#black disability

[blackautmedia]

Please share if you can't give. One of my mutuals is trying to meet rent and get groceries. Even a bit would go a long way for them.

[northern-punk-lad]

Controversial opinion you don’t need an opinion on everything for example yes “oh well i don’t understand tourettes” then you don’t need to put your opinion on it out their there where loads of people including black people with tourettes explaining the situation and the best way to fix it amplifie their voices yours was not needed

[roga-el-rojo]

Black Disability Politics - Sami Schalk

Hello friends!

This week's recommendation circles back to disability justice struggles in the "US," specifically Black folks often unacknowledged work in the movement for disabled liberation in the past, present, and hopeful future: "Black Disability Politics" by Sami Schalk.

Dr. Schalk is an Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her interdisciplinary research focuses broadly on disability, race, and gender in contemporary American literature and culture. She has published on literature, film, and material culture in a variety of peer-reviewed humanities journals.

"Black Disability Politics" traces Black people's engagement with disability identity and politics and demonstrates the crucial insights and actions individuals and organizations have taken in the past for disability liberation. It also investigates the unique conjuncture that Black disabled folks experience and how past and present Black disabled activists work from that experience, providing much needed reflections on how we can be better today.

First, I wanted to highlight the attention paid to organizations like the Black Panther Party (of which Brad Lomax pictured above was a part of) and the National Black Women’s Health Project (NBWHP) throughout the book. Dr. Schalk's insights into the successes and failures of the organizations are thought provoking, especially as they pertain to the ways we sometimes re-produce ableism in our activism and need to find ways of fighting for each-other's liberation at all times.

Second, I really appreciated the emphasis on non-medical models of disability throughout the text. Tracing the way the NBWHP particularly weaved cultural and spiritual frameworks into their understanding of disability highlighted the ways white mainstream disability discourse homogenizes disabled experience and self-understanding, requiring racialized disabled folks in general to understand their conjunctures more specifically.

If you'd like to really learn about Black disability justice from a historic lens, as well as one filled with insights from today's activists, I highly recommend this book!

[peachyblkdemonslayer]

BHM Fact #9

[lifewithchronicpain]

Black History Month disabilities

For Black History Month, we recognize six African Americans with disabilities who took on the challenge to benefit humankind. Some were also

Did you know that Harriet Tubman had epilepsy? One of the most famous black women in history was struck by a rock in her youth and left her with a permanent brain injury. That did not stop her from doing her work in the Underground Railroad and the civil war. This article features more historical black people with disabilities. I hope you take the chance to check it out.

[chrysanthemumpink]

I think i have to change thesis chairs. Like she literally asked me how “dementia” was a disability when many consider it a natural side effect of “age progression,” not “a deformity.” She wants me to take it out because it doesnt make sense.

And first of all PAUSE. This thesis is about disability NOT “deformity.” Nowhere did I refer to disability as a deformity. That’s not how disability is defined within the construct of my paper or, even at all. I focus on intellectual disability and neurodivergence. In the paper I’ve mentioned the rhetorics of Autism, dementia, and Aspergers on black bodies in literartuew. Nowhere did I talk about “deformity.”

Second! The entire point of this thing is that able-bodiedness is a construct! It’s a social category boulstered by bias...it is ultimately an illusion. Able-bodiedness isnt REAL, its socially enforced and does so in a way that ignores the very real reality that able bodiedness, though a construct, is temporary. The body is in flux and in a cycle. Even the most abled bodied person moves through life as abled, then non-abled. Neurodivergence exists! Dementia is a disability because it is not able bodiesness and its existence as “natural age progression” only further proves my point because it proves that able-bodiedness & neuro-typicality are illusions. It spotlights disability be reframing it as a reality instead of a subjugated minority.

Like oh my god. i want to write a thesis about the intersection of blackness, gender, & disability in african american lit. I DO NOT want to explain human decency and basic disability rights!

[its-just-lindsey]

I don't care about non-disabled opinions on Wes on queer eye.

I extra care about the opinions of black disabled people about Wes on queer eye.

[blackautmedia]

Crutches and Spice did an amazing podcast on the r-slur and the broader implications of how ableist language gets used and the mindset behind it.

It's pretty short, so I'd really suggest giving it a listen.

CW: Use of the R-Slur

The R-word is back. But why? : It's Been a Minute

Over the past few years, Brittany has noticed the resurgence the R-word - a word that otherwise left the cultural lexicon. And while that's