disability--race

I have an ambivalent relationship with my subscription to New Mobility. NM was one of the first things I allowed myself to read when I began this journey. I was deeply fascinated by the way other people "did" disability. Gazillions of ads for things I didn't need, but didn't know existed. Then, there were occasional how-tos that I did need. I felt in claiming my NM, I was claiming my place in the world.

As it turns out, I would have been better off with subscriptions to Mouth and/or the Ragged Edge; I soon found NM boring. The majority of the columnists were older than me, whiter than me, and maler than me. I still found the articles mildly appealing, but I was considering ending my subscription when I discovered that there was a photograph of a non-white woman on the cover. This spurred me to action. Was NM breaking with its past? I looked for other signs of non-whiteness, but found precious few. I wrote to NM -- race! People of colour! -- not enough. NM was somewhat ungracious in its response but admitted it wanted to be a little different. They chided me for undercounting by one -- I never guess from name alone: LaTara Jones is probably not male, but she might be of any ethnicity.

I stuck with NM, weirdly, though. Probably out of loyalty to that first intimation of community. There were a couple of hints at racial and ethnic differencs. A face here and there (though most of the advertising remains white). A terrible article on racial prejudice and assistance from unknown people. Imagine my shock and surprise, then, on finding in this month's issue a piece on the minoritization of people of colour in the disability community (subscription only). Had NM actually struck the motherlode?

Well, not exactly. (I'm hard to please). But I did learn some stuff -- ADAPT has a more racially diverse membership than basically any other disability related group, particularly in AZ, CA, DC, and TX. The reason seems to be that ADAPT's issues in those areas matter to disabled people of colour. OK. That's a good first step towards bringing poc into the movement.

NM, misspelling Judy Heumann's name, offers the following case for the lack of brown faces: "there were logistical reasons in the past why they disability rights movement was mainly made-up of white individuals. Unlike today, there was no accessible public transportation and it was difficult to get around. Moreover, people lived in more segregated settings, which often guided their relationships." This is a direct quote from NM, but it seems, I hope at least, to be a paraphrase of JH herself. It's not enough to say the movement didn't include black people because there needed to be accessible buses before black people could get a foot in the door. It's not like all the white people involved lived in the same area ...

Many hundreds of years of race history doesn't just go away because everyone is sitting in chairs. The model, itself, is not easily aligned with cultural understandings of disability in other racial and ethnic groups. Disability itself runs into tension with liberalism -- here, here, but best of all here -- add race to the mix and the whole thing implodes.

The conclusion is weak: "systemic acceptance" of difference is a nice idea, but it will not be enough. The DRM needs to be open to change. Some of the articulations of core principles will change. The safety and familiarity will change. Passive acceptance and charitable tolerance are not enough.


NOTE: the other end also needs some work, as NM reminds us, not every movement run by people of colour is welcoming to those of us with disability. Open up, you all! We're at the door.