While coding survey responses from teachers as part of our annual evaluation of the Unified Champion Schools program, I came across an anecdote about a middle school student of color with autism, Junior, sharing a traumatic experience:

“Junior was playing outside, and the police ran up to him and aimed their guns at him and shouted commands. Police claimed that Junior fit the description of a suspect the police were chasing down his street. When the police told him to put his hands up he appeared to ignore them and played with his fire truck which the police thought was a weapon.”

Luckily, Junior’s neighbors intervened, and Junior was not hurt. That said, Junior’s story is not unique: 20% of adolescents with autism are stopped and questioned by police before they turn 21, and a 2016 report finds that between one-third to half of all people killed by police are disabled.

Junior’s experience falls at the intersect of race and disability: not only was Junior more likely to be profiled by police because of his race (“Junior fit the description of a suspect”), but racial bias compounded with the police’s lack of autism awareness, nearly costing Junior his life.

This anecdotal data reminds us of our responsibility as researchers to represent the voices of those whose identities intersect and result in compounded prejudice in our work, especially since it directly impacts inclusion of students with disabilities in their communities. In prioritizing voices of youth of color with disabilities, for instance by use of methods such as participatory action research, we can begin to highlight and deconstruct racist and ableist norms in our schools and communities.

By Anmol Gupta, former Research Assistant at the Center for Social Development and Education.