helped me to plan the trajectory of my child’s life and to ultimately carve my career path. Early on, it became clear that I needed to become my daughter’s voice. As a Black mother with a deaf daughter, I quickly learned that I would be required to advocate for her to have access to communication (via a sign language interpreter) in some areas and to feel included in others.

The following are a few examples of challenges Arabelle experienced while in high school. During Arabelle’s freshman year in high school, her English teacher refused to allow the use of a standard testing accommodation, which had been written into her individual education plan. Her teacher (a white male without a hearing loss) argued the accommodation was unfair to her classmates, and thus, she would not receive additional time to complete written assessments. During her sophomore year, we were required to file a formal petition with the school district to allow Arabelle to opt out of speech therapy because of the time conflict with her academic courses. The school’s assumption was that teaching her to speak properly was more important than doing well in calculus and physics.

Arabelle played tennis each of her 4 years in high school and even something as simple as tennis became problematic. During her sophomore year, Arabelle and her doubles tennis partner earned the right to compete in a state doubles tournament. Not only was Arabelle the only Black student participating in the tournament, she was also the only deaf player competing. During the first match, Arabelle and her partner performed well against a highly ranked team. Halfway through the second set, the coach of the opposing team interrupted the match and accused Arabelle’s sign language interpreter of cheating and distracting his players. His complaints resulted in the prompt removal of the interpreter. Arabelle’s team quickly lost the match, primarily due to her inability to communicate with her partner. These are just a few examples of some of the challenges faced as a Black deaf female high school student. Arabelle felt that if she had been white female or male, teachers, and coaches might have responded to her differently. As in the case of the umpire claiming Serena Williams was cheating in the 2018 U.S. Open, the penalties imposed were much higher than for men tennis players. Furthermore, as a Black woman, she has always had her body scrutinized. While these challenges Arabelle experienced are not unique to Black deaf high school girls, they likely experience more discrimination due to the intersections of race, gender, and disability/deafness. Through the years, it has become apparent that many of the significant challenges in her life and in the lives of other Black deaf women I have connected with on both personal and professional levels experiences are based on their intersecting marginalized identities.

Social Construction of Black Deaf Women

Black women

The lives and bodies of Black women are inherently politicalized and constantly scrutinized (Carby, 1992; Chapple, Jacinto, Harris-Jackson, & Vance, 2017; Hobson, 2003; Yancy, 2016). Harris-Perry (2011) notes, “Black women in America have always had to wrestle with derogatory assumptions about their character and identity…assumptions that shape the social world that Black women must accommodate or resist” (p. 5). Within popular culture and media in particular, Black women have existed primarily as negative stereotypes illustrated through the following three lenses: Mammies, Jezebels, and Sapphires (Collins, 2000; Harris-Perry, 2011). These Black female epitomes originated in slavery and continue to proliferate today. Black American slaves were socially constructed as property (chattel) and not as human beings to demonstrate how social constructions have been used in history to facilitate cultural imperialism (Williams, 1991).

Black women have the distinction of being the only group whose identity is “socialized out of existence” and “are rarely recognized as a group separate and distinct from Black men or as a present part of the larger group ‘women’ in this culture” (Hooks, 1981, p. 7). This is the result of negative imagery and distortions associated with the Black female body which is continuously disseminated and reinforced through media, literature, and research (Chapple et al., 2017; Collins, 1998, 2000). According to Collins (2000), the normalization of negative images and stereotypes of Black women can create lasting adverse effects in their lives, these skewed generalizations can also render Black women invisible. The invisibility of Black women has been written about in scholarship for a long time (Cooper, 1988; A. Davis, 1981; Hooks, 1981, King, 1988; Truth, 1851/2001). Invisibility can be defined as an absence of, erroneous representations of, a lack of individuation, or a lack of differentiation of an oppressed group, which is often the case for Black women (Fryberg & Townsend, 2008). In scholarship, the belief that all women are white, and all Blacks are men, can cause Black women to experience a type of intersectional invisibility by which they are generally “unnoticed” and “unheard” in most spaces, especially in relation to white women and Black men (Hull, Scott, & Smith, 1982; Sesko & Biernat, 2010). Jordan-Zachery (2007) describes her identity as a Black woman as follows:

When you look at me, what do you see: a woman who is Black or a Black woman? In my eyes, this is a moot question since my blackness cannot be separated from my womaness. In fact, I am not sure if I want them to be separated. What I want is for individuals not to use my social location to justify punishing me or omitting me from the structures and practices of society. Sometimes, my identity is like a “marble” cake, in that my blackness is mixed intricately with my womaness and therefore cannot be separated or unlocked. (p. 261)

There is a relentless struggle for Black women to be seen, acknowledged as legitimate and to take control of the narrative of our lives. In the words of Lorde (1984), “if we do not define ourselves, we will be defined by others—for their use and to our detriment” (p. 45). Despite historical mistreatment of Black American women, the propensity to survive and the resilient nature of Black women is unwavering (Collins, 2000; Harris-Perry, 2011).

