Description
What is the difference between Disability Rights and Deaf Rights, and Disability Justice? Please read “Disability Justice: A Working Draft”
Please consider the following quote:
While a concrete and radical move forward toward justice for disabled people, the Disability Rights Movement simultaneously invisibilized the lives of peoples who lived at intersecting junctures of oppression—disabled people of color, immigrants with disabilities, queers with disabilities, trans and gender non-conforming people with disabilities, people with disabilities who are houseless, people with disabilities who are incarcerated, people with disabilities who have had their ancestral lands stolen, amongst others…Disability Justice activists, organizers, and cultural workers understand that able-bodies supremacy has been formed in relation to other systems of domination and exploitation. The histories of white supremacy and ableism are inextricably entwines, both forged in the crucible of colonial conquest and capitalist domination. One cannot look at the history of US slavery, the stealing of indigenous lands, and US imperialism without seeing the way that white supremacy leverages ableism to create a subjugated ‘other’ that is deemed less worthy/able/smart/capable… We cannot comprehend ableism without grasping its interrelations with heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism. Each system benefits from extracting profits and status from the subjugated ‘other.’ 500+ years of bodies and minds deemed ‘dangerous’ by being non-normative.
A Disability Justice framework understands that all bodies are unique and essential, that all bodies have strengths and needs that must be met. We know that we are powerful not despite the complexities of our bodies, but because of them… Disability Justice holds a vision born out of collective struggle, drawing upon the legacies of cultural and spiritual resistance within a thousand underground paths, igniting small persistent fires of rebellion in everyday life. Disabled people of the global majority–black and brown people–share common ground confronting and subverting colonial powers in our struggle for life and justice. There has always been resistance to all forms of oppress, as we know through our bones that there have simultaneously been disabled people visioning a world where we flourish, that values an celebrates us in all our myriad beauty.
Patty Berne, “Skin, Tooth, and Bone—The Basis of Our Movement Is People: A Disability Justice Primer.”Reproductive Health Matters 25 (May 2017); 149-150
- Reflect on how you would contribute to the disability justice movement here in the US and globally. Provide 2 examples for each country. In order to complete this assignment, view the images, watch the videos, and read the articles in the section on disability justice and anti ableist organizing (Part 1)
- How could you advocate for and support the full inclusion of people with disabilities in communities in which you consider yourself a member (i.e. cultural, county of origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation)? How will you bring the concepts and issues explored this semester beyond the classroom? Provide a concrete example.
- Reconsider your first encounter with disability (yours or someone else’s) through the lens of the concepts and issues we explored this semester that resonated with you the most. How have these two concepts furthered your thinking and shifted your perspective about disability?
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