#KripHop As a Change Maker

Back in 2016, I was in a private chat room and witnessed an ambitious, aggressive, disability rights activist dis KripHop and one of its founders, Leroy Moore. The same activist was lobbing ad hominem attacks on me as well, but what matters here is a stain of internalized ableism and hierarchy of disability within the criticism of KripHop as a force for change.

  It was disturbing to witness this behavior from an activist who should have known better. Someone who I presumed was informed about the history of every hip-hop genre as a voice for dissent and transformative change in the world. But disability rights are rampant with this subtle form of internalized ableism, deeply embedded in the presumption of incompetence. This activist should have had our backs. Instead, full of their own view that only certain types of physical disability are somehow more competent to achieve than developmental disability, they trolled this form of delivering the message of civil rights to audiences in a form they are more willing to hear. Said activist probably never heard a KripHop joint.  I posted Krip-Hop Nation's Hub Week performance above so everyone can hear it instead of dissing it in ignorance of how it speaks truth to power.

I chose to write about this last week because I was expecting my KripHop comic book, the next expansion of the KripHop social justice project, in the mail. I had no idea that this would be the week comedian Hasan Minhaj would choose hip-hop as his topic.

KripHop Comic first edition.©Leroy Moore 

In this week's episode of the Netflix series Patriot Act,  Hasan Minhaj used humor to discuss how hip-hop is impacting geopolitics. The most striking moment of this segment was about the THRap hip-hop group  Rap Against Dictatorship, whose protest rap song, "What My Country's Got"  was inspired by Childish Gambino's "This Is America." As rap becomes a resurgent global vehicle to express dissent and artists literally risk their freedom and this lives to speak truth to power in defiance of oppressive regimes, KripHop is still being dismissed by those who hold the largest platforms within our disability justice community while it continues to expand globally just as quickly as mainstream hip-hop.

The music video for "What My Country's Got,"  has garnered 58 million views and counting on YouTube. "What My Country's Got recreates the most graphic scene from the Thammasat University massacre, and was shot in one take.  Thammasat was Thailand's Tiananmen Square protest moment. Imagine the courage of Rap Against Dictatorship to even consider recording and posting such a video. KripHop Worldwide collective rappers globally are possessed of the same valor, and rapping with the same intensity. They take the stage to fearlessly confront stereotypical ableism and demand acceptance as they are. Within a greater movement where the continuance of a very clear hierarchy of disability persists and one's own colleagues don't take the time to educate themselves about the collective and the way it drives change, this project needs such valor and heart.

Sadly missing from Minhaj's discourse was any mention of  KripHop, despite the same critical importance to our causes, our intersected community's culture, and living history. KripHop Nation, given the funding and platforms needed to grow and allow the collective to get its message out to wider audiences, has the potential to be just as impactful a transformative change agent. This begins with our own community members suspending their dismissal and disbelief and supporting  KripHop and other disability justice collectives' labor in the struggle for disability justice. Watching Minhaj's discourse on hip-hop's global impact, in general, might be a good start. Reaching out to founders Leroy Moore and Keith Jones would help too.

Some don't care for hip-hop in general; so that is a preference. But for Intersected disabled folk, this is part of our culture and like spoken word and music, is part of our historical method of delivering truth and expressing dissent. So what we all need to ask ourselves when we are discussing not just disabled culture but activism, is what it means when KripHop is excluded from the disability justice conversation.

There are ways we can all support this cause and make it relevant. Buy the KripHop Comic for your libraries, groups, and projects. Cite it in your academic papers. Invite the KripHop Collective to your universities and all places where folk are receptive to music with a message.

Most importantly, when disability rights activist colleagues diss or dismiss the labor of KripHop or any activist collective addressing the concerns of marginalized community members speak up and call them out on their ableism.

I'm going to go read KripHop volume one to my wheelchair-using disabled brown son.

Peace.

