#black disability politics

[lesbianboyfriend]

Attention to accessibility [in activist work] not only ensures the participation of disabled people, which, as [Lorrell] Kilpatrick notes, can transform the practices of an entire organization, but also ensures that people can participate in movement work in sustainable ways because the multiple needs of their bodyminds are being considered and care, for one's self and each other, is valued. As Dustin Gibson contends, "All of the influx of sustainable practices that we in disability justice work] center for survival will be key to actually being able to do the work long term."

Sami Schalk, Black Disability Politics

[theacecouple]

TOMORROW is the start of ACE WEEK 2023!!! :D

To kick things off A-specs Committed to Anti-Racism is hosting a book club on October 22nd.

If you're interested, you can get more details and the link to join on the Ace Week Website

[blackautmedia]

[sirenium]

'I think it's very disrespectful to both, really. Whether it's Indian or black, I think it's very disrespectful to both' okay, so Trump is willing to misconstrue what it means to be biracial in order to leverage himself. That's super fucking insulting to me, and I hope it's insulting to other biracial Americans. If you don't give a fuck about trans or disabled people, at least you can acknowledge the guy's strategic racism. In the very least. Because this guy doesn't care about minorities, he doesn't even care about his fanbase of white people who, to me, appear to be mostly cishet and abled with some exceptions. If there are people who still go on to vote for this scumbag, that says a lot about them as people. They're self-entitled, stupid individuals who really think Trump has their interests in mind, and that's all that matters to them is that their own interests are being acknowledged and upheld... no matter how many people are harmed in the process. Sickening.

[queerpunktomatoes]

Hey, I know talking about revolution and constantly facing the atrocities happening in our world is so so necessary, but it's also really hard, and I see you, and I appreciate you. I love you very much, I acknowledge and respect you as a person, and you're doing great.

[crystalsandbubbletea]

If I were the US president, I would have ended ties with Israel long ago.

Israel has stated multiple times that they don't care about the civilians in Palestine, hell they don't care who gets hurt in general. All Israel wants is genocide, anyone who supports Israel wants genocide, and anyone who goes like "Well it's complicated" or remains silent is genocide complicit.

Silence.

Is.

Violence.

There's a poem, it's called "First they came for" and it's by Martin Niemöller, it shows that silence does nothing, and in the end, there will be no one to help you because you were silent.

I wanted to do a modern retelling of it, here it is (Note: This is from the perspective of someone who is silent on politics):

First they came for the socialists—and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for black people—and I did not speak out—because I was not black.

Then they came for the disabled—and I did not speak out—because I was not disabled.

Then they came for trans people—and I did not speak out—because I was not trans.

Then they came for gay people—and I did not speak out—because I was not gay.

Then they came for unionists—and I did not speak out—because I was not a unionist.

Then they came for Palestinians—and I did not speak out—because I was not Palestinian.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

[houseofpurplestars]

[Image id: a picture of Jasmine Sherman, a beautiful Black non-binary person. They wear multi-colored beaded braids, glasses, and a septum piercing. They look confident and capable. /end id]

If you pass up this opportunity to vote for a disabled Black femme enby, I won't listen to anything you have to say ever again.

[alwaysinbetweeninsaneandinsecure]

This family needs help fleeing Sudan. There are children, elders, and disabled people at risk in this family. Please give what you can & share!

[my-midlife-crisis]

[void-thegod]

Defund billionaires

Defund corporations

Defund the military/police

Defund the Vatican

...

Oh wow. Look at that.

Now let's just get rid of all the nazis and fascists in positions of power.

I wonder how.

Hmm.

How would we do this. Not just voting. Not just protesting. But.. maybe ALL the means we have available?

(Looks at rich people)(looks at people with more spoons than I have ever had)(looks at people who have had more love and support than I have/will ever have)

Hmm. Maybe NOT relying on your most disenfranchised, disillusioned, and disabled to do the heavy lifting would get this done faster. Unfortunately (normies?) Don't know how to treat brown, weird, queer, and crippled folks like humans a lot of the times..

So we are very much here. Despite having -negative life-force at this point.

[lesbianboyfriend]

Dustin Gibson argues that "race and disability were pathologized in a way that we can't separate them now.... I think we can't literally talk about ableism without talking about racism"; therefore, he continues, "I don't think that there's such thing as anti-Black ableism ... ableism is inherently anti-Black.”

Patrick Cokley similarly explains that in some regards "ableism is very much one and the same with racism because what we're really talking about is who has agency in our culture."

The relationship between racism and ableism (and other systems of op-pression) is most expansively articulated by TL Lewis, whom I quote at length in order to make clear not merely how Lewis and other Black disabled activists and cultural workers understand the relationships between these systems conceptually but also how this intersectional understanding shapes political approaches to social change. Lewis states:

I always chuckle about this because my brain doesn't disconnect them. There is no racism without ableism. There is no ableism without racism... you quite literally can't have one without the other.... There is a fundamental lack of understanding of the connections between racism and ableism, classism, and other structural and systemic oppressions that is killing us because if we understood those things—how they are connected, how there's an unbroken chain between asylums, plantations, zoos, circuses, and prisons—then we would be able to actually fight all of those things collectively and very differently.... [If we did make those connections,] then we would be able to have a much more holistic understanding of what is going on in our society but also a much stronger framework from which to unearth the histories... these collective histories and then dismantle the system—all of these systems....So long as we continue to allow people to think that it is just one or the other, we are going to keep spinning our wheels and not being able to identify the cause of the harm, which is all of these systems operating simultaneously.

