“Blackness, Blood, and Borders
” Anti-Black Racism in Disabled Children’s Health Care Spaces as Epistemic Violence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22124133 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Fiona J Moola (0000-0003-4904-7304), Fiona Moola (0000-0001-9803-8514), K E Johnson, Kathia Johnson, Nivatha Moothathamby (0000-0003-1222-6157) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 74-88 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Childhood Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2371-4107 • E-ISSN: 2371-4115 |
| Publisher | University of Victoria Libraries (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.18357/jcs512202621683 |
| OpenAlex | W7160413729 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 31 |
The lives, selves, and social worlds of racialized disabled children and their parents have been hidden and silenced under the weight of grand metanarratives about the white disabled child. In this way, the centrality of the white disabled Eurocentric child is a symbolic violence that has erased the lives of other children, especially Black children and their families. In this qualitative interpretive study, we utilized a theoretically informed approach to explore the parenting journeys of Black parents who care for disabled children. We found that anti-Black racism, as symbolic violence, was constituted by health care narratives about biological determinism. Health systems also symbolically violated the lives of Black mothers through practices of bodily control and surveillance, and the wisdom and generational knowledge of Black mothers as experts on their children’s lives was erased through the practice of being rendered incompetent. Implications: Following calls by Black feminists, we suggest that scholars, theorists, and clinicians must theoretically and empirically center the lives of Black mothers with disabled children while recognizing the grave harms of anti-Black racism in children’s hospital spaces
Ableism · Centrality · Disability studies · Health care · Narrative · Qualitative research · Racism · Social worlds · Critical Race Theory in Education · Disability Rights and Representation · Family and Disability Support Research
Thematic Analysis
“I rewrote their story and you can, too”
Black Mothering Legacies
Black Disability Politics
The Sage Dictionary of Social Research Methods
Black feminist theory in maternal health research
(Self-) Reflection / Reflexivity in Sensitive, Qualitative Research
Decolonizing African Studies
They can't be believed
On Becoming a Qualitative Researcher
Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing
Methodological Pluralism and Mixed Methodology to Strengthen Community Psychology Research
The Devil and the One Drop Rule
Work in the Intersections
If You're Half Black, You're Just Black
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |