A Call for Disability Inclusion at HBCUs
Vocabulary:
Note: We use both the terms “disabled” and “differently-abled” throughout this piece based on our interviewees' personal preferences.
Invisible disabilities - According to the Invisible Disabilities Association, “an invisible disability is a physical, mental, or neurological condition that is not visible from the outside, yet can limit or challenge a person’s movements, senses, or activities.”
Neurodiversity - According to Harvard Health, “neurodiversity describes the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways; there is no one ‘right’ way of thinking, learning, or behaving.”
On Monday, January 22, 2024, Spelman senior Lauren Proby hosted a virtual panel entitled Black Disabled Excellence: Disability Inclusion at HBCUs. By exploring the intersections and politics of disability, Black womanhood, and Black excellence, the event shed light on the challenging realities of many disabled students within the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) system.
Proby, who is a Fellow at the Coelho Center for Disability Law, Policy, and Innovation at the Loyola Law School, explains how her own experience as a disabled student at Spelman College motivated her to promote awareness and education. “I have multiple disabilities, and they are all invisible. So, I feel like that has impacted my experience at Spelman, and college in general. As a disabled person, I have had to advocate for myself a lot at Spelman. Especially having mental health disabilities, I have had to navigate a lot of things that I felt were very unfair and discriminatory,” Proby said. “I came to Spelman with this expectation that [because] this is a school for Black women, this would be a school that would accept every facet of my identity, but that hasn’t been the case.”
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 21% of undergraduate students reported having a disability from 2019 to 2020. This survey identified disabled people as those “who reported having deafness or serious difficulty hearing; blindness or serious difficulty seeing; serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition; or serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs.” However, the world's first comprehensive federal civil rights law for disabled people, The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) defines an individual with a disability as “a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment.”
The ADA aims to guarantee that people with disabilities have fair access to employment, state and local government services, public transit and businesses, telecommunications, and more. As explained in “The Rights of College Students with Disabilities” by Disability Rights South Carolina, disabled college students are specifically protected by Title II and III of the ADA. Title II aims to protect the rights of disabled students at state-funded universities, community colleges, and vocational schools. Title III does the same for disabled students at private colleges, universities, and other schools. These sections outline rights related to admissions, aides and services, modifications of school policies and procedures, and responsibilities of students with disabilities.
According to the JSTOR article “Being Black and Disabled in University,” while HBCUs do offer some resources and accommodations to promote an equitable college experience for disabled students, the institutions should be doing more to better tailor accommodations to specific student needs, destigmatize individuals with disabilities, and encourage uncomfortable dialogues about disability discrimination on college campuses.
Spelman senior Love Lundy explains how Spelman’s infrastructure has intensified the challenges she has faced while navigating Bipolar disorder and Type I diabetes. “I think the fact that there is no elevator in the building where people go to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner is insane. Walking up a flight of stairs is not easy when your blood sugar is low. It is exhausting,” Lundy shared. “I know that [Spelman] is taking care of AC in the dorms, but [having] elevators really makes a difference, and [there should be someone] consistently checking on the elevators and making sure that they work all the time…I know I’m not the only one who seeks revision on these buildings.”
The primary resource offered for differently-abled students at Spelman is the Student Access Center. According to the Spelman College website, their mission is to “create an accessible academic, social, and physical environment by minimizing challenges and facilitating academic success.” SAC's Assistant Director Nina Quiñones is committed to constructing a sustainable academic life for all students.
Despite the lack of accessibility that she has faced, Lundy has received support from the SAC and faculty. “Ms. Quiñones has been my advocate since I’ve come in. She has been supportive in listening to me and doing what she can within her bounds to support me. I love her, and I appreciate what the Student Access Center has done to provide accommodations so that I can be a little bit more flexible in my attendance. This is important for me because my blood sugar can make things crazy,” Lundy said.
Though opportunities for support exist, there should be more efforts to address the biases and disparities that exist for disabled students. Specifically for neurodivergent students, language plays a significant role when representing and understanding experiences and identities. An excerpt from “Neurodiversity to Neurodivergence” says that “everyone can be said to be neurodiverse, but...it is almost impossible for everyone to be neurodivergent. Neurodivergence is a fact of society. Neurodivergent individuals are those whose cognitive profile diverges from an established cognitive norm, a norm that is not an objective statistical fact of human neurological functioning but a standard established and maintained by socio-political processes”.
