Dear Advocate Magazine,
THANK YOU! I can’t even begin to express my gratitude for your last cover… You’ve just made my work so much easier. I’ve spent a lot of time this year cringing and praying “please please please don’t go there”, only to have leaders and colleagues compare lack of wheelchair access to people of color going through the back door, the r-word to the violence of the n-word, and “_____ struggle as the last civil rights frontier”. I know folks still won’t get why it’s not okay to use these analogies in keynote speeches, as points thrown out in heated arguments, or as reason to bring an issue to the table, but damn, with your blatant ignorance and privilege spread out all over the cover of a #1 gay rights mag, you’ve brought light to the issue of privilege in a way i never could. for that, i have much love and appreciation for you.
today i had the honor of moderating a call where media makers came together with disability activists to talk about the issue of inclusion and how we could support micah fialka-feldman’s fight for access*. analogies were made on this call— analogies that did not silence anyone or render anyone invisible. grace lee boggs connected this issue of inclusion to the environmentalist movement and said that both raised questions of humanity and recreated a world that was based less on individualism. a fellow blogger explained how the issues micah were bringing up on his campus were similar to those raised by students of color around what education is (competition? degrees? or community education?) when andy smith was denied tenure. another connected this to the feminist movement, with the personal being political. it was so good to take disability issues and connect it to issues of liberation for all. i’m so damn happy, can’t even work cause i’m just sitting around grinning…
so for those that were worried about how you can fight the good fight without coming off as racist or a cultural appropriator, the answer is yes— you *can* indeed make connections to other movements that do not offend people, make assumptions about our lives, require us to be silent, relegate us to textbook cases, or rewrite our history… it is easy! listen. ask. don’t go for the easy route. think before you speak…or use native american story sticks.
love,
cripchick
ps. oh yeah. this post was in reference to this:
the advocate's recent cover: gay is the new black
*micah is a student w/ a cognitive disability who is advocating to live in his school dorm. his activism has brought up questions around what education is, what inclusion can mean, and who the disability community fights for. this case is precedent-setting in that there are a lot of initiatves sprouting up around the nation for students with intellectual disabilities on college campuses and this will determine what they are and can be.
I’m trying to find out more about the Oakland University Post-Secondary TransitIONS program that Micah is participating in so that I can blog about this campaign for full inclusion. Do you know if they have a website? I’ve looked for it but, so far, I haven’t been able find one.
Posted by bint alshamsa on December 12th, 2008.
“I’ve spent a lot of time this year cringing and praying “please please please don’t go there”, only to have leaders and colleagues compare lack of wheelchair access to people of color going through the back door, the r-word to the violence of the n-word, and “_____ struggle as the last civil rights frontier”.”
OK, i completely understand what’s wrong with the “last civil rights frontier”, “last acceptable prejudice”, etc rhetoric, don’t use it, and call out other people for using it.
But why are the first 2 things you mention not valid comparisons? I can’t see anything inaccurate or inappropriate about either of them – they are not claiming priority of one oppression over another, they are analogies that (as far as i can see, anyway) go equally well both ways.
I dunno, maybe some of these things look different from a US to a UK perspective – but it disturbs me that you are deeming these comparisons invalid – that just seems like *reverse* Oppression Olympics.
Or do you think there actually is a material difference between excluding or segregating people based on physical access needs and excluding or segregating people based on something like race or ethnicity? I can sort of see that there are some arguable differences – like one requiring money and/or labour to physically achieve, and the other not – but i think it’s an incredibly radical and challenging position to take that one is just as bad as the other, in fact that they’re basically the same thing – in fact, i think that’s right at the core of my politics, that all these exclusions and oppressions are forms of the same thing, and that all diversity is part of one struggle…
Sorry to disagree with you in my first comment on your new blog (which is awesome, btw, and i still need to update my blogroll), but this just… troubles me. Maybe it is something i can’t see, because of where i’m situated either neurologically or geopolitically. But i would like to ask you to expand on that, if you can…
Posted by shiva on December 14th, 2008.
shiva, welx to the new blog site! i’m glad to see you over here.
i think for me personally, those two analogies connect to the advocate cover because when ever i’ve seen them used, it’s always been by people who have *no* idea what the experience is like that they are claiming to have. though i think many have good intention, i don’t think rich white gay folks, rich white disabled folks, anyone who hasn’t have that experience for that matter, can really ever begin to do work that includes and speaks to people of color as long as they are claiming to have had the same experiences. we know how figures like dr. king and others have been turned into symbols that represent freedom to everyone (and that is important) but if used, must not take out who these people actually were and stood for (i.e. quotes by audre lorde used by racists). in that way i feel things like the n-word, backdoor, etc are cultural appropriation in the sense that it is taking another community’s experience for oneself and then changing the meaning.
i don’t know about the UK but here where i live (United States’ South), the n-word is more than a epithet. it has so much history, history of lynchings, rapes, violence, fear, dehumanization, destruction that i know as a non-black person i will never understand. to say the r-word is the same without recognizing that history of the word is wrong and divisive. i think the pain and horror of the r-word, exclusion through lack of access, being relegated to certain sectors of society, etc. are bad enough that we don’t have to say it’s exactly like the n-word and other experiences that we have no idea about.
of course of course of course i believe in the connection of these experiences and that liberation can only happen through multi-issue work but don’t believe that liberation can happen when folks are assuming that they know another’s experience w/ oppression and so quick to claim that they have experienced it as well.
at the same time, analogies are powerful tools in arguments. i just think we need to put more thought into how these arguments are framed because issues are way way way complicated and only people who have experienced both pieces can really speak to the full complexities of it all.
those are my thoughts though. i really like what eli clare had to say: http://eliclare.com/2008/09/03/thinking-about-the-word-retard/
again, glad you are here and that we have a friendship where you can trust me and tell me you completely disagree with me.
Posted by cripchick on December 14th, 2008.
bint, i will ask!!
Posted by cripchick on December 14th, 2008.