Sojourner Truth Was A Disabled Social Justice Activist

Truth is powerful and it prevails.

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth, albumen silver print, circa 1870
from the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

It's Black History Month, and the corporate response to this year's remembrance is to finally lead with Sojourner Truth. They might tell you her name was Isabella Baumfree, although she left her slave name behind when she gained freedom. They might tell you she escaped her bondage with her infant daughter. They might add she successfully went to the U.S. court system and sued to free her son from bondage. They might post all or part of her iconic speech some titled "Ain't I A Woman?"

What few if any will mention, so I mention it every February, is that Sojourner Truth became a famous human rights activist and Black feminist after suffering repeated physical and emotional injury at the hands of her slaveholders.

So when you read about Sojourner Truth, understand that she was a disabled black feminist who went on to become a public speaker despite not knowing how to read or write,  learned about and understood the justice system enough to enlist help and use it to fight for her son's freedom outright rather than try spiriting him through the underground railroad. She recruited Black soldiers to fight for the Union Army during the Civil War. She eventually became a property owner through her own efforts. She accomplished all this while living with the effects of surviving physical and emotional abuse and pain that defined the arc of her life.

People question Sojourner Truth's competence to deliver speeches in English and point to the conflicting voices in her memoir.  I actually don't. As professor Jewon Woo points out in "Performing Bodies and Performative Texts," Sojourner Truth's illiteracy did not deny her agency in the creation of literature related to her life experiences or speeches. Per Professor Woo, "that the lack of her own authorial voice paradoxically highlights Truth’s control over their writings. I argue that because her story was not being fixed by one scribal voice, Truth could weaken the authority of literate others and present herself as a central force of various observers’ writings collected in the Narrative. " Professor Woo's work aligns with the presumption of competence rarely granted to disabled people. 

We know Sojourner Truth went on mass speaking tours with other emancipated slaves, and we know she obviously could not give speeches across America in Dutch, nor could she have recruited English speaking  Black soldiers who were emancipated slaves into the army speaking Dutch.

There is this lack of willingness to accept that history is always written as if freedom and any level of competence for African Americans came exclusively from white abolitionists' singular efforts and not a united effort where African Americans were equal partners in their own liberation.

For someone who was disabled and a woman from what was then one of the most marginalized groups to create a successful career as a public speaker and generate a memoir with support from literate abolitionists also defies modern presumptions of incompetence that cast an ableist shadow over the lives of adults with neurodivergent labels like nonverbal autism, where literacy is often denied them because of structural ableism. Probably the greatest barrier to literacy for nonverbal autistic people is a structural ableist attitude that insists making any genuine effort to make neurodivergent nonspeakers literate is a waste of time.

We have evidence that many literate slaves defied unjust laws and threats to their lives and taught others by lamplight in secret. Holes were literally dug in the ground for this exact purpose. The presumption that she would not speak in the dialect written during her speech shows a lack of willingness to understand the successes disabled people have had throughout history in creating and customizing adaptive solutions to barriers by disabled adults as well.

 Because of conflicting historical accounts of Sojourner Truth's life, how she spoke English remains a mystery. There is no recording of her speech and sparse and conflicting outlines of her life. We do know that she enlisted the help of literate abolitionist friends like Olive Gilbert, to write her memoir. I am trilingual. I can assure you that if you grow up around more than one language, disabled or not, you can learn to grasp many languages because your brain is prepared to simply code switch when needed. To this day, African Americans code switch from AAVE to English by necessity. Why is it hard for historians to fathom that Sojourner Truth may have done the same? 

I also need to point out that the narrative of Sojourner Truth's life intersected race, religion and political ambitions and agendas. This complicates accurate views of her life since Christians used her to stand for evangelical devotion, abolitionists used her to represent the reason their cause was just, and political forces needed her to recruit Blacks for war. 