Sami Schalk, Black Disability Politics

[theacecouple]

We have SO MANY awesome events coming up during Ace Week this year! Kicking things off on Sunday the 22nd, we have an Aspec book club!

More information about how to join on the Ace Week Website!

[girl-with-bones]

Hey. You. Yes, you.

Stop scrolling for a second. Breathe with me.

You don't need to decide who does and does not validly exist. You don't need to decide who is and is not guilty of crimes. You do not need to decide exactly who does and does not benefit from complex webs of systemic oppression.

Breathe with me again.

You do not need to have any part in any discourse. Keep practicing care and compassion for you fellow people, that's what really matters.

If you want to debate, go ahead. I know I do sometimes. But, one last time, breathe with me.

You don't have to be right. You don't have to be perfect. You're allowed to use debate as a way to figure out what YOU believe.

Figure out what causes YOU are for,

Then fight like hell for them. With kindness, support, rallies, donations, and yes, anger. Sometimes. Where it is due - not at your fellow activists.

But please, breathe with me.

If it feels like infighting, it probably is. You are allowed to just. Breathe.

[hussyknee]

People are really hung up on this idea that ambiguity affords protection, and that it's the same as privilege. As though having camouflage means you aren't hunted.

Only the oppressed are concerned with our own variation and degree of difference. There is no such ambiguity in the eyes of the oppressor. They don't care how like them you are, in fact being like them is all the more reason to punish you and keep you in your place. The project of exclusion is not to force conformity, it's to find people to make an example of so that others comply with the oppressor's hierarchial power structure and struggle desperately to conform. Exclusion is purely a show of power. The more people try to conform, the more they fail, the more can be made examples of. This is how systems of oppression propagate themselves.

Identity politics focuses on defining ourselves by the extent to which we are punished as individual groups, and under what criteria. It imagines a rational and restrained power matrix that metes out punishment according to the degree of difference and perceived threat. A methodical, conscientious, if misguided, gardener pruning a rose bush, rather than a brutal machinery that has invented arbitrary rationales to eat the human bodies it needs to sustain itself. Instead of building a coalition around the fact that we're all being hunted by the same beasts, idpol would rather build a hierarchy of prey animals according to the ways we will be skinned and cooked, stopping only short of putting us on a menu with accompanying prices.

This is the project of hyperindividualist neoliberalism, that is culturally entrenched in the West at every level. It's what drives the destructive identity discourses and leftist in-fighting that use trauma as currency. When you define yourself according to the appetite of the thing that wants to eat you, you end up weirdly attached to the romance of being eaten, and are loath to give it up.

[alpaca-clouds]

Respectability Politics suck

Okay, let me talk about respectibility politics and why they suck. The face eating tiger party is gonna eat your face, believe it or not.

And hey, this is a topic that even concerns fanwork and shipping and all of that.

I understand that to many Respectability Politics is a word that gets thrown around a lot, but from what I see a lot of people are not quite sure of the exact meaning.

So, basically Respectability Politics is when a marginalized group tries to police parts of their own culture to be more accepted by the majority culture of whatever country they life in. While not the origin of this, the most classical example of this is queer folks trying to push other queer folks into going into more normative, nuclear families. To further the narrative of "we are not so different from you, love is love!" As such quite a few aspects of queer culture (like cruising, for example, but also ballroom culture and such) were socially frowned upon from those queer folks who were trying to seek acceptance by the majority culture.

Which is exactly also what is happening with those queer folks, who try to exclude trans people. and Those trans people trying to exclude non-binary folks. And trans medicalists, and so on and so forth.

It is also seen within general feminism - where this always has been a big thing. "Sure, I want voting rights, but do you really have to wear trousers?!"

Of course this extends to every other marginalized group. My white ass does not have the right to talk about Black civil rights for the most part, but just think of those people who would go "that is not how you ask for it" when it comes to Black Lives Matter and the like.

Or, for example, in the Disability Rights groups, where some people are trying to exclude some other folks. Or are pushing for a "everybody should want to be healed" narrative.

It really is all around.

We see it within fandom culture, too. The entire "proshipping"/"antishipping" thing expesically nothing but Respectability Politics. Be it respectability politics for fandom culture - or for queer culture, because both things are so closely related.

But the thing is this: No matter how much those people pushing for Respectability Politics do that... they will never be accapted by majority culture. They will be used as pawns for those more right leaning folks on the side of the majority culture to go: "See, even the XY agree with us. It is just XY extremists who see it differently and extremism is bad actually!" But make no mistakes: If those right leaning folks manage to push for laws against any minority group, those laws will be acted out against EVERYONE within that minority group, not just the "deviants".

Because here is the thing: the people who think of queerness as something bad and unnatural, will not leave you alone just because you and your gay husband/wife mime a nuclear family perfectly. They will still hate you, vandalize your house and what not. They might just go for the more "deviant" queers, first.

So, yeah. Fuck Respectability Politics. They do not get you anywhere. And when you need to give up part of yourself and your culture to be accepted, you are not accepted at all.