Dear Higher Education: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain

Navigating the Crip Sprint: Invisible Labor, Temporal Stockpiling, and the Myth of the "Abled" Academic Body

Tiffany Jones

Spelman College

Abstract

This letter addresses the profound intersectional invisibility of Black women in the academy who navigate the dual pressures of tenure-track expectations and high-stakes multigenerational caregiving. Drawing on the author’s lived experience as a "Lonely Only"—an only child, only grandchild, and sole caregiver to an aging mother—this narrative challenges the standard academic metric of "productivity." It introduces the concept of "Temporal Stockpiling," a survival strategy utilized by scholars with chronic illness (Fibromyalgia and Long COVID) to "pre-pay" for inevitable physical crashes.

By applying Jane Hill’s framework of "white public space" and Robert McRuer’s “Crip Theory,” the letter explores how academic "mentorship" can often morph into hyper-surveillance and "Presumed Incompetence" (Gutiérrez y Muhs et al. 2012) when applied to minoritized and disabled bodies. Furthermore, it critiques the pervasive "parenting" metaphor in higher education, arguing that it fails to capture the technical and emotional complexity of "re-parenting" an aging parent. Finally, the author argues for an expansion of intersectional theory (Crenshaw 1989) to include caregiving labor and "dis-able-ity," moving away from the "Big Three" toward a framework that recognizes the "Crip Sprint" as a legitimate scholarly pace. By narrating the journey from a high-surveillance, predominantly white institution to the supportive yet high-burnout environment of an HBCU, the author invites Higher Education to adapt its standards for a more inclusive, compassionate, and sustainable future.