Transcript for Ep 39 with Dr. Sana Rizvi

00:00:00.000

Asalaam Alaykum.

You're listening to 'She Speaks: Academic Muslimahs'.

Today we're talking to Dr.Sana Rizvi about our fresh off the press book called "Undoing Whiteness and Disability Studies: The Special Education System and British-South Asian Mothers"

that just came out with Palgrave Macmillan. She's interested in ethical and feminist qualitative research methodologies and researching the experiences of minoritized communities at

the intersection of racism, ableism and Islamophobia in the UK. She's a senior lecturer in Education in Early Childhood Studies at University of Liverpool.

00:00:35.010

Before we begin, though, just a reminder: please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. And of course, share this episode with friends and family. Now let's turn to Dr. Rizvi.

00:00:44.666

She Speaks: Academic Muslimahs podcast theme music

00:01:03.088

SF: As salaam Alaykum Sana

00:01:05.330

SR: Walaykum salaam Saba, how are you?

SF: Alhamdulillah, How are you?

SR: I'm good, I'm good, Alhamdullilah.

SF: I know you've been on the podcast few times before, but we've never really talked about your scholarship before this and I'm going to launch right straight into it.

Congratulations on your new book. I wanted to ask, how did you even get into this project to begin with? What made you think about focusing on British-South Asian mothers

of children with disability?

00:01:29.007

SR: It started with my Masters research, 11 years ago, where I was looking at home-school relationships and an with minority context and with parents with disabled children in a special school and a lot of the findings from that research, or I would say reflections from conducting that

research made me realize how there was an absolute lack of intersectional analysis, and not only did it not do justice to the experiences understanding

experiences of, I think minority parents, but it also reinforced a lot of stereotypes about ethnic minorities.

00:02:04.639

SF: Yeah, so I saw this quote right at the beginning of your book and I really it really touched me because it kind of.

Seemed like the kind of experiences that a lot of us have and the quote is this lady you're talking

to this lady and she says to you, she says:

00:02:22.50

"It's the parent from Bangladeshi backgrounds more than any other community. We need to engage them more, but it appears they're just indifferent.

We've tried coffee mornings, parent groups. I mean, they just don't want to attend any of that. I personally think it's because they're women,

They're shut up in their houses, aren't they? They're oppressed,they need to get out of their houses. Living with with large families with

their in-laws and all their relatives. Where's the privacy? And you know, they're all related. Get into trouble for saying this, but we all know that they have babies with disabilities. I can't understand how you can marry your cousin and live with his entire family.

where is romance in that?"

00:03:02.163

SF: So, I saw this quote and it kind of reminded me of so many interactions we have within academia about, about our own communities and when we're

researching our own communities and we run into these interaction with the dominant people who are dominantly located. I wanted to ask why did you decide

to include this interaction? I wanted to ask, why did you decide to include this interaction? Like what's the significance of this?

00:03:25.160

SR: Well, as a British Pakistani I I think when I when she said this to me this is a pastoral manager whose job it is to actually foster, cultivate relationships with ethnic minority parents. OK,so it's her job description to understand and work with families and parents of disabled children.

00:03:42.720

Now imagine if she's seeing all of this there is. I mean this is an interesting point of reflection that even though I am saying that there is a lack of intersectional analysis in understanding experiences. There's also a very, very quick rush to judge and reduce our experiences to single issues without even going further and understanding. Hang on a minute. What am I saying? And there was this lazy assumption that large families could only be seen as crowded. Rating, privacy and quality of one's personal life in that single encounter. She had managed to cluster labels such as oppressed, large families, cousin marriages, and lack of romance to define your local British-South Asian community. And actually, when I pointed out to her that. I'm actually also married to my second cousin and I also live in a joint family.

00:04:32.930

It is at that point. She was, huh, like she gave this very awkward laugh and I gave a very awkward laugh too, because this was my first interaction 11 years ago into this country and I really wanted to progress with my dissertation and she was that in many ways that gatekeeper, you know.

00:04:51.13

So I had to navigate this very carefully and say, actually, we don't get into each other's faces. There is privacy and there is romance. But as I had, you know,

headed back to my car,

00:05:02.070

I was so angry and furious because it didn't give me that it she didn't give me that moment to come back at her and to say what you are saying implies a very, very you're stereotyping experiences, but also let me explain to you why we are living in like these large joint family systems where we are, you know, living in crowded homes. It's because we are not afforded ownerships. It's because the housing sector is institutionally racist. British-Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are not homeowners, majority of them, and they have to live with these within joint families because that is their support system. That is actually their opportunity to save up and actually own homes in future. So, you know, there was this kind of an assumption that, that was coming with it.

So I chose this reflection because it's an interesting stereotype but it's so prevalent wherever I've gone people always start. With that of, what's

the stereotype? What is that they know about us and that they can they think this is an entry point into a conversation or where we would share a middle ground,

but it's actually not and I, and I then have to go into this mini crash course of explaining? Where are they wrong?

00:06:14.782

SF: Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's it's kind of micro-aggressive to encounter these kinds of interactions so often. I did see that in, in one of your chapters,

I think it's chapter three, you talk about mothering within a Muslim context, and I bet that was a difficult chapter to write because having had so many interactions with people who essentialize your religion, it's kind of difficult then to write from within the religion. But one of the quotes that you use, because you interview these mothers and you use your quotations throughout the book, which I found quite enlightening, and one of the mothers says, she says, quote, "it was so emotional for us when he, Ahmed, was born, we asked why us? Why him? You go through that, but again, that, that was what was meant to be. That's God's way. So God tests people in different ways, and this is a test. So religiously we go down that route and it makes it a bit easier for us." So you use this quotation to illustrate

the way that this mother is making making sense of her experiences, in what way did you see how people experiences with their faith with with Islam shaped their view on disability?

00:07:29.653

SR: I think this is an interesting and complex issue and we have to understand that it intersects with ableism or it intersects with patriarchal structures that exist.

Um, it also intersects with, uh, you know, how homeschool literature has been approached with regards to ethnic minority parents? There's also another thing which people need to understand is that in Iran, wealth and children are constantly used to remind parents to reflect on their everyday experiences and to be better people.

So when Quran mentions and wealth and your children are a way of improving yourself, it immediately feeds into this discourse as well. The mothers in this study I used this

code because it's quite interesting. It's very easy to fit this into there.

00:08:21.010

It's very easy to fit this into a Kuebler Ross model of, you know, grief. The five stages of grief and where this fits in quickly. You know he's going through

this denial process. The next step should be surely this and it's not. In this case, I mean, the mothers that I've interviewed, they do not identify with the

Kuebler Ross model and instead they adopt an alternative trajectory to explain their experiences which was set within a religious narrative of successfully

overcoming divine test of being content with God's will. Interestingly, you know, these mothers can express grief, they can express anger, they can express

joy and they can express, um you know, different emotions at different points in their life and go back and forth.

00:09:00.870

There's no linearity as far as, you know, raising or experiencing or mothering is concerned. And this is something that people need to understand

that it again feeds back into this ablest discourse of um I mean, I've read literature around this of the loss of the perfect child and how the Kuebler Ross

model helps us to understand this. And I think when it comes to Muslim mothers, it's this is not how we should be understanding their experiences. It's perfectly,

I think, OK for us to think that mothers are having, have this very honest and open relationship where they can express grievances with the God, where they

can express anger with God, where they can express joy with God, because that is not just their faith, it is acting as their support system. It's almost like they're

confident I don't want to use the word confident, but it is about being that having that kind of caring and honest relationship, and that's what I noticed with the mothers

that I was interviewing.

00:09:59.820

SF: Yeah, I mean, religion is just such a personal and integrated topic. I love the way that you dealt with it in explaining the experiences of

the mothers that you interviewed. You also addressed sexual rights of children and the ways that mothering impacts them. Could you elaborate

on that a little bit? Or maybe give us an example and also talk about Our labor for mother is tide in with sexual rights.

00:10:27.680

SR: So this again we have to understand that whatever sexual rights and sexual agency we're talking about, it has to be understood in the broader

context of living in a welfare state that is, you know, being subjected to a policies living in a patriarchal state. When we talk about giving children

and or discussing their sexual rights and agency, it's a difficult topic as it is for any parent to discuss.

00:10:53.360

But when, when we're talking about it from a religious context, we have to understand, uh, that there is an element of there is internal internalized ableism.

00:11:04.660

Let me expand on this. When we talk, for instance, the mother said I talked to, they were few of them discussed that oh it's sex education is as Muslims, we don't,

we don't talk about this in our families and, and actually it would be, you know, it's pointless because our child would not be able to comprehend that.

Or that you know when our child is being allowed to explore sexual, their sexuality in in educational settings? For instance, if they're ************ and

teachers allowing that by putting them in a, in a room so that they're OK with it, the Muslim mothers were like, no, we do not allow this.

00:11:41.810

Now this is quite interesting because it is a very difficult topic to talk. To Muslims about because as it is, we don't talk about sexuality so openly right?

00:11:53.190

But when we're talking in terms of disabled children, we have to understand that we might not allow it for able bodied children as well. But the fact that able bodied

children can explore sexual agency can explore their sexuality without their parents finding it out.

00:12:08.850

There there there is that element that there is that acknowledgement that we have to make that we cannot infantilize, that we cannot internally fall to these

ableist practices where we infantilize or desexualize disabled children in the process of saying, oh this is not. And mind you, we're talking about Islam does

not prohibit sex education. There's literally there's nowhere written that it's prohibited.

00:12:31.910

You have to talk about sex education, but you have to understand that a lot of these interpretations have been constructed within a cultural context, so there is.

00:12:40.044

It feeds into that cultural patriarchy kind of thing. It's not to do with religion itself, but it is to do with cultural patriarchy of how certain topics cannot

be discussed, right? So again, when we're talking about sexual sexuality, sexual rights, we have to understand that some of the emotions or some of the views that mothers

expressed did fall into that infantilize. And we have to acknowledge that at some point these children are, have sexuality. They are not desexualized. You cannot say that

it will go above their heads if we talk about sex, sex, education. Or we don't allow this well.

00:13:14.560

Of course you don't allow this for your disabled children as well As for your able bodied children, but the fact that you're able bodied child can explore this. And you're

able to use that.

00:13:24.090

You're able to monitor and surveil your disabled kid type for them. Whether they engage in sexual activity. I think that is controlling in many ways. That is, depriving them

of sexual agency. So this is a very difficult topic.

00:13:36.810

It's not an easy topic to discuss within a Muslim context, and I do understand that. The other thing which I thought it intersects with is gender, and this is with regards

to reproductive rights. This is with regards to you know autonomy and respect and dignity that we can afford. When we talk about disabled people, disabled individuals going through

forced categorisation or forced sterilization or giving them force contraceptives, what are we talking about here we are talking about? We're depriving them we are actually

removing their reproductive rights. We're removing their body bodily autonomy on issues that actually are directly relate to them, and but at the same time, we have to realize that.

00:14:22.640

The person who's making it may not be the most influential. May not be the person who has the most choice available. Perhaps this is the only choice available. So when we're talking about,

I mean there were mothers who said we don't have a child or we don't have a daughter right now we don't have a daughter, so we don't have to worry about

periods we don't have to worry about changing them every month, and we have seen how in our neighborhoods that mothers have taken a step where they are giving contraceptives so that the care is

managed and this is an important issue because who is doing the care for their disabled children?

00:14:55.283

It's not the state because there's a cut back on services. It's not the schools, it's the mothers who are being assigned this caring role, which is not paid.

00:15:04.698

And then again they're being put in a position they may not actually approve of, you know, these practices, but they have to as carers. So this is quite very delicate and

a very very conflicting position to be in because you're not the person with the choice in power to make those decisions. You're operating within a neoliberal. Welfare state that's cut back on

services that places the burden on mothers to do all the caring work that places them and still blames them for their pairing. Dysfunctional and yet, you are the first person that you

can blame them is the mothers. It's not the state that's cut back on the services. It's not the institutions that are depriving rights of disabled people to dignity to explore their

reproductive agency and all that. But no. So I think this is something that has to be explored further. I'm not saying in this chapter, I was mainly expanding on this that this needs

to be explored within a Muslim context.

00:16:01.470

This needs to be explored further in a South Asian context. Mainstream Islam does not explicitly prohibits sex education. However, religious interpretation of most mothers in the

current study disapproved fixed posing their child to sex education and that indicates that religion and sexual rights are both enacted within a cultural framework. A cultural

patriarchal framework.

00:16:22.350

And this was also enmeshed with their religious identities, which, disapproves of public display of sexuality and sexual experiences. So when we are talking about this,

00:16:32.620

I think one of the things going forward is how do we have this discourse where we include children and, and, and young people, disabled children, and young people?

00:16:43.820

Conversations with parents able bodied parents with regards to how sexuality can be explored, how can they express their gender, right? Their freedom?

00:16:53.600

SF: This kind of ties in right with my next question, 'cause you speak about how the culture is kind of intermeshed into it, or one of the

terms that you introduced in the book is cultural bubbles. What is a cultural bubble and how does it, or in what ways does it protect and

expose mothers within their communities?

00:17:13.144

SR: So I define a cultural bubble as a small but meaningful space which represents people and cultural symbols that most closely reflect intercategorical

positioning and values. It's, it's not talking about cultural similarity here. Other people who wanna lines with in terms of religiosity, educational

background, family values, support, language and so forth. And people can belong to different cultural bubbles and how I thought about this is because I,

I in the process of talking to mothers.

00:17:44.370

I realized that they're not only being. Excluded from formal spaces or and informal spaces such as cultural community centers, because they're ableist

they're not inclusive.

00:17:55.070

I realized that mothers were quite agentic in that process that once they realized the spaces that they were being excluded from it, they quickly formed

their own networks. They quickly formed their own bubbles. They quickly formed, you know, their own network of people or, or spaces that they, you know that they

associate as inclusive and that is really important for us to understand that in terms of seeking support in terms of seeking services and provisions in terms of

feeling at home in terms of exposing their child to their values. This is really important because once a mother realizes that my local mosque, for instance,

does not have a staircase, not have a lift or does not have an inclusive atmosphere and my child and myself are not welcome, she's not going to just stay at home.

She's going to find a space that actually provides that kind of meaningful spiritual experience to her, and it might be that she finds it in the in the house of her friends.

00:18:54.670

So for instance, a lot of these mothers used to gather around, um, in someone's home and they would practice yoga or talk. And, and it was these women belonged to

very different social positionings, but yet they were able to form these this inclusive space on their own, and it was not based on cultural similarity,

if you were to strictly say. But it was based on inclusiveness.

00:19:18.703

SF: Now, can a person belong to conflicting cultural bubbles or cultural bubbles with conflicting values?

SR: Yes, I think. We all do that. We don't at all. Our circles don't agree on the same value, so I think it's unfair to expect mothers to do the same.

If you feel that you are attending, let's say a space, a cultural Community Center that is able to offer your child weekends, cultural experience.

But at the same time you realize that hang on a minute. Some of their positioning is quite different to yours. So for instance, in terms of dress, for instance.

