[Xmca-l] The intersection of disability and blackness

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Hello Xmcars,

This was in The Guardian today:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/09/sandra-bland-eric-garner-freddie-gray-the-toll-of-police-violence-on-disabled-americans__;!!Mih3wA!SwBDu_0L-cQ38xzdrOMNUos0WMKdMrzhQZi3fJ4uzS58qqFYdj3Q2g6ChVfjxxJXmEKJBQ$ 

It's an odd synchronicity given my exchange with Peg about disability and protest.

This is from that article:

"While the numbers of disabled people killed by police are not systematically tracked in the United States, the Ruderman Family Foundation has estimated<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://rudermanfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/MediaStudy-PoliceDisability_final-final.pdf__;!!Mih3wA!SwBDu_0L-cQ38xzdrOMNUos0WMKdMrzhQZi3fJ4uzS58qqFYdj3Q2g6ChVfjxxLMvZimKA$ > that between a third to half of all Americans killed by police have a disability. (Their study defines disability broadly, “inclusive of physical, developmental, intellectual, psychiatric, emotional, and any other form of disability that might fall under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)”.) To put that into perspective, data<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/p0816-disability.html__;!!Mih3wA!SwBDu_0L-cQ38xzdrOMNUos0WMKdMrzhQZi3fJ4uzS58qqFYdj3Q2g6ChVfjxxKgMDAu3g$ > from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that disabled American adults make up a quarter of the population, making them the largest minority group."

I had no idea that 25% of adults in the US are disabled. That is pretty huge.

Unfortunately much in the way class divides women from supporting change about perceptions of women in everyday life, as is the promise of feminism, disabled folks are also divided because even with a single disability there are huge differences in how a disability impinges upon an individual's freedom to be. And some are more disabled than others. So I can understand why it's been difficult to become a politically active group, when just being and living is an arduous undertaking, who has the energy for activism?

There is also a very strange phenomenon, as I understand, for certain people who work in the disability community to control them as an effort to "keep them safe" because "they don't know how to be safe on their own." This is done by lying to them, as one might do to children. I'm not sure if this kind of discrimination has a name, but it doesn't protect the agency of the cognitively disabled, no matter their age.

California has the Lanterman Act which is the State of California accepting responsibility to aid and support individuals with developmental disabilities to live a life of their choosing as independently as they are capable of living. I feel legislation should exist like this for all people with disabilities, but ADA doesn't seem to have enough teeth. Only where federal law governs and with employers that have a particular number of employees are there fairness protections, which means small business owners can practice discriminative hiring with impunity.

There is also the education system, of which has been very challenged with the pandemic, to make sure kids with learning challenges are supported to develop as much as they are able. Talk about the limitations of Zoom.

It may not only be that the people murdered by police was "because of the color of their skin," but because of their disability, meaning that these victims of brutality were unable to communicate in a way police officers can perceive or understand, thereby triggering a police reaction based upon a perceived threat.

It's really awful to know this, actually and it provides a different dimension to the problem, which is perhaps not only about living while black, but also living while disabled.

Kind regards,

Annalisa









-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200609/b98b9c1c/attachment.html