InCrit. For theoretical foundations, I will reflexively construct the critical scholarship that informs this research, starting with Cruz et al.’s (2024) InCrit. This article was introduced to me in a graduate inclusive education course. The core of InCrit rests on two tenets: variability as an asset; relevant, rigorous, and responsive learning. The first tenet recognizes that human variability is the norm and a strength to be leveraged. The second tenet operationalizes this by insisting on critically inclusive pedagogy. It explicitly rejects rote, decontextualized instruction and false inclusions. 

InCrit weaves together Disability Justice scholarship (Sins Invalid, 2016), Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Crenshaw, 1991; DuBois, 1903), and critical disability theory in education (Annamma et al., 2013, 2018). Interested, I read more about these foundational theories and frameworks. Although CRT came before Disability Justice, which came before InCrit, I will walk through them in the order I learned them in. This sequencing reflects the actual development of my understanding and supports me in tracking my reflections and how my thinking shifted and continues to shift.

Disability Justice. Contrasting a predominantly white, single-issue-focused Disability Rights activism, Disability Justice emerged as an intersectional view of disability, centering the lives, needs, experiences, and strategies of disabled queer and trans BIPOC communities. Sins Invalid, a collective founded by Patty Berne and Leroy Moore, lays out ten guiding principles towards justice for disability communities: (1) intersectionality, (2) leadership of those most impacted (3) anti-capitalist politic (4) commitment to cross-movement organizing (5) recognizing wholeness (6) sustainability (7) commitment to cross-disability solidarity (8) interdependence (9) collective access (10) collective liberation. For me, this action-oriented, collective framework made the connections to colonialism and capitalism clearer. As Piepzna-Samarasinha & Lakshmi (2018) put it, “disability justice means a political movement and many interlocking communities where disability is not defined in white terms, or male terms, or straight terms” (p. 20). 

The film, Crip Camp (LeBrecht & Newnham, 2020), moved me because of the profound demonstration of cross-disability solidarity and cross-movement solidarity. The 504 Sit-In, where disability activists like Judy Heumann, Kitty Cone, and Brad Lomax organized a 26-day non-violent occupation of a federal building, was sustained by a diverse coalition of communities. The Black Panther Party, Glide Memorial Church, Gay Men’s Butterfly Brigade, Delancey Street, United Farm Workers, Gray Panthers, and Salvation Army brought food, water, medical supplies, and other support (Yu, 2024). Their collective efforts contributed to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), which protected the civil rights of disability communities. What stood out to me about this is how communities showed up for one another. It demonstrates the impact that is possible when collective action is taken and struggles are seen as interconnected. 

In my writing, I do not speak for all disabled communities, nor do I speak for all ADHD brains, and certainly not for every queer person. In fact, my class and racial privilege have shaped my experiences of neurodivergency and queerness. My family had the financial stability to support me through university, even when I took time off. My whiteness and English proficiency protect me from multiple forms of discrimination. Disability justice reminds me that disability cannot be separated from race. It reminds me of the limits of my own perspective and the responsibility to learn more about critical perspectives to situate my story within broader structures.

Critical Race Theory. As I have come to understand it, Critical Race Theory (CRT) was a revolutionary movement founded by legal scholars, including Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, and Richard Delgado, to develop methods of analyzing and challenging racism (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). Although, as Solórzano and Yosso (2001) point out, written conceptualizations of CRT start as early as 1903 with DuBois’ (1903) work, The Souls of Black Folk. CRT has expanded to include scholarship such as InCrit, TribalCrit, DisCrit, LatCrit, FemCrit, AsianCrit, and more. Specifically, CRT involves the following tenets: (a) counterstorytelling, (b) the permanence of racism, (c) Whiteness as property, (d) interest convergence, and (e) the critique of liberalism (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). 

In thinking about the CRT tenet of counterstorytelling and its alignment with Disability Justice’s principle of leadership of those most impacted (Sins Invalid, 2016), critical counterstorytelling engages narratives from marginalized communities that challenge dominant norms, particularly those with intersecting experiences of oppression. Intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), was developed in response to the essentialism imposed on Black women’s experiences of marginalization. Watson (2022) points to a parallel erasure; Indigenous communities are seldom acknowledged for their contributions, despite their leadership, intellectual contributions, and storytelling as fundamental to Indigenous cultures. One way she challenges this erasure is through “speculative biography” (p. 101), which works to reconstruct the lives of Indigenous women by turning to oral, community, and archival histories. Her approach aligns with and expands counterstorytelling as acts of care, “through telling their stories, we may begin to heal from the grave injustices of the past, and start to see injustices of the present through new lenses” (p. 102).

hooks (1994) affirms concerns of essentialist theories and practices that use identity as a form of authority or coercion. At the same time, she cautions that a binary shift from essentialism to anti-essentialism can erase the ways that structures specific to racism, sexism, and classism. She argues that critiques of essentialism can become a new way to silence marginalized students by dismissing the significance of their experiences. She writes that “biases imposed by essentialist standpoints or identity politics, alongside those perspectives that insist that experience has no place in the classroom (both stances can create an atmosphere of coercion and exclusion), must be interrogated by pedagogical practices” (p. 86).

