cripchick's blog

this week i had the opportunity to reflect on what i’d like to say if i had a chance to address disability rights community (i was filling out an application for an award). this is an abridged version of what i wrote:

“I would like to challenge movement leadership to grow, support, and create space for disabled people of color. I do not mean this as a platform for encouraging simple diversity or one-dimensional multiculturalism, but as a push for us to rethink and revision what we understand as disability community and history.

I want to talk about why disability looks white. I want us to understand how ableism has been leveraged against communities of color with black folks historically being thought of as less capable (therefore fit for slavery) and special education commonly serving as a means of segregating students of color both with and without disabilities. I want us to create a disability pride that acknowledges the complexities of our experience and does not pit living resiliently and proudly against the knowledge that disability is often created by injustice our communities face.

All of this must be done without flattening our differences, without saying being disabled is just like being of color, just like being poor, just like being queer. Let us bring our best selves to community and learn to be with each other in ways that transform and grow who we are, even when (and though) the work is hard.”

With that said, October is Disability History Month in North Carolina. In 2007, disabled young people decided teaching about ableism and disability history in schools should be a priority. We wrote a bill and lobbied our legislature to require local school boards to provide education on disability. This time last year, we ambitiously created a puppet show, skits, a self-advocacy rap, a video, a 100+ page zine, bookmarks, and buttons and took them into several classrooms to talk about things like self-determination, eugenics, and the models of disability . Inspired by theredtree posting one of our bookmarks, I am including below the text of a few of our bookmarks as an example of what we could say about disability history if we told the stories of queer disabled people of color.

Frida was a Mexican painter who painted using vibrant colors in a style that was influenced by Mexican culture. Frida had polio. Her art illustrated both her love of her body & her experience with disability. She was a modern woman & had many lovers. Frida is both a feminist icon for the way she was not afraid to be herself and a legend for the way she brought light to Mexican art and culture.

Harriet Tubman was an abolitionist. When she was 13, she threw herself between a slave & the overseer who was about to whip him. The overseer hit her & gave her a traumatic brain injury (TBI). After she escaped slavery, she went on secret missions to rescue other slaves. B/c of her TBI, many people brushed her off as “crazy.” She played up her disability so no one would guess she was mapping out paths for slaves to escape.

Audre Lorde was a feminist, poet, & activist known for organizing women of color. Her poems and teachings reflected her concern for oppressed people. When she had surgery for her breast cancer, she refused to wear a prothesis stating, “Either I love my body one breasted now or remain forever alien to myself.” She is celebrated by poets, feminists and activists everywhere.

A few other historical figures and pop icons we include are Curtis Mayfield, Helen Keller, Dummy Hoy, Danny Glover, Dorothea Lange, Howie Mandel, President Roosevelt, Damon Wayans and Chief Wilma Mankiller. (Check out their stories).

last night my 21 year old brother was tased and arrested in a small town with an all-white police department three hours from here. i am so angry – angry that my white dad could never prepare him for this aspect of life – angry that he thinks that the privilege his stupid white drunk college friends have will cover him – angry that with all these young black and brown men getting shot, he STILL stepped to the police – angry at the ways racism, colorism and classism dictate who is considered dangerous and threatening.

my heart aches.

with all of this, i was outside of a bookstore today and a cop approached me. he was so polite to me, insisted on being my personal escort across the parking lot and everything. wouldn’t take no for an answer. the way i, as a disabled light-skinned east asian woman, interact with the police is so different from my brother.

some people get helped, some people get followed, some people get tasered, some people get shot. folks like to flatten out experiences but privilege is an explosion with violence reaching out a hundred different ways.

really, how could this boy look threatening?

i am teaching these dusty bones to quiet
their rattling this heart to eat
its longing these fingers to quit
their reaching

one day, i will not want and
you will not
hurt me

okay yall, wherever mia and i end up in the bay will be a third of the size of where i live now. this means i need to purge a lot of things i own. city livin’ at its best. :-)

i’ve learned so much from the blogosphere that i want to share what i have. below are list of books i can mail you for free (i have a free postage stamp thingy). to make sure things get distributed fairly, let’s start with each person getting two items. if two people ask for the same thing at the same time, preference will go to women of color, those working outside of the academy, and poor folks.

please pass the word!

books

• law school confidential
• dreamweaver 8 textbook (i can send you copy of program too)
• what i know for sure by tavis smiley
• an american life: benjamin franklin -taken
• the alchemy of race and rights -taken
• dreams from my father by obama -taken
• cockeyed -taken
• how to teach filthy rich girls -taken
• jesus land
• the pigman -taken
• revenge of the paste eaters
• ovid’s metamorphoses in latin and english -taken
• the culture of fear -taken
• stumbling on happiness -taken
• colonial pathologies -taken
• extraordinary bodies -taken
• globalization reader textbook -taken
• book of poems from def jam poetry tv show -taken
• letters to a young feminist -taken
• to be real by rebecca walker -taken
• the time of our singing -taken
• my face is black is true -taken
• nothing about us without us -taken
• how did you get to be mexican? -taken
• sex drugs and cocoa puffs -taken
• the bible tells me so: uses and abuses of holy scripture -taken
• the communist manifesto -taken
• the essential gandhi -taken
• a cab called reliable -taken
• charlie chan is dead volume one and two -taken
• dragon ladies -taken
• the god of small things -taken
• kitchen confidential -taken
• the truth that never hurts by barbara smith -taken
• the disabled god -taken
• to kill a mockingbird -taken
• letter to my daughters by maya angelou -taken
• the new intifada -taken