00:19:57.064

A lot of mothers didn't dress in, in traditional put the shalwar but they were going into community centers where there was there was, there was a heavy

representation of women wearing very eastern wear, but these mothers are also Pakistanis who were coming in jeans. But the reason why they were going in

was because they were still able to connect. Their child was still able to have that inclusive experience and I think this is quite interesting because when

we as parents act and make judgments about where our child will be accepted, we are willing to negotiate. We're willing to be part of circles. We're willing to be

00:20:29.648

part of networks that offer our child something. We can, we can take that we can sort of incur the cost of it being non-inclusive in some ways,

but the overall benefit that it offers to our child, that sort of. Colors experience.

00:20:45.420

SF: So Speaking of, you know, women wearing different clothings and different cultural donning, different cultural symbols. Did you see a difference

in the uptake and critique of the system when it comes to 1st and 2nd generation immigrant mothers? And by the way, I loved, I loved your nod to

what's his face? Riz Ahmed 'cause you your chapters called

00:21:10.920

SR: Englistan and Citizenship?

00:21:12.773

SF: Yes, your chapters called Englistan and Citizenship and actually enjoy that particular song. I think it's called the song is called Englitan,

and I'm sure he's not the first person who came up with that term but, uh, but I do enjoy that song of his and so I enjoyed that nod to that term.

But did you see a difference when it came to how people critique the system depending on whether they were first generation immigrants or second

generation immigrants.

00:21:39.640

SR: I think, So, I had a combination of first generation and 2nd generation mothers that I talked to. There is no clear cut distinction when we talk about British-born mothers versus first generation mothers. If you're talking about you know this is how the literature actually makes it out to be. It reduces them to who's passive and who's, who's, who's more agent agentic in that process. And I again think this actually reduces the whole debate. I think when you're talking about first generation and 2nd generation mothers, you have to talk about in the context of immigration policies that have happened over the last 10 years. You have to talk about all the social and wider social inequality's that that affect these families.

So when we talk about British-born mothers, their grievances were far more grounded in the belief that they were well within their rights as citizens to question and express grievances about state services their families had received without fear of being perceived as ungrateful. And this is so important because when you are first, I've been through that where I'm a first generation mother and until I had received my citizenship I was so hesitant to voice grievances or complaints with, with the health care system or the education system that my child was exposed to, and when I was talking to 1st generation mothers, it's not that they, that they don't have grievances. It's because they, they know the very policies that, you know, because their, they have a transitionary status,

they, they're newly, they're newly, they're new citizens, they're newer citizens, so they know how their citizenship is conditional. And they can't be vocal about their grievances, and the ways that second generation mothers can be. So it's not that they didn't have grievances, or it's not that they were passive. They were not.

They were quite vocal about what is missing in the health care system. What is missing in the education system. But they thought that it would put their child.

It would put their family in a, you know, tricky situation. That would be hard to get out of.

00:23:43.180

So that's one thing that I realized about, uh, you know, with British-born mothers, the other thing which I thought was with British-born mothers did knowledge

of how to deal with discrimination and racism and institutional bureaucracy was partly learned from their experiences of going through that system.

They also had a financial stake because their grandparents, their great-grandparents, have paid into the system and they had got nothing out of it.

So they had seen what it had done to their parents. They had seen what had done to their grandparents, and so they were more, they were more aware that it does,

it's, it's not a relationship of oh, if I work, I will get the benefit. Or if I contribute to the society I will get the benefit. They were much more aware

that it's not so simple. There is institutional bureaucracy and racism that will always put them on the periphery of things. With these first generation mothers

that obviously financial stake was missing because they were starting out, they were forming their own families. So in that sense, yes, I, I think, you know,

they did not have that kind of vocalization of being, you know, upset with the system, even though they had poor experiences.

00:24:58.090

SF: Yeah, excellent analysis. I mean especially resonates about the first generation immigrant 'cause I am also first generation immigrant and you know I mean in the

area where citizenships are stripped and there's so much Islamophobia, that's a very pertinent concern. So you end with some recommendations to remove institutional barriers that impede minoritized mothers and caring for their disabled children. Could you just highlight a few here?