Deaf women

Deaf individuals have historically been characterized as deaf and dumb and are often thought to be mute even though most deaf individuals are verbal (Branson & Miller, 2002). Deaf individuals are often referred to as hearing impaired even though the Deaf community does not approve of this characterization, as it perpetuates the stereotype that deaf individuals are broken, in need of repair and inferior to the hearing majority population (Padden & Humphries, 2005). Consistent with these false stereotypes, most research conducted with the Deaf community takes a glass half empty approach focusing solely on their “inability to hear” and the challenges associated with being a deaf individual in our society. This approach ignores the positive aspects and diversity of the Deaf community (Holcomb, 2013). Further, research conducted on deaf persons are taken from the medical model that views disability as a pathology or takes the position that all deaf people are white, straight, and male (Fernandes & Myers, 2009; Smith & Bienvenu, 2007). This can lead to the assumption that the Deaf community is a homogenous community, share similar views, and have the same interests and identical struggles from a deficit perspective. In reality, the Deaf community is composed of a variety of racial, ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, and educational backgrounds (Leigh, 2012). Deaf individuals choose to identify and express their racial identities, their sexuality, and gender in a myriad of ways (Moreman & Briones, 2018) and have a variety of political views matching their upbringing and individual experiences (Wardle, 2017).

Deaf women as a population are rarely discussed outside of the larger deaf community. Being a deaf woman sometimes requires the individual to choose to wear the identity of being deaf or being a woman. Furthermore, scholarship on deaf women tends to exclude the intersection of race and ethnicity. For instance, Najarian’s (2009) research on the educational experiences and self-identity of college educated deaf women consisted of only women who were identified as white except for one Jewish-identified woman. In another study on deaf women’s perceptions and experiences of the health-care system, 84% of reported respondents were white. There was no mention of the racial makeup of the remaining 16% (Steinberg, Wiggins, Barmada, & Sullivan, 2004). In a study on the identity development of deaf adolescent girls, the topic of race appears to be ignored or excluded by the author who argues, “the overlay of their identities matters as it doubly places them in the cracks of two dominant worlds” (Brueggemann, 2009, p. 83). This analysis fails to take into consideration racial differences within the Deaf community, which perpetuates the assumption that whiteness is the unmarked category and thus, naturalized. These studies and others often highlight some of the intersectional challenges that deaf women face but tend to ignore other marginalized identities.

Black deaf women

Black Deaf women are a uniquely complex population in that the intersection of race, gender, and deafness offers notable challenges as well as exceptional strengths. Many of these strengths and challenges often go unnoticed by other populations. As Mitchell (2006) explains, “I live in the movements or spaces between these states of invisibility and visibility and/or femaleness, deafness, and blackness. The fact that they construct and inform each other is never critically examined” (p. 137). As previously stated, Black deaf women are rarely included in disability scholarship and when they are, only one or two of their three identities (Black, deaf, or female) are considered (Aramburo & Lucas, 2000; James & Woll, 2004; Obasi, 2014; Vernon, 1999).

Black deaf women as a population have been omitted from most institutional structures in society, often feeling forced to assimilate. They often report feeling misunderstood or not taken seriously by hearing members of the Black community and white members of the Deaf community, which can lead to greater invisibility and further marginalization of the population (Chapple, 2012). Black deaf women often report feeling pressured to choose between their blackness and deafness in order to be accepted within either the Black or Deaf communities. Affirming this premise, Mitchell (2006) states, “my experiences of being African American, female, and deaf manifested like a flashcard. The visibility or invisibility of one of these identities usually incites the visibility or invisibility of the others” (p. 137). Adding to the challenge is the emphasis placed on communication by both groups (Corbett, 2003). Within the Deaf community, deafness is often considered of primary importance relegating other identities (i.e., race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation) into inferior positions, as focusing on other identities can shift the focus away from the empowerment of the Deaf community (Valentine, 1996). To make the case for BDF, existing social theories relevant to the intersectional identity of Black deaf women will now be considered.

