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.

sister, i am angry
furious at your death
upset with my own foolishness in celebrating him
while you die in the streets

with beatings, with violence left on your beautiful brown skin
with the names, the silence, the mainstream media lies
they refuse to let us ever forget that
guns penetrating our backs, we are always standing at the cliff of our own mortality

sister, i am in mourning
lighting a candle, i read this poem into the glimmering light
my poem is a prayer for you,
for the others i will never have the opportunity of knowing, and for the friends who mourn your death today
we will not forget. we will speak your name.

you said no!, you would not let police brutality and violence against transgender women of color fade into an invisible cloud of silence
you said no…
and now you are gone.

you are gone
but we will not forget.
the anger, the connection, the injustice just cuts too deep.
instead we will carry your name on our tongue
your bravery in our own ribcage
your memory in our work
we will wear red everyday
remembering you
and countless of others

we will not forget, sister.

“the community is not great for anyone until it is great for everyone.”        –WIDU motto

this past saturday, a friend, her family, and i went to a 6 hour star-studded gospel extravaganza hosted by radio station WIDU (biiiig Dottie Peoples’ fan here). what i didn’t realize on my end was that it meant i’d *literally* be attending church with 10,000 other folks. it was a really powerful experience and i realized something big is missing in my life by not being connected to a spiritual/faith community.

had a lot of interesting thought processes at this event. first and foremost, everything we are just now talking about community has been talked about for decades. it’s not a new conversation. i need to listen more and talk less. this event was organized by a coalition of SEVENTY-ONE local predominantly african-american churches and the speakers talked a lot about how what we are experiencing locally and at the gospel fest was a harvest (love that word) that was a result of people were being intentional about coming together. the event was also amazingly intergenerational. the theme was “fighting for the family” which in any other circumstance would scare the HELL out of me [normally when you hear this it's in a homophobic, nuclear family rhetoric]. here it meant being anti-war, anti-prisons, and anti-oppression—this was not a progressive event either, if you asked people i’m sure they probably identified as having conservative values even if it was a pro-obama environment. these are all things i already knew but was nice to be reminded.

what also really stuck out to me was the high numbers of disabled people at the concert (and i’m only talking about disabilities that were visible to me, let alone all the disabilities our community represents). it wasn’t a big deal, there was no special effort to get those disabled people out there. they were just there with their families, friends, etc. maybe it’s cause i sat mostly around other disabled people, but it seemed like everyone was looking out for each other (i.e. a ten year old kid got separated from his grandma and when it was announced, not only did the whole coliseum PRAY for this boy but everyone was actively looking for him). community happened organically.

when i go to events led by people of color, i am always reminded that disability is and has been ALWAYS a part of the conversation. the model isn’t a replicate of the one the disability rights movement uses (independence first and foremost) but i’m not sure that model can ever work for our communities. values systems are different. at least for the corean-american/API community, independence alone is not something we cherish; in fact, western ideals around independence clash with our family/community structures and belief in interdependence. i feel like disability rights for communities of color is about making the quality of life for the whole family better, not one person. again, a one-issue solution is not going to be enough (i.e. is a ramp to get in the store a priority when you don’t have money to feed your kids? is getting PA services going to be really for one person or by being for that person, will it be for the whole family?).

not trying to romanticize communities of color or say that we don’t experience ableism here, just trying to really think whether our mainstream disability rights model will ever really *fit* for communities of color or whether we need to reframe the conversation and think about the values that are included in this model instead of “outreaching” to them.

one specific example of this i suppose is the politics of door-opening. for me, i feel no shame around strangers opening a door for me. being able to ask folks and count on community is a huge part of my own independence. if the situation was reversed (or if there is an automatic button), i would open the door for them. i have a hard time of seeing the message of “i can do this by myself!” as a priority. at the same time i understand the danger of low-expectations, the trap of expected roles, and even how door-opening is gendered. i know many people who connect door-opening to these issues and am guessing that my outlook on this maybe different because i didn’t experience life pre-ADA, corean culture emphasizes people helping each other v. doing things independently, and my disability requires me to have no shame around needing and asking assistance with things.

and with all that said, i *was* still offended when i ran into someone i knew at the show and he randomly asked if i needed help with anything. but did he have low expectations for me? no, he knows firsthand my work as a community organizer and what i am capable of doing. did he mean anything by it? no. he was just checking. was it because my disability? yes, of course. but in a community that functions by making sure everyone is accounted for, is that so bad?

i’m not sure. obviously i know what it’s like to be trapped in the receiver role (it’s probably really bad that one of my reasons for wanting to go to law school is to say HA! COREAN COMMUNITY! BOW DOWN TO MY MOM AND TAKE BACK YOUR PITY!). at the same time, the corean community has always supported my family, especially around disability. i mean, heck, my halmoni left her whole life in corea to come support my mom and it wasn’t even something to think about, just like putting halmoni in a nursing home will never be something to think about as it isn’t even a perceivable option.

so what do you think? is there a balance to it all? is it just about different values clashing? is it something different? really curious to hear if anyone has any thoughts on this.

(check out philosophercrip and wheelchairdancer for recent blogs on similar themes).

Background: a professor for a women’s studies class wrote about how he assigned Full-Frontal Feminism (FFF), a book that was accompanied with much criticism, to his class and that it was a hit with the students. To sum it up it was basically “HA! you radical women of color (WOC) bloggers, I know woc who LOVED IT so there!!!” BrownFemiPower (BFP) framed the follow-up discussion in her post to not to be around FFF but how women of color are tokenized and ignored in women’s studies departments. This professor attempted to discredit every point BFP made and when Black Amazon (BA) followed up, she was made to be a spokesperson for all women of color. Gotta love it.

