On the Situation of African-American Women with Physical Disabilities

This paper explores a category of people with disabilities, African-American women, that is rarely studied by scholars and rarely the subject of education and training within the fields of medicine and rehabilitation, African-American women have a high incidence of physical disability; and among those with disabilities, their socioeconomic situation is less well off than would be predicted on the basis of general patterns of male-female, White-Black, nondisabled-disabled disparity. Drawing upon quantitative surveys as well as qualitative interviews, the authors explore factors which appear likely to contribute to the situation of African-American women with disabilities.