00:25:23.070

SR: I think there are so many things that can be done on different fronts. So First off, we have to start looking at how religion can play a positive role. It is

playing a positive role in the lives of Muslim communities. We're just not acknowledging it. We want to problematize it. There's a tendency to say that it, it holds back parents from taking, you know, services or provisions, or that there's an issue or cultural issue or religious issue when there is not.

I think what needs to be done is that there needs to be a greater representation within mosques. Um, from there needs to be a greater representation within religious

scholarship of how issues around caring, sexuality, gender rights uh, marriage, marriageability prospects, education or citizenship, of of being fully, you know of being Muslims can be can be explored within the context of disability. Because when you are talking about these issues you only considering the experiences of able bodied individuals, you excluding disabled children, young people and individuals.

00:26:22.500

You're not looking at how this intersects with policies, you're not looking at how this intersects with social inequality. And I think the, the mothers, one thing that I've learned from them is that they had far more greater knowledge on religious jurisprudence than than any, than, than most religious scholars would, because they had gone to the nth degree of finding out what is it that I need to know in terms of day-to-day lived experiences, in terms of caring responsibilities, in terms of can my child do …should my child be a full-time five times a day namaz, or should my child be reading Quran if he has no comprehension?

These are such very delicate matters that need to be explored.

00:27:01.190

And they're not being explored enough in traditional religious Islamic scholarship. They need to be addressed and they need to be addressed in a way that is inclusive of the opinions of disabled individuals and, and, and disabled families. So that's one thing, and I think there's, there's a lot of interesting work that's being already done. So if you look at, there's, there's an initiative that's currently being done by Muslim Council of Britain. It's called women in mosque

conversation toolkit. They're trying to promote women leadership in mosques. They want women on boards they want women to be part of main, you know, main conversations,

but I think we shouldn't stop there. I think this is just the first step we need to include people from different walks, from different aspects of life. We need to include different nationalities, different ethnicities, different Muslim families from different socioeconomic statuses. We need to include disabled people, disabled families need to be at the forefront of these conversations. So there are some interesting initiatives happening, and that's one place to begin with.

The other thing which I think. You cannot ask.

00:28:03.978

You know you cannot entirely rely on mosques. You cannot entirely rely on cultural community centers, and the reason why you can't do this is because there have been massive cuts to them. You know, there have been funding cuts since 2000, you know, 2010. One study says there's been £16 billion worth of funding cuts to, uh the voluntary charity sector and in another study we're talking about 50% of councils have made cuts to the voluntary sector, and these services are actually lifeline for minority communities such as social services, housing services, welfare assistance and access to services such as ESOL and English language courses. So when you're talking about oh, there is such low uptake of services in ethnic minority families. You have to understand you have to be cynical about this and say, well, actually it serves the states

purpose. If they're funding cuts you wouldn't want everyone to take services, would you?

And I'm quite cynical when it comes to this, so I think there is some kind

00:29:01.27

of intentional hard to reach persona that the state has about its services, the less you know the better and hence lower uptake amongst different communities.

And even when now you are applying for services and provisions, you actually have to prove your citizenship and again it intersects with who's a citizen, who's a full citizen.

Are you British born? If you're not then you have lesser rights. All of these things have to be taken into account when you're thinking about disabled families. And again,

people might say this is not an educational discourse, it is. I think this is the biggest injustice, as long as you are excluding conversations that are directly

related to housing inequality, racial inequality, social services, unemployment, as long as you're excluding all these debates about citizenship and immigration trajectories,

you are doing the biggest injustice. You are excluding a big part of that conversation that should be at the center of the inclusion discourse when we're talking about minoritized

disabled families.

