Brittany is a Deaf Black women and assistant professor, Brittany noted that there are times when if she requests an ASL interpreter for a university event the make Brittany sit in front and require the interpreter to be on stage, even when it improves access for Brittany for the interpreter to be sitting down with her, so that the university can benefit from the optics of having a hypervisible Black Deaf participant at the event, and showing how they are accommodating Brittany.

Example of Compelled Surveillance: Brittany and ASL Interpreter

Brittany is a Deaf Black woman and assistant professor. Brittany noted how colleagues typically tell her to incorporate her personal experience into her research. Brittany pushes against this because she doesn't want her writing reduced to experience as a Deaf woman and doesn't want to have to display herself for the scrutiny and learning experience of nondisabled white readers.

Example of Compelled Surveillance: Brittany and Research Positionality

Moya Bailey and other scholars have pointed out that Black women are subject to heightened surveillance by institutions, both to be seen through compelled surveillance as markers of institutional diversity and also because of histories of surveillance of Black women's bodies and criminalization of Black women.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Price defines compelled surveillance as one is told or strongly urged to disclose or make more visible their disability or other aspects of their lived experience.

Compelled Surveillance

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Ore, Ersula. 2017. "Pushback: A Pedagogy of Care." Pedagogy 17(1):9-33.

Pushback: A Pedagogy of Care

Bailey, Moya. 2021. "The Ethics of Pace." South Atlantic Quarterly 120 (2): 286-299. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-8916032.

The Ethics of Pace

Black Women and Surveillance

Henry is a deaf white man and university lecturer who recently lost the ability to speak orally due to surgery. After becoming nonspeaking, Henry was assigned an online-only teaching schedule. This led to jealousy and resentment from his colleagues who wanted to teach all their classes online. Henry was asked by his department chair for permission to discuss his lack of speech in a virtual department meeting to explain Henry's accommodations. While Henry didn't mind it, it is still compelled surveillance that Henry's department chair saw the answer to resentment from department members to be revealing Henry's disability. 

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