When you read about Sojourner Truth today, remember everything she accomplished after freedom was accomplished as a Disabled Black Woman. She dared to be a feminist when Black women were made to march behind so as not to upset white Southern feminists. She dared to do what no one else had done and yet her disabled identity is ignored or erased.

 Right now, in the age of infantilization, ableism, hate crimes against marginalized people and the presumption of incompetence, remembering Sojourner Truth and reclaiming her Black Disabled feminist identity need to happen.

Here's her groundbreaking speech as reported by Marius Robinson, and the later version by Gage. Read it understanding that this was a woman who was disabled and neurodivergent and instill disability pride in your loved ones of color.

The Speech

1851 version reported by Robinson

Marius Robinson, who attended the convention and worked with Truth, printed the speech as he transcribed it on June 21, 1851, issue of the Anti-Slavery Bugle.

One of the most unique and interesting speeches of the convention was made by Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave. It is impossible to transfer it to paper or convey any adequate idea of the effect it produced upon the audience. Those only can appreciate it who saw her powerful form, her whole-souled, earnest gesture, and listened to her strong and truthful tones. She came forward to the platform and addressing the President said with great simplicity: "May I say a few words?" Receiving an affirmative answer, she proceeded:

I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a woman's rights. [sic] I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman have a pint, and a man a quart – why can't she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much, – for we can't take more than our pint'll hold. The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don't know what to do. Why children, if you have woman's rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won't be so much trouble. I can't read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept and Lazarus came forth. And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your part? But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.

The Speech reported by Gage

This appears in History of Women's Suffrage

Matilda Joslyn Gage's version appears in 1863 and while there is evidence of Truth's agency in the transcription of Robinson's version of her speech, the same is not true for Gage's version here:

"Wall, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be somethin' out o' kilter. I tink dat 'twixt de n[expletive]s of de Souf and de womin at de Norf, all talkin' 'bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all dis here talkin' 'bout?

"Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place!" And raising herself to her full height, and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked. "And a'n't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! (and she bared her right arm to the shoulder, showing her tremendous muscular power). I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And a'n't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear de lash as well! And a'n't, I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos' all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And a'n't I a woman?

"Den dey talks 'bout dis ting in de head; what dis dey call it?" ("Intellect," whispered some one near.) "Dat's it, honey. What's dat got to do wid womin's rights or n[expletive]'s rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yourn holds a quart, wouldn't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?" And she pointed her significant finger, and sent a keen glance at the minister who had made the argument. The cheering was long and loud.

"Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wan't a woman! Whar did your Christ come from?" Rolling thunder couldn't have stilled that crowd, as did those deep, wonderful tones, as she stood there with outstretched arms and eyes of fire. Raising her voice still louder, she repeated, "Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to do wid Him." Oh, what a rebuke that was to that little man.

Turning again to another objector, she took up the defense of Mother Eve. I can not follow her through it all. It was pointed, and witty, and solemn; eliciting at almost every sentence deafening applause; and she ended by asserting: "If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese women togedder (and she glanced her eye over the platform) ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now dey is asking to do it, de men better let 'em." Long-continued cheering greeted this. "'Bleeged to ye for hearin' on me, and now ole Sojourner han't got nothin' more to say."

UPDATE: The original post cited Sojourner Truth had ID based on TBI as her primary disability. While this was well documented with Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth's memoirs refer to frequent beatings and abuse resulting in a disabled hand and neurodivergence which first manifested in hallucinations when she was enduring a period of sustained physical abuse by slaveowners.   

Because the original version of this post was called into question and it was implied that posts like mine might be considered fake news, I am now honor-bound to provide references for historical information to allow the post to remain published without the taint of fraud. I am always open and grateful for fact-checking because I am also the primary carer for a high support needs son and time constraints may cause errors in my blog posts, but it is was quite painful to note that such calls for fact-checking did not occur about the blog posts of any other blogger in our 889 member group prior to this post, and this makes me wonder how much of this demand was prompted by my race or the fact that I am discussing a disabled woman of color. 

