DRNC is excited to announce the launch of our series of articles for EdNC.  These monthly articles will cover a variety of topics relevant to the experiences of students with disabilities at NC Public Schools.

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Disability Rights North Carolina (DRNC) is excited to launch our series of articles for EdNC and offer its readers diverse topics relevant to the experiences of students with disabilities at NC public schools. DRNC is a nonprofit legal advocacy organization and our state’s Protection & Advocacy system, with a unique mission to advance the rights of people with all types of disabilities, of all ages, statewide. We use an array of strategies to create a more integrated and just society, with a critical component being our advocacy on behalf of students with disabilities.

DRNC works to overcome a history of systematic discrimination, abuse, segregation, and oppression of disabled people that is not widely understood. The dehumanization and criminalization of people with disabilities is longstanding, pervasive, and ongoing.

Examples include the “ugly laws” of the 18th-20th Centuries that made it illegal for “any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself to public view;” the routine segregation in congregate institutional facilities; and the forced sterilization and eugenics laws, such as those in North Carolina from 1929 to 2003, providing “for the [involuntary] sterilization of mentally defective and feeble-minded inmates of charitable and penal institutions, or for the public good.”