Additionally, in “The Gendered, Racialized, & Dis/Abled Experiences of Neurodivergent Black Women Graduate Students Across Higher Education,” neurodivergent people are often rendered to a stereotypic “look” that is “heavily racialized to reflect Whiteness and is heavily gendered as male.” Thus, when visualizing neurodivergent people in academic spheres, we must be attentive to how HBCUs welcome neurodivergent Black women’s experiences. Work in the Intersections: Black Feminist Disability suggests that the marginalized identity of the neurodivergent Black woman allows us to “think in generative ways about the intersectional nature of oppression [and] address the multiplicity of our lives.” As Spelman students invigorated by the motto “A Choice to Change the World”, we must consider how our values align or conflict with representations of Black neurodivergent women in a society where we are conditioned to view neurodivergent people through a white, male lens.
Proby would like to see Spelman do more to address this reality by cultivating community among disabled students and addressing the specific social and emotional difficulties that exist for neurodivergent students. “Unfortunately, colleges are historically ableist institutions, and HBCUs are no different. However, I do wish there was more support for neurodivergent and other disabled students. I’m autistic, and if you think about autism, you may have trouble socializing. You may feel anxious around people, and you may need somebody to help you find a community because you can’t create that on your own,” Proby said. “Spelman will have conversations here and there about being neurodivergent. A couple of semesters ago, they had a silent party for people who are neurodivergent. But, there’s not a lot of support or community. Just like we have this community of Black women, disability community is so very important. And, I feel like Spelman doesn’t really make an effort to cultivate a community or they place that responsibility on students. I think this is unfair because a large part of being disabled is oftentimes needing extra support.”
For visually impaired Spelman senior Chandis Hamilton, the lack of a differently-abled community at Spelman proves to be a troubling experience indicating a larger social issue. “Coming to Spelman as a differently-abled student can make you feel alone. There wasn’t a club or anything to make you feel part of a community. One of the reasons I hesitated to come to an HBCU is because some of the most ignorant statements came from my own community. Black people are not educated on how to approach visible and non-visible disabilities. I remember one time I had my cane out at the cafe, and one of the workers asked me a question. I didn’t know he was talking to me, but he also didn’t know that my cane was more than just a “stick”.” The scarce representation of differently-abled bodies in the Black community makes Chandis and others feel that they have to continuously urge their HBCUs to uproot preconceived notions about what disability looks like.
Ola Ojewumi is the Founder and Director of Project ASCEND, a nonprofit organization that sponsors college scholarships and community grant programs that promote civic engagement. Ojewumi describes how the lack of disability support and resources during her time at Howard University motivated her to transfer to a predominantly white institution (PWI). “I attended Howard University for my freshman year of college from 2008 to 2009, and I am a heart and kidney transplant patient. I needed private showers because when you have an organ transplant, you’re more susceptible to infections. I was getting sick from having to share showers, and I had to pay extra for this accommodation,” Ojewumi shared. “I [also] have a mobility disability. I now use a wheelchair, and it was so difficult to walk to class from my dormitory. When I transferred to the University of Maryland College Park, I didn’t have to go through nearly as much hassle. A shuttle would pick me up from my apartment every day and take me to my classes and even to the subway [if I needed to go]... I loved my HBCU for helping me grow up and mature. But, at what cost?”
Once she transferred to the University of Maryland College Park, Ojewumi’s college experience improved due to increased accessibility and resources. “If you were too sick to go to class or you had a doctor’s appointment, the disability service office would send somebody to take notes for you. You could [also] have interpreters on demand. They created an apartment for me because they didn’t have an accessible apartment,” Ojewumi said. “They offered me an opportunity to stay at a hotel while they built a private wheelchair-accessible bathroom for me. At Howard, none of these accommodations were offered.”
Ojewumi also explains how her transition to a PWI expanded her community and sense of pride in her disabilities. “At my PWI, talking about my disability was more encouraged. I saw more visibly disabled people. I was also able to be an instructor in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and talking about disability was more welcomed,” Ojewumi shared. “I love Howard, but there was always a heavy emphasis on healing and denying disabilities instead of embracing it or finding pride in them.”
Proby also notices this lack of disability pride and acceptance among HBCUs within disability advocacy spaces. Predominantly white institutions including the University of Illinois at Chicago, Syracuse University, the University of Texas at Austin, and more have Disability Cultural Centers (DCC). These centers aim to celebrate disability identity, encourage disability education, and provide safe spaces for disabled students on campus. According to the University of Illinois at Chicago’s “List of DCCs”, the first DCC was established in 1991 at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in response to the passage of ADA. There are currently 18 existing DCCs and 13 pending. Of these, none of them are at HBCUs.