Theoretical Foundations for BDF

Critical race feminism

Critical race feminism seeks to deepen the analysis of critical race theory to be more inclusive of gender (Berry, 2010). Even though critical race theory and traditional feminism developed to theorize from the perspectives of the marginalized and oppressed individual or group, at times, they fail to reach their goal of inclusivity by ignoring other marginalized identities like disabilities (Asch, 2004). Bridging race and gender, critical race feminism recognizes that no woman is ever only a woman, she occupies multiple social locations and cultural identity categories while navigating gender (Spelman, 1988). We saw this universalism of women repeatedly highlighted in social media covering protests by various political activists and social protest groups promoting social justice after the election of Donald Trump. For instance, the Women’s March on Washington (as well as sister marches) held on January 21, 2017, as well as subsequent women’s marches held on January 20, 2018, were widely criticized as being exclusive of women of color, transgender women, and persons with disabilities (Dupuy, 2017; Willits, 2017). The exclusion of these groups is especially relevant given the Women March on Washington’s mission, which sought to highlight the immediate challenges Donald Trump posed in his divisive positions against women; immigrants; persons of color; persons with disability; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual individuals; and other certain religious groups (Brewer & Dundes, 2018).

Black deaf women often face the challenging reality of marginalization or invisibility which makes navigating the world difficult at times. The limitation of critical race feminism is that Black feminists have not historically grappled with disability, possibly for two reasons: (1) we often tell stories from our positions and the perspectives of those closest to us and (2) the stark reality of the invisibility of persons with disabilities (or in this case in deaf women) can at times extend to critical race feminists. During my doctoral studies, I was often interrogated regarding my interest in studying Black deaf women, not because this population should not be researched, but rather this population was unknown to them. Most people I spoke to were genuinely intrigued with the topic but expressed concerned that I could not locate a large enough sample to complete my dissertation.

During a recent conversation with Arabelle, she expressed growing concerns about her ability to find employment as a social worker, despite having earned a master’s degree in social work. Her primary concern was communicating with hearing clients; however, she also feared being overlooked, feeling invisible, or not being taken seriously because she is a Black deaf woman. Arabelle recalled some of the challenges she endured during her last year of graduate school. The first obstacle was obtaining an internship for her clinical year. During her first year, she interned at a school for the deaf but wanted a different experience for the clinical year. Prior to the start of the school year, she contacted the social work field office to inquire about locating a place to complete her required clinical year internship. She was instructed by the director to look through the internship listings and contact agencies to schedule interviews. Arabelle became discouraged after contacting approximately seven agencies and meeting resistance. Each agency repeatedly asked a variety of questions and registered concerns about her ability to communicate with clients and agency staff. Arabelle experienced the interviews as microaggressions based largely on racism and ableism. Arabelle eventually found an internship placement outside of her preferred area of interest. The second obstacle occurred when the university changed her class schedule without her knowledge during her final semester in the program. Arabelle learned that her classes had been changed when submitting an assignment using the online submission link connected to the class. After contacting school administration, she learned that one of her classes was held in a classroom that exceeded the fire code capacity because of her two sign language interpreters. As a result, her schedule was rearranged without informing her or the sign language interpreters. The school officials assumed that changing her schedule did not matter. After several e-mails and phone calls, she was reenrolled in her original classes. The problem was solved by relocating the class that exceeded the fire code capacity to a larger room. It is impossible to know whether the reason for the discrimination Arabelle experienced was due to audism or racism or sexism or a combination of all three. On the surface, it would appear that Arabelle’s deaf identity was more salient than the others in this social situation. That said, the case can be made that Arabelle, compared to nondisabled Black females, and white deaf females, likely experienced more discrimination due to the intersection of race, gender, and disability/deafness (McGee, 2014).

Traditional disability studies

Emerging as an interdisciplinary field in the 1980s, traditional disability studies examined the social construction of the disabled body and systematic social discourse that determines how persons with disability and their behaviors are labeled, valued, represented, and treated (Schalk, 2018). In the beginning, the field was dominated by scholarship on white male bodies with physical disabilities and the experiences of women and people of color with disabilities were largely ignored or considered to be all the same (Kafer, 2013). This singular focus led to the development of additional theoretical frameworks that attempted to address the lived experiences of disabled people more fully. Bell (2006) observed the absence of people of color in disability studies, which he referred to as “whitewashing” disability history, ontology, and phenomenology in research and literature (p. 275). Disability scholarship has generally excluded racial minorities, unless using a deficit perspective to address the oppression of people of color with disabilities (Artiles, 2013).