Ladson-Billings & Tate (1995) introduced CRT to education, and contextualized the tenet of “whiteness as property” in education. Because affluent, predominantly white communities have higher property values, thus higher tax assessments, they are able to fund “better” schools. In this context, white property functions as access to certified and prepared teachers, science labs, computers, new technology, a variety of courses available, extra-curricular activities, athletic equipment, and curriculum. Ladson- Billings & Tate (1995) argue that rigorous curriculum has been almost exclusively enjoyed by white students (tracking, honors, gifted programs), necessitating a CRT lens in education. Additionally, they critique the multicultural paradigm, a reform movement designed for multicultural equality, which is often reduced to “trivial examples and artifacts of cultures such as eating ethnic or cultural foods, singing songs or dancing, reading folktales, and other less than scholarly pursuits of the fundamentally different conceptions of knowledge or quests for social justice” (p. 61). I felt particularly called out on this critique, as I reflect on how I have operated within this paradigm. I have often focused on individual identity representation and multicultural celebration. This symbolic inclusion allowed me to ignore systematic intersectional exclusion.

Back to InCrit. For too long, systems of oppression have been treated as separate, siloed problems. By cross-pollinating frameworks like Critical Race Theory and Disability Justice, InCrit provides the necessary lens to interrogate how interlocking systems of oppression hoard learning opportunities for those who do not fit the mythical “normal” student. This framework demands the dismantling of the systems that justify exclusion based on perceived deficits. In this study, InCrit serves as an interpretive lens to analyze my shifting roles and mindsets, helps me identify normative scripts of success, and functions as a theoretical collaborator.

Neuroqueering and Neurodiversity Paradigm. I thought that was the extent of the theoretical lenses, but I could not help but reflect on my specific experiences of marginalization in schooling. The cost of masking. The cost of being closeted. My teen years were full of longing, self-loathing, self-rejection, and deep feelings of inadequacy. At the time, I felt unauthentic in my body. I spent a great deal of time researching the latest makeup, fashion, social media, and music trends. My fear of rejection and self-doubt consumed me at times. I engaged in suicidal behavior. I developed an eating disorder. I had a constant self-critic analyzing my every move. When students show up at school, this pain does not stop. In fact, for me, that is when I felt these pressures most intensely. There is a wide array of causes and reasoning behind my mental health at this time that extend beyond my marginalized identities. However, I found profound solace when I began to embrace my queer and neurodivergent identities. I am learning to hold these tensions, that my privileges do not negate my suffering, my suffering does not negate my privileges. Coming across Walker’s (2021) work felt like a gold mine that resonated deeply with my experiences. 

The neurodiversity paradigm (Walker, 2021) is grounded in the biological fact that neurodiversity, or the infinite variation in human minds, is a natural, healthy, and valuable form of human diversity. There is no "normal" or "right" human mind that exists, just like there is no "normal" ethnicity or gender. This paradigm recognizes that the concept of a "normal mind" is a culturally constructed fiction used to establish hierarchies of dominance. 

Neuroqueer theory (Walker, 2021) extends this paradigm as a practice of subverting, disrupting, and liberating oneself from both neuronormativity and heteronormativity. This theory recognizes that the embodied performance of being neurocognitively "normal" is inseparable from heteronormative gender roles; therefore, queering one queers the other. Unlike essentialist views that categorize individuals, neuroqueer perspectives treat the mind and body as fluid canvases for ongoing creative experimentation. It allows individuals to reclaim their capacity for uniquely weird expression by undoing cultural conditioning and reclaiming identities.

Neuroqueer theory adds a layer of nuance to InCrit’s first tenet, variability as an asset, by explicitly addressing neurodivergence and queerness, and viewing variability as a site of resistance against a colonial school system. As an interpretive lens for this study, neuroqueer theory allows me to analyze my history as a performance of neurotypicality and heteronormativity. This practice serves as a bridge between the movements of "queering" and "cripping" (Barkved, 2021). 

Cripping is a method of intentionally challenging the normative expectations about how a body or a mind should work. The language of cripping is meant to serve as a shock because the word itself has discriminatory and derogative origins. I still find a sense of discomfort using this word. However, I am guided by disability communities who reclaim it use that discomfort and shock to force a realization that society is built only for a specific type of mind and body. For example, Price & Kerschbaum (2016) embrace crip time, an understanding that disabled communities move through time differently, by allowing interviews to "shape-shift" into year-long email exchanges or pausing when energy levels were low. They also challenged the power of the direct gaze; for instance, one researcher knitted to manage mental energy during sessions. Cripping is a deliberate political act. Neuroqueering and cripping reject the normative pressure to assimilate into social structures never designed for neurodivergent or queer communities, reclaiming narratives and imagining a different kind of future where we are all capable, subjective beings who don't need to be cured or normalized to have a world that belongs to us.