“I know HBCUs are very behind when it comes to support, awareness, acceptance, and inclusivity surrounding disability because I am in a lot of advocacy spaces with students who attend PWIs. DCCs hold [intersectional] events about disability and sexuality, race and disability,” Proby shared. “There are also colleges who have programs specifically for students with disabilities. When I was looking at colleges, I remember an advisor giving me a list of 10 PWIs that had autism-specific programs. But things like that exist only at PWIs. I know of individual HBCU students who are doing disability advocacy, and it hasn’t really been well received by their HBCU.”
Ojewumi attributes this lack of disability culture and pride at HBCUs to the disability stigma within the Black community. “When you talk about disability studies or disability history, being Black was considered a disability. We were considered intellectually inferior. We as a culture try to distance ourselves from the racism and ableism that accompanies the inferiority complex that is already applied to Black people for being Black and adding something else to it by being disabled. You’re doubling your struggle,” Ojewumi said. “I have colleagues who are neurodivergent who attended Howard too, and they don’t have a disability services office or a single person dedicated to this. There’s [a desire] to stomp out disability and not let it hold you back. It’s not holding you back. Just like you can be proud to be Black, you can be proud to be disabled.”
Lundy explains how this stigma and lack of acceptance is perpetuated by miseducation and unwillingness to understand the perspectives of disabled people. “There is miseducation which leads to a lack of compassion. People don’t like to hear my diabetes monitor go off, and there’s not really anything I can do about that. It’s really interesting how people can be so intolerant when this has been my life for six years,” Lundy said. “The community that I have developed cares about me very much, but that’s not the general population.”
While HBCUs should be doing more to support disabled students, Black institutions face systemic inequalities that prevent them from acquiring the same funding and resources as PWIs. To build a future in which HBCUs can do more to fully embrace disability identities, encourage intersectional conversations about disability, and prioritize the celebration of disability history and culture, these inequities must be acknowledged and addressed. “HBCUs that are still state colleges may have more resources because when you’re receiving money from the state, there is a higher expectation of what you can provide disabled students. So, there is more accessibility. But, I think ableism within higher education in general is a problem. I don’t want to paint PWIs as this magical place. I have friends who have gone to PWIs who have had horrible experiences and have not been able to get the services that they need. But, at HBCUs, it’s a little bit more systemic because there is a lack of funding. And so, able-bodied people are always going to be prioritized in every context, whether you’re at a Black college or a white college. But, that systemic [impact] does affect accessibility at HBCUs.”
In addition to the systemic breakdown, Proby highlights the importance of using education and advocacy to combat the stigma associated with disabilities and neurodiversity at HBCUs and Black communities in general. “There are so many Black people who don’t even consider themselves disabled even though they have disabilities. They feel like it’s something that makes them less than others, something that they should hide, something that is not deserving of the same sense of community as Blackness. That [sentiment] translates into Black spaces,” Proby said. “We have to continue to have these conversations. People have to continue to organize and not take ‘no’ for an answer. People have to continue to be themselves and build community. You have to know that you’re here for a reason and that you belong here. And as a [disabled] student, it’s important to know how much you’re willing to tolerate.”
Resources for continued advocacy, education, and support:
Disability Rights, Education, Activism, and Mentoring (DREAM) - a national, virtual, student-led disability cultural center that aims to connect and support disabled student change agents on their campuses. DREAM seeks to encourage the development and celebration of disability culture and promote disability studies in academia.
Project LETS - a national grassroots organization led by and for people who experience mental illness, disability, trauma, and neurodivergence; specialize in building responsive and transformative peer support collectives and providing crisis support
National Center for College Students with Disabilities - the only federally-funded national center in the U.S. with resources and information for current and future college students with disabilities
College Guide for Students with Disabilities - an educational guide that allows students with disabilities to know understand their rights and evaluate campus accessibility
Work in the Intersections: A Black Feminist Disability Framework by Moya Bailey and Izetta Autumn Mobley - a Sage Journal research article addressing the intersectional relationships of disabilities with pertinence to black women.
Letter To The Editor: The Acceptance Of Black Neurodiversity by The Hilltop- Howard University student journalists honor Autism Awareness Month (April) by opening a discussion on neurodiversity and disability acceptance at HBCUs.