Feminist disability theory

Feminist disability theory placed gender in conversation with disabilities, as a way to advance toward a more inclusive view of disabilities and away from centering the white and male view and the medical model (Gerschick, 2000). Feminist disability theory seeks to foster an understanding of ability as a critical category of scholarly analysis and to more fully integrate feminists’ scholarship to include persons with disabilities (Garland-Thomson, 2005). Early inclusion of gender in disability studies tended to categorize disabled women as abnormal and inferior to nondisabled women in almost every area (Wendell, 1996). Women with disabilities encounter the intersection of ableism and sexism while often being denied the normative standards of beauty and femininity. Women with disabilities are thought to be asexual, unfit to reproduce, dependent on others, and generally removed from the domain of true womanhood (Fine & Asch, 1988). Garland-Thomson (2002) asserts:

…feminist disability approach fosters complex understandings of the cultural history of the body…[to address] such broad feminist concerns as the unity of the category woman, the status of the lived body, the politics of appearance, the medicalization of the body, the privilege of normalcy, multiculturalism, sexuality, the social construction of identity, and the commitment to integration. (pp. 3, 4)

Although feminist disability theory addresses the intersection of gender and disability, it often fails to address issues of race and culture as well as other marginalized identities and does not center the experiences of women of color with disabilities or Black deaf women.

In response to the continued invisibility of people of color with disabilities, a number of movements have come into being, such as #disabilitytoowhite, a hashtag created by Vilissa Thompson, a social worker and founder of Ramp Your Voice! an organization that advocates for the inclusion and acceptance of all persons with disabilities. The hashtag was created to highlight the invisibility of people of color in discussions surrounding disability. Thompson uses the hashtag to bring greater awareness of issues that plague Black women with disabilities. Other vehicles for advocacy highlighting the needs of women of color with disabilities are #GetWokeADA26 and Disability Justice. While these types of campaigns bring awareness of inclusion, they may not necessarily translate into positive change in the lives of these women.

Critical deaf studies

Critical deaf studies “DeafCrit” serves as a method to label, describe, and research discrimination against deaf persons as similar to other types of discrimination (i.e., racism, sexism, heterosexism, or ableism; Gertz, 2003, 2008). DeafCrit focuses primarily on fighting audism and challenging the belief that deafness implies an imperfect or damaged person who needs repair (Ladd, 2008). The major limitation of DeafCrit is the exclusion of other marginalized identities such as race, class, gender, or sexual orientation in its analysis of deafness. To conceptualize a multidimensional analysis that includes deafness, Sheridan (2001) argues for an intersectional approach to deaf studies that addresses issues concerning the position of deaf women and recognizing the marginalization and oppression deaf women face in the areas of education, health care, mental health, and employment when confronted with sexism and audism simultaneously. Sheridan emphasizes that the intersection of gender and deafness can offer unique challenges to the success of deaf women in social institutions. Sheridan’s analysis situates deafness with gender but like others in the field, she fails to include a racialized analysis.

Critical race disability studies

In response to the absence of race in critical deaf studies, theorists and researchers turn to examining the intersection of race and disability as well as other aspects of identity in relation to disability. Annamma, Connor, and Ferri (2013) introduced dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit) as a theoretical framework that combines aspects of critical race theory with disability studies to incorporate “a dual analysis of race and ability” (p. 1). Cramer and Plummer (2009) illustrate the use of intersectionality as a conceptual framework to contextualize the behavior of women experiencing intimate partner violence who seek assistance. Using two case examples, they illustrate the intersection of class, race, gender, immigration status, sexual orientation, and disability operating when women seek help with intimate partner violence. Shaw, Chan, and McMahon (2012) discuss the intersections of disability, age, race, and gender with respect to disability harassment claims. Another example is Peterson’s (2009) use of intersectionality to explore the educational experiences of African American women with disabilities.

