In her newest book, Black Disability Politics, Dr. Sami Schalk, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies on the University of Wisconsin-Madison discusses the parallels between racial activism and advocacy for those with disabilities. Relying heavily on research, the book partners the archives of the Black Panther Party and the National Black Women’s Project with interviews of present day Black disabled cultural staff. ESSENCE recently spoke with Schalk about her book, set for release October 31, and the role that systemic oppression plays in disability politics.

For many who may not have familiarity with Black disability politics, are you able to define what it’s?

SAMI SCHALK (SS): I define disability politics generally as engagement with disability as a social and political issue moderately than as simply a person and medical concern. Black disability politics specifically then are anti-ableist arguments and actions performed by Black cultural staff which address disability socially and politically inside the contexts of anti-Black racism. Black disability politics are sometimes performed in solidarity with disabled people collectively, but Black disability political work doesn’t necessarily center traditional disability rights language and approaches, akin to disability pride or civil rights inclusion. The book identifies and analyzes examples of Black disability politics so as to correct the frequent overlooking and misrecognition that has typically occurred in scholarly evaluations of disability in Black activism and culture.

What life experience or realization inspired you to jot down this book?

SS: I’ve been studying in the sector of disability studies for a very long time, ever since I took a category called Women & Disability as a sophomore in college. Even then I used to be really eager about how disability studies didn’t talk loads about race and the way in my Black literature and Black feminism classes, disability wasn’t being talked about with the identical critical lens because it was in my disability studies class—if disability was talked about in any respect. In my time as a disability studies scholar, I actually have often been the one Black person within the room. In my experiences with Black liberation work, I actually have often been the one person talking about disability and accessibility. This book got here from wanting to lift up and expand my community of Black individuals who care deeply about disability as a political and social issue, especially Black disabled people. I didn’t wish to be the one person within the room anymore. So I wrote the book to focus on and honor a few of the cultural staff who’ve done or are doing this work and to supply a theoretical framework to assist more people understand how and why Black disability politics may look different from the mainstream, predominantly white disability rights movement. 

“In my time as a disability studies scholar, I actually have often been the one Black person within the room. In my experiences with Black liberation work, I actually have often been the one person talking about disability and accessibility.”

In keeping with your research, what’s the correlation between Black Activism and disability advocacy work?

SS: Black activism has often included disability advocacy work, but Black activists don’t all the time use the word disability. As an alternative they could discuss a selected health condition or disease that particularly impacts Black people like sickle cell anemia and diabetes or they could use words like health, healing, and wellness to explain what is basically disability advocacy work. Historically, Black activism has responded to racist violence and racist neglect which produces disability inside Black communities like police violence, medical discrimination, or clean water access in ways in which no less than acknowledge if in a roundabout way address disability. 

Moreover, as I discuss in my book, Black activists have also sometimes partnered with disability activists on issues directly impacting each communities, akin to when the Black Panther Party worked with mental disability activists to fight against the creation of UCLA Center for the Study of Violence which might have used state funds to check various types of psychosurgery, particularly on “urban” populations and folks who had been institutionalized, including those in prison psych wards. The Panthers understood this might disproportionately goal low and no income Black people, and so that they partnered with mental disability activist groups who were also concerned to stop the funding for the middle. 

Your book also goes in depth about Black disability politics as a part of the National Black Women’s Health Project. Are you able to share a few of the legacy of that work?

SS: The National Black Women’s Health Project was a health education, advocacy, and empowerment organization for Black women by Black women began in 1981 as a project inside the National Women’s Health Network, and it became an independent non-profit organization in 1984 with its base in Atlanta, Georgia. The organization desired to empower Black women with the knowledge and support obligatory to give you the chance to take an energetic part in caring for his or her physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. They did this by taking an intersectional and specifically Black feminist approach to addressing health disparities and health crises for Black women. The National Black Women’s Health Project’s activities included grassroots health self-help groups, national conferences on Black women’s health, Black women’s leadership institutes, sponsored research, policy lobbying, and programs akin to Walking for Wellness, which encouraged more physical activity, and Plain Talk, which created dialogue about sex and sexuality between Black moms and daughters. 

From 1988 to 1996, the Project operated the Center for Black Women’s Wellness in Atlanta, a wellness center and clinic in a public housing neighborhood which provided free health screenings, vocational training, and support programs for Black women living with different chronic healthy conditions like HIV/AIDS, diabetes, and hypertension. In 2002, the organization modified its name to the National Black Women’s Health Imperative and that organization still exists today. The legacy of this work is so essential because this organization showed how critical it’s to have health data specific to certain gendered racial groups like Black women so as to understand where health disparities exist and why. 

“We can’t be free as Black people unless we learn to deal with disability as a systemic oppression issue that works together with race, gender, class, and sexuality to oppress and harm people.”

What are some takeaways that you prefer to for readers to achieve by reading your book?

SS: One thing I’d like readers to remove from this book is that Black people have been doing anti-ableist work and excited about disability politics in our own communities in our own ways for a very long time. Simply because it doesn’t look the identical or use the identical words as disability rights sometimes doesn’t mean that it’s not essential work against an ableist society. The second thing that I’d like readers to remove from this book is that there isn’t a Black liberation without disability justice, and there isn’t a disability justice without Black liberation. We can’t be free as Black people unless we learn to deal with disability as a systemic oppression issue that works together with race, gender, class, and sexuality to oppress and harm people. All Black individuals are impacted by ableism, because, ableism which is discrimination against disabled people based on the concept people whose bodyminds look or function otherwise from the norm are broken or bad and in need of treatment, cure, and/or personal work to alter to be more just like the norm, supports the function of racism. We cannot dismantle one without dismantling the opposite. 

Learn more about Professor Sami Schalk and her latest book, Black Disability Politics here. This book has been published with complete open access online; downloadable PDFs of every chapter could be found here.