00:30:00.664

So that's one thing that. We need to be thinking about in terms how can we hold the state accountable. How can we push the state to do better and there have been again good, good

initiatives. For instance, the Runnymede trust and the Good Law project are holding the government accountable for different aspects. You know, they're holding the government

accountable for their trace and track tenders that they put out so it good work is being done, but, but we have to stop saying that the informal sector has to pick up or mosques

have to pick up or cultural community. We have to hold accountable the, you know, formal spaces we have to hold accountable the schools that are not including or we have to hold accountable

the overly white institutional spaces that are not only bureaucratic, but they're also very racist and they reduce our experiences to single issues. So that's something that needs to be done.

00:30:55.610

SF: Excellent recommendations. I, this kind of also like leads into my final question that I had for you, but I think you've already kind of answered it on why you named the book,

"Undoing Whiteness"? In what ways, do you see your framework "Undoing Whiteness"? If you want to say a couple more lines about, that'd be great. 'cause I think I think you kind of

already captured that, but I would like to kind of get a mental picture of what was what were you thinking about when you titled the book?

00:31:27.000

SR: when we understand when we are trying to engage with the literature experiences of minoritized, disabled families there's a damaging narrative done at an epistemic level with

very flawed presumptions that the education system does not discriminate, that the health care system does not discriminate, that the social care system does not discriminate on

the grounds of sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, and by this rationale, the responsibility of poor outcomes is squarely laid at the individual or familial lack

of educational aspiration or motivation to succeed. And so, when I'm talking about undoing whiteness, we have to get rid, we have to dismantle these problematic, flawed assumptions.

So the reason why I called it "Undoing Whiteness" is because firstly I want to shift the discourse from special education field to disability studies. That's one thing, as long as we focus on special education field, we will not be considering the wider inequalities,

00:32:29.385

the wider oppressive systems that impact the lives of disabled people. Disability studies has to be joined up has to be examined, has to be looked at when we're talking about

the experiences of minoritized families. The maternal accounts in this book actually speak the truth about the special education system in this country. It does not see their children

in their entirety as individuals who are rooted in their culture, religion, ethnicity, heritage and other intercategorical positioning. What does instead is it problematizes all these

positionings it says, oh, you're Muslim, that's why you have to be watched your unruly because you are this, you know. So we have to start looking at the, the racist kind of frameworks

that we employ to understand the experiences of disabled families.

00:33:17.794

SF: In some ways, disability studies has always been intersectional because it recognizes all the various ways that a person made renderable in society, and it's that it's about the

obstacles set up in society to impede you. So disability studies is always kind of looked at the systemic injustice as opposed to problematizing the person that often is what happens.

00:33:41.780

SR: Yeah, a lot of it is about the social model of disability and a lot of it is about the, you know, medical deficit length. With which we view the experiences of anyone who falls

short of the heteronormative, so that's one thing, but the other thing is when we talk about minoritized families, I think there's another thing that we need to be considering.

Is that even within disability studies, there is an overly. White experience that is currently being represented and if we are to approach and if we are to say we have, you know we are moving towards social justice goals for minoritized communities. We have to stop problematizing them we have to stop looking at how their religion or their cultural aspects or how their heritage is, is. It actually falls into

00:34:27.408-->00:34:33.857

that deficit narrative. So it's almost antithetical if we constantly reduce their experiences and again abdicates all that responsibility and accountability from the LIDAR systems

that are supposed to provide equal rights. They're supposed to provide equal citizenship. They don't for minoritized communities, they don't. For minoritized, disabled families.

So that's, that's I think the main argument that I'm focusing on in this book.

00:34:54.020

SF: Thank you so much Sana and I mean this is an excellent book, I really recommend it to anybody who's in disability studies, um, and or in educational policy.

The field of education at large. The book is called "Undoing Whiteness and Disability Studies: The Special Education System and British-South Asian Mothers" and

it came out with Palgrave McMillan does this summer, I really recommend that you guys go out and get the book or have your institution ordered the book. Again, thank you

Sana for coming on the podcast and discussing your research.

00:35:25.027

SR: Thank you so much for the opportunity.

00:35:26.910

SF: As salaam Alaykum

00:35:28.320

SR: Walaykum Salaam