Ribet (2010) has been critical of some attempts to gender disability to create a “disability intersectionality” by simply adding the category of disability to other marginalized identities. She states:

…discussions of the intersection of categories such as gender and disability usually do not venture far beyond a basic acknowledgement of compounded vulnerability, based on an “additive” conception of subordination in which vulnerability + vulnerability = lots and lots of bad events and consequences for women (and sometimes as it’s framed, girls) with disabilities. (p. 39)

Erevelles and Minear (2010) outline the three types of intersectional frameworks (e.g., anticategorical, intracategorical, and constitutive approaches) used in scholarship to situate race and disability (p. 127). They outline ways that intersectionality can be utilized in combination with both critical race feminism and disability studies to examine the experiences of women of color with disabilities. Their analysis emphasizes the ways individuals at the intersection of race, class, gender, and disability are classified as “(no) bodies” by social institutions (p. 128, 129). BDF builds on Erevelles and Minear’s argument, as well as other conceptualization of race and disability introduced by Annamma et al. (2013), Cramer and Plummer (2009), Pearson (2009), Ribet (2010), and Shaw et al. (2012) among others.

Toward a theory of BDF

The framework of BDF seeks to offer an alternative perspective to existing theories by combining DisCrit with three overlapping dimensions of intersectionality, which are the application of an intersectional framework, the theoretical paradigm of intersectionality, and the political interventions that deploy an intersectional lens (Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013, p. 785). As Collins (2000) states, “intersectional paradigms remind us that oppression cannot be reduced to one fundamental type, and that oppressions work together in producing injustice” (p. 18). Critical race feminism, feminist disability theory, and critical deaf studies each offer a distinctive perspective that can be useful to understand the complex reality of the lived experiences of Black deaf women. Each theory focuses on challenges situated with one or two identity(ies), causing the analysis to stop short of embracing all aspects of identity comprehensively. Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall (2013) discuss the need to further elaborate intersectionality’s theoretical and practical content through collaborative efforts across disciplines (p. 807). Further, Carastathis (2014) asks theorists to continue to engage intersectionality to challenge the rigor, integrity, and attentiveness to the original theoretical and political aims of the theory (p. 312). The versatility of intersectionality is its ability to be used in all areas of research, scholarship, and practice to examine patterns of social injustice and generate social justice action. The goal of social justice is full inclusion and equitable participation of all individuals regardless of their group identity or social status in all areas of society.

Taking an intersectional and critical race approach that builds on the tenets of DisCrit (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013) and promotes principals of social justice, I propose the following five tenets of BDF:

BDF interrogates marginalized intersectional oppression and the impact that these identities have on the lived experiences of being Black, deaf, and female.

BDF is interested in the ways structural inequalities and political spheres impact intersectional identities and a Black deaf feminist standpoint at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels.

BDF highlights the intersectional lived experiences of Black, deaf women in the context of social research.

BDF acknowledges social constructions of race, gender, and deafness and resists the normalization of whiteness, maleness, and ableism including speaking ability.

BDF recognizes the compounding effects of intersecting identities while also recognizing the positionality that one aspect of identity may be more central than others at any moment in space, place, and time.

The basis for a Black deaf feminist framework is not to negate existing social theories but rather to build an intersectional approach that includes marginalized groups previously absent and invisible in mainstream scholarship.

Discussion and Conclusion

The creation of a BDF seeks to highlight the lived experiences of Black deaf women by introducing a framework that is centered on their experiences and acknowledges their unique positionality. This theory advances social justice principals by viewing them as the intersectional embodiment of racialized, gendered, and differently abled bodies (Mitchell, 2006; Romero, 2018).

Each of the theoretical perspectives outlined in the article is advantageous for considering one or two dimensions of Black deaf women’s intersectional identities. Nonetheless, if we further delineate the intersectional identity of Black deaf women, it becomes a challenge to situate their entire personhood in our society. Some Black feminists’ scholars suggest that we reclaim intersectionality as a way of keeping Black women at the forefront when they are telling the stories of their lived experiences (Alexander-Floyd, 2012; Cho et al., 2013; Jordan-Zachery, 2013). Further, I invite Black deaf female scholars and researchers to engage with these tenets, to see whether these tenets resonate, or perhaps suggest further expansion. Which identities become more salient in certain social contexts, race, gender, or deafness? What happens when the identities converge simultaneously? What if there are more than three marginalized identities? In agreement with Mehrotra (2010), “feminist social work scholars need to develop and use a continuum of different theorizations of intersectionality, with various epistemological bases, that can be strategically applied, depending on the goals of a particular project or practice context” (p. 418). Additionally, “having frameworks that include the voices of diverse populations are essential for the field of social work and others” (Walton & Oyewuwo-Gassikia, 2017, p. 471). This is where BDF seeks to begin, in the gap of the triumvirate or quadrumvirate marginalized identities.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Reshawna L. Chapple

Note

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