Please note that because this is a blog post and not an academic or commercial publication,  I am simply listing the references without regard to style. KC

References:

Sojourner Truth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sojourner_Truth

Performing Bodies and Performative Texts, Jewon Woo

https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/159493/Woo_umn_0130E_14044.pdf?sequence=1

Resisting the Status Quo: The Narratives of Black Homeschoolers in Metro-Atlanta and Metro-DC, Cheryle Fields-Smith, University of Georgia, Monica Wells Kisura, Trinity Washington University

https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/pje/pje_volume_88_issue_3_2013/fields-smith_kisura.php

How the Suffrage Movement Betrayed Black Women, Brent Staples

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/suffrage-movement-racism-black-women.html

Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal: an African American Anthology, Rowman and Littlefield

https://books.google.com/books?id=CkxHDoN5WxYC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA67#v=onepage&q&f=false

 Narrative Of Sojourner Truth, Dictated by Sojourner Truth (ca.1797-1883); edited by Olive Gilbert; Appendix by Theodore D. Weld. 

Boston: The Author, 1850.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/truth/1850/1850.html

History of Women's Suffrage, edited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

 https://archive.org/details/historyofwomansu01stanuoft/page/n12 1. p. 116.

Sojourner Truth: a life, a symbol, Nell Irvin Painter

https://books.google.com/books?id=R2cqNLwUWXYC

Sojourner Truth, Bold Prophet: Why Did She Never Learn to Read? Carleton Mabee

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23178487?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

The waves of feminism, and why people keep fighting over them, explained

https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth

#DisabledWhileBlack; Missed Opportunity, #SerenaWilliams, Adaptive Wear, And Intersectionality

Image of a female form clothed entirely in black
 with a Black mask resembling a Black Panther,
she is leaning back against a tree with one arm
 draped over a branch and the other petting a large
 black panther, her fingers seeming to be scratching
the panther's head. The panther's teeth are bared.
credit Marvel.com.

The disability rights conversation around the French Open Committee banning of tennis champion Serena Williams compression catsuit took a singular turn on social media that merits further discussion.

For anyone who may have missed this, Ms. Williams needed a compression suit to reduce clot formation. @Nike created one for her in Black. The suit also had an emotional meaning to her as an athlete forced to make a comeback for the 'crime' of nearly dying giving birth to her daughter Olympia.

I witnessed disability activists discussing this from the perspective of accommodation for disability excluding the rest of Ms. Williams' identities when this entire episode is happening because of the combination of her roles in the African American experience,  her position as a role model for women in sports, African American women survivors of pregnancy and childbirth in our country, and career women punished for giving birth.

I was taken aback by a negative comment about the Black Panther movie reference when discussing the entire kerfuffle. For those who don't know, in the @Marvel Universe Shuri becomes the Black Panther, meaning the Black Panther superhero archetype can potentially transcend gender identities. The Black Panther movie also has historic cultural and emotional importance to our community.

So #SerenaWilliams saying she felt powerful in this catsuit has layers of intersectional meaning addressing how an accommodation for a medical condition can empower disabled bodies and how important character representation is to our disabled and our Black communities. She felt like a Black superhero at this moment and that means more because we now have such characters in major films representing us. For those of us who grew up with the first nonsegregated representations in all media expecting more but remaining disappointed for decades, Ms. Williams gave voice the reality that we feel; the realization of  a small dream deferred too long.  Giving voice to this matters to every young African American child and every Black child globally. It cannot be left out of the catsuit conversation or why this prompted an official to single out this particular suit as an example of what is unacceptable.

How Serena feels in the suit after overcoming a traumatic childbirth also matters and should be

Serena Williams in her awesome catsuit. Credit Nike.

included in any conversation as her high-risk birth was directly related to her health challenges. She is in fact, by virtue of her chronic health conditions, a disabled Black athlete. Sadly, no one in our community is stating the obvious, that despite internalized and externally strong ableism, Serena Williams is a disabled champion athlete who is continuing to compete with her nondisabled peers and defeating them. Making her, in fact, a living icon or hero.