One of my favorite words is the term “crip on a stick.” A dear friend and activist was at a planning group for some community festival and when they did not have any Native American people present, a committee member actually suggested creating life-size images of people in ceremonial outfits, putting them on sticks, and dancing around in a circle with the stick images during the event. Ridiculous, huh? Now we use the term Crip on a Stick to describe people in the Disability Rights Movement who are brought in to meetings to be that one token crip, young person, person of color. etc.

And this is where the conversation quickly swerves to a whole different thing…

I’ve been that crip on a stick quite a bit (in fact, try the first two years of my involvement in the disability community). Because so much of the way young disabled people find out about the movement/community is through gov-funded programs, many (and I would dare say most) young people in the movement start out as these type of crips. We are taught to think disability activism means being that one token young person on every single board and committee in the country. And this entry probably sounds like utter hypocrisy because I still excessively serve on these boards and committees. This is what happens when a movement is run solely through the nonprofit complex and is dependent on government and philanthrophic [like charity] funding.

Obviously we NEED representation—I’m not arguing against that. My point is that this tokenized representation [a person just being a symbol] may come off as a good thing (getting X group to the table) but in reality, a tokenized person is often used first as a tactic to invalidate [cancel or take away] points made by others.— i.e. “We HAVE a woman of color on our board and she LOVES this idea. You’re wrong.” Secondly it is used as an excuse not to act on something—“Can’t you see we’re already talking about youth issues? We have a young person on our committee!” (And of course this is just a side note but I’m not sure that person counts as a youth when they’re going on 30, my friend.)

Not only are there rewards for the people who are these tokenized figures, but there end up being strong penalties [problems] for those that don’t (i.e. losing funding for important programs). People who choose NOT to go this route and instead do other types of activism end up facing the consequences of not being on these boards. They may choose to focus on radical community-organizing or infesting their group with concepts of disability pride and identity and in return, they miss out on all the networking and connections with powerful people.

The way everything is organized (dare I say “the system”?) is designed for us to be submissive. When we aren’t, whether we are disabled people, women of color, queer people, young people, people who don’t have class privilege or all of the above, we are told that this is not the time or place, the issue is not actually an issue, or there is something wrong with our tone (BA did a great post on this a while back).

My favorite song by Immortal Technique ends with this:

“I don’t look at a few token Latinos and black people in the public eye as some type of achievement for my people as a whole. Most of those successful individuals are sell-outs and house Negros. But, I don’t consider brothers a sell-out if they move out of the ghetto. Poverty has nothing to do with our people. It’s not in our culture to be poor. That’s only been the last 500 years of our history; look at the last 2000 years of our existence…So in conclusion, I’m not gonna vote for anybody just ’cause they black or Latino they have to truly represent the community and represent what’s good for all of us proletariat.”

I ran across this article on privilege today, written by Peggy McIntosh, an anti-racist feminist. (Maybe I’m late to the table and you folks have already seen it?) Anyways, here were some of my favorite points that describe aspects of privilege:

• If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
• I can go shopping alone most of the time, fairly well assured that I will not be followed or harassed by store detectives.
• I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely and positively represented.
• When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
• I can swear, or dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
• I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
• I can remain oblivious to the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
• I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
• I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co­workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
• I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

While the list she created was specifically on white male privilege, what I found most interesting is how they could have easily been describing abled-bodied (nondisabled) privilege, heterosexual/cissexual privilege, and class privilege. She pointed out while society sometimes does talk about how racism and sexism disadvantages women and people of color, it doesn’t talk about how it gives others advantages (her words: “As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.”)

Although sometimes I think people who identify with an oppressed group of people think they have an automatic free pass from recognizing privilege (i.e. disabled men who are racist, feminists who are ableist, etc….) and it’s wrong to casually say all forms of privilege are the same, it still amazes/bothers/frusterates/surprises me how, as individuals or communities, it is still difficult to recognize that the struggle is one that is shared. 

But I guess that’s part of the oppression we face in the first place…

I’ve always credited my “academic success” (not sure you can call it that considering I just failed online P.E.) and parent’s involvement in my life due to my Korean heritage and the pursuit of the “American Dream” that my mother had as an immigrant. It was interesting today to drop my brother off at college— my father (who is not Korean) was very emotional and told me that out of seven children, only one of his siblings went to college and that today was so meaningful to him.

I’ve always felt that I live(d) a life of upper-middle class privilege: I don’t remember a recent time in my life where my father was not a high ranking military official or when we could not have something that we earnestly and reasonably wanted. That said, it was enlightening to hear how my great grandfather was a sharecropper [a person who does all the work on the land but receives almost nothing] and my grandfather, worked in a factory and was very involved with his union to the point where picket lines and protests weren’t out of the norm. My father’s siblings all worked with their hands and my father joined the military straight out of high school.

I’m not sure where things really changed for my family but history is so important. As a non-white person, my mother has always felt left out of the family (my grandparents did not even come to the wedding) and I felt the same. Now I feel like I’ve spent a lifetime devaluing one half of my family.  Who knows I guess, still it just proves to me more why teaching young people about disability history, heritage and culture is so important. I viewed them as strangers when we may have had more in common all along.