You can take the superhero out of her costume, but you can never take away her superpowers. #justdoit pic.twitter.com/dDB6D9nzaD

— Nike (@Nike) August 25, 2018

Serena Williams' role as an African American woman who disclosed how she nearly died during childbirth and her struggle to return to health and the fitness needed to be a competitive tennis player again must be included in any disability conversation about the issue of accommodation for her tendency to create clots. 

I am an Afro-Latina disabled woman who nearly died in childbirth and in the fifteen years since the birth of my disabled son, I have not completely recovered. The efforts that African American women like Serena Williams and Beyonce have made to share their stories of survival, recovery, and self-nurturing are life-affirming to me and the thousands of others who have survived this trauma, as well as the families of women like Erica Garner, who have not. Her survival and recovery should be part of any conversation about her need for a compression catsuit.

The conversation about Serena's fashionable adaptive clothing is also a conversation about the fetishizing and patriarchal control over women's bodies. With the tremendous push for the acceptance of disabled bodies and our need for stylish adaptive clothing, this opportunity to discuss the topic was lost as well. 

I am asking disability rights activists to try not to compartmentalize and focus on a single disability aspect of an issue without addressing the intersectional aspects that combine to cause a problem. If the intersectional aspects of any event are something that can't be addressed by you that means that the voices of those who can understand the totality of a hot-button topic should be amplified. Comments that resent the Black Panther catsuit homage aspect of this, the disabled pregnancy and birth for African American disabled women aspect of this, in short, every angle of how this episode matters to our intersectional disabled community does not do this catsuit as adaptive clothing debate justice, and actually erases African American disabled women and treats adaptive clothing as something that is somehow segregated from disability and racial discrimination, disabled maternity, disabled career challenges and disabled POC representation.

#AutisticWhileBlack: At the Intersection of Ableism and Racism

 "Microaggressions are the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership"

from Diversity in the Classroom, UCLA Diversity & Faculty Development, 2014

Discussing racial microaggression is always challenging. Anyone who is rightfully called out for any deliberate or unintentional act of racism that to them may appear slight will deny their misstep in defiance of being branded a racist.

This fear of the consequences of being labeled racist has made having an open discussion about this class of oftentimes unintentional insult difficult. Attempts devolve into a  series of skirmishes in which those at fault react by gaslighting accusers into silence, then flip the script and call themselves the victims of hypersensitive minorities policing political correctness. This is something that perpetuates a kind of under the radar racism that is supported by counterattacks like the chastisement of so-called  'victimhood culture.'

Despite all this,  I am entering this moment of trying to speak truth to power through this example to open a dialog that might help reduce such behavior in the autism community with no hope that it will be understood much less heeded.

We are living in one of the worst times for racial aggression and maltreatment since the beginning of the New Jim Crow era.

Seeing racist constructs in an essay written by an author appropriating rare genetic disorders linked to people our race as a convenient literary allusion for any argument adds an additional layer of sad disappointment.

That was my initial reaction to such an allusion used in a disturbing essay about autism labeling by Stephen Prutsman.

This is the paragraph of his essay I mean:

"Consider for a moment if “African American” and “Sickle Cell Anemia” were grouped together; let’s call this hypothetical grouping “AASCA." For some, it would be a beautiful identity full of rich culture, heritage and uniqueness. For others, it is a serious blood disorder found predominately in people of African descent. One can only imagine the confusion, misunderstanding and pain that would ensue if scientists were to lump both under the same category."

The use of the term "African Americans" as a monolithic grouped object and "Sickle Cell Anemia" as an objectified construct in a literary allusion in this manner promotes the subliminal message of the "diseased Black" vs the "healthy Blacks." The reduction of a marginalized group to a construct and placement of a disabled subgroup within that population in implied opposition to the nondisabled group is not only ableist it is a dehumanization created solely to instill discomfort and guilt needed to win a written argument. This falls into a specific category of racial microaggression called microinvalidation.

No one who shares my race would use African American and Sickle Cell Anemia in any allusion about anything because right now, there is a crisis causing premature deaths in African American Sickle Cell patients directly due to race-related disparities in health care, health research, and education of medical teams.  Sickle cell patients suffer bouts of excruciating pain as impacted organs fail, and their suffering is frequently ignored by ER staff believing African Americans have a high tolerance for pain, an old stereotypical holdover from the age of using and abusing the Black body for medical experimentation. Add to this the stereotype that African Americans may be asking for opioids because they are more likely to be drug addicts and you have a perfect storm of racism.

Figure A shows normal red blood cells flowing freely in a blood vessel. The inset image shows a cross-section of a normal red blood cell with normal hemoglobin. Figure B shows abnormal, sickled red blood cells blocking blood flow in a blood vessel. The inset image shows a cross-section of a sickle cell with abnormal (sickle) hemoglobin forming abnormal strands (Information & media from U.S. Department of Health & Human Services) 

The allusion Prutsman makes of lumping  the rare genetic pool of Sickle Cell with the total population of African Americans makes absolutely no sense when in fact the ability to gain the  genetic counseling, services and supports African American Sickle Cell trait and disorder clients need absolutely requires identifying as either a carrier of the trait, or a patient needing health supports and services throughout their lives. Mr. Prutsman's allusion appears to show his complete lack of understanding about invisible and apparent disability and the importance of identity in gaining access to lifelong services and healthcare supports.

Every marginalized group within any community progress by reclaiming or owning labels used to limit or marginalize them and empowering such labels by making them part of a greater individual identity. The term "Black" was reclaimed when I was growing up, and as I and hundreds of other students of color in my generation entered all-white schools to insults, attacks, and abuse, James Brown's "I'm Black and I'm Proud" and similar reclamations of  skin color as identity kept our heads up.

Sickle Cell Trait and Sickle Cell disorders in all stages are both the disability and the disabled identity of those who are diagnosed.

There is a long, painful history involving the African American community and modern medicine and the lack of advancement in the supports and treatment of Sickle Cell patients in adulthood is part of it. We have been subjected to experimentation, sterilization without consent, endemic disparities in medical care that have created another race-based health crisis in America. We women who are African American are dying in pregnancy and childbirth in numbers not acceptable anywhere, much less in a so-called developed nation.

I have spent years trying to think of a way to explain the insult in stereotypical racial microaggressions ingrained in white society that use the monolithic construct of "African American" as an object in literary allusions that dog whistle racism as a method to make an example that they believe will offend others enough to hammer some trivial point home. In this example, I can only guess the author intended  to invoke a genetic illness which in his mind would evoke sufficient pity and validation as a catastrophic enough condition to make his essay readers uncomfortable when paired with "African American."

 But in this moment, where white people are calling 911 on young girls of color selling water, on this anniversary of the death of Tamir Rice, it is not acceptable to use African Americans and rare disabilities in any attempts to dominate the autism or any other unrelated conversation.

Researchers believe that the cumulative impact of racial microaggressions over the lifespan of a marginalized group are more damaging to minorities they target than any single blatant incident of overt racism. There are now ongoing attempts to make POC aware of these microaggressions so that they can act to reduce their impact. At the same time, professionals are trying to educate perpetrators of racial microaggressions while letting them know that intentional or not, such acts cause widespread harm to marginalized people.

Mr. Prutsman could have found any number of literary allusions to make his point without the misuse of African Americans and disabled African Americans. Futhermore, as the Black mother of an autistic son, the use of such offensive constructs alienates me and my disabled son from the autism conversation and this is unacceptable, because we have a right to representation in this community.

I created the hashtag AutisticWhileBlack because macro and microaggressions are embedded in the structure of autism advocacy and it needs to end. Let's begin to make to an effort to improve diverse representation in the autism conversation by not repeating combined racist-ableist gaffes like this one.


Further Reading:
Racial microaggressions in the life experience of Black Americans
By Sue, Derald Wing, Capodilupo, Christian M., Holder, Alisha M. B.
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Vol 39(3), Jun 2008, 329-336

Disparities in care of Sickle Cell Patients
Sickle Cell patients suffer as disparities in care and research persist

http://c-hit.org/2018/05/10/sickle-cell-patients-suffer-as-disparities-in-care-and-research-persist/

 Sickle Cell Patients Endure Discrimination, Poor Care, and Shortened LIves

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/11/04/561654823/sickle-cell-patients-endure-discrimination-poor-care-and-shortened-lives

 Sickle Cell Patients, Families, and Doctors Face a FIght for Everything

https://khn.org/news/sickle-cell-patients-families-and-doctors-face-a-fight-for-everything/

The Healthcare Crisis of Black Mothers
Black Mothers Keep Dying After Giving Birth. Shalon Irving's Story Explains Why
https://www.npr.org/2017/12/07/568948782/black-mothers-keep-dying-after-giving-birth-shalon-irvings-story-explains-why

Birthday Letter: Parenting Autism In The Age of Trump

I wrote this for my son on his birthday last December. It was painful and personal, and I withheld it for this many months without publishing it because it hurt so much to write it.

My son, surveys his backyard kingdom, holding
his iPad AAC device and wearing a sky blue t-shirt
that reads "Noncompliance is a social skill" available
@RealSocialskills photo © Kerima Cevik

 I was in doubt of many things after some post-election ugliness had visited our town, a sign of worse things to come. I remain concerned for his future and ours.

Happy Birthday Son,

In the 14 years since your birth, I have been forced to witness and experience some pretty sad and disturbing things. We are living in some very polarized, hate filled times. How will I be able to talk about this transition to your teens you are making that changes everything? But I must. Not because it will help you manage the legacy of trauma that is a part of from our racial heritage, but because talking about this is the only path to exorcising it from our futures.

You are 14 now, and I am not simply afraid. I am terrified.

Like your uncles and forefathers, you are big. It isn't just a matter of weight. You are a massive, tall, handsome 14-year-old. Not particularly large or small for our people. But your soft mustache and curly hair are making you look older. Then there is the look of awareness in your eyes. That is the thing that petrifies me. It is the look of understanding that might lead a policeman to misunderstand when you can't respond, to reach for a gun should you reach for your speech device, to shoot should you stand there trying to process why this police officer is shouting and conclude there must be danger and try to run away. No amount of police training or training of you on how to be a compliant brown body will change the statistics. The very high risk is that you, nonwhite and disabled, might meet catastrophe one day.

Those people who are supposed to provide therapies, supports, and services for you always ask me "How do you see your son in 10 years?" What the hell does that mean? I don't think in ten-year plans. I think in the only way we can think. I think in the universe of the breath. I inhale, wait, exhale that we are alive, in this moment, that we have survived harm another day in this now blatantly hyper violent world.

How I see you doesn't matter. How you see yourself matters. That stupid rhetorical query reeks of the presumption of your incompetence. The stench of the recalcitrant automatic mumbling of words that translate as "his cognition will remain static" and,"technology will not change the quality of your son's life." When in fact the largest improvements in the quality of your life did not come from the billions of dollars in autism research but in an idea that everyone thought was inane. The idea that became the iPad.

When I say they don't presume your competence I don't mean I want them to presume you are an autistic savant. It does not mean I expect you to wake up tomorrow with the ability to speak fluently and the ability to do 10-dimensional calculations in your head. The baseline gap between how the people who are supposed to be helping you view you and how you see yourself can be resolved by their simple adherence to the law. They need to accommodate you and stop asking me to tell them what you want when they actually don't care what you want or what I think about what you want.

One of my favorite photos of my son, age 5, in his wheels,
waiting for his ride to school. Image of a Latino presenting
male in a blue hooded coat, curly dark brown hair can be seen
just under the coat's hood. 

You are a teenager now. Remember that son.They must ask you to indicate a response to that aggravating query or any other question they have for you. This requires presenting the question in a communication structure that you are able to receive clearly, understand or try to grasp how you communicate and respect you enough to wait for and hear your response.  It isn't my life. It is yours. I cannot tell you how to be or where I want you to be in ten years.  Our goal as your parents is that no matter what happens, you survive, are safe, have lifelong community-based shelter, and that technology assists you to such a degree that you can live your autonomous life with minimally invasive supports or services.

They are supposed to be helping you and setting goals with you for you to meet.

They never speak of the elephant in the room, the fact that the world has shifted and we are now the objects of even greater hate than before. How does that fit into their transitioning youth plans? What are their ten-year plans for surviving that hatred, xenophobia,  that ableist racism?

How can you find your own way,  when everyone around you now works to diminish you?

Everyone will stand in your path and repeat what you can't do. You must will a path around that. Somehow, your father and I must survive this time of hate backlash and help you will that path. My son, you can do it. Find your own way and indicate to people what you want. Make your "voice", you will, heard. While we live, we will stand by your right to your agency in your own life. All you have to do is not give up.

Respect yourself no matter what others do or say to you, around you, or about you. Shake the insults off the way you shed water when you shoot upward in the pool or brush rain from your face.  Water is only good doing its job, cleansing or nourishing our bodies, our lands, our communities. Insults are like water. They are only useful doing their job. They don't reveal truths. They alert us that we are in the presence of those who would do us harm and that is their only purpose.  Remember the warning, and put either physical or mental space between those elements and you.


I want to see you here in ten years, vibrant as you are now, thriving. I want to see you happy, unafraid, unhurt.

I am usually not afraid of much at all. Thank goodness, I have lived a wonderful life. I've had several brushes with death, and therefore my soul is prepared. But I fear the rise in hate when it was already bad prior to the installation of the present administration. The weakest most spineless creatures have gained courage and they are out in force, saying the disabled should be euthanized, using black and brown bodies for target practice, shouting Muslims should be in camps. Keeping people from using public toilets as they once did my people.  And this time, I have not been able to abate this rising terror.

Your very name makes you a target. That fact is sadly ironic since you were named for a staunch secularist. You have no idea what this is all about. You are innocent of any understanding of what this means but your name, your great grandfather's name, may cause you to come to harm, and that has frozen me in fear.

And yet we must endure. We must continue to show compassion, mercy, and humanity. Not because the dream has been deferred beyond all recall, or because I believe love can cure all. But because it is our human right to live safely in our own homeland. We are Americans, my son. This is our home as much as any citizen's. We have a right to live here in peace.

Your opinion of yourself can elevate or devastate you.

I hope you know by now that you are loved. We have worked very hard to make that clear your entire life. There is no question that you are a wanted and welcomed member of our family. There was great joy when you and I survived your birth. But what is more important, and what I want you to take forward into the rest of your life is that you are respected here. When society is structured to discriminate against you because of your racial, ethnic, and neurological heritage, remember we are here, in your heart, we are your haven.

Remember I am not or was ever ashamed to be in this black body. I am proud to wear the visible genetic legacy of my ancestors. Each time another person gets away with murder, it is society's shame not ours. That is not the fault of our skin color or any divergence in us. That is the burden of those who facilitate and enable the harm that is escalating against us.  It is important that you never be ashamed of who you are, and have patience and understanding of yourself as you are.

Don't stop communicating however you can.

If you cannot use verbal speech that doesn't matter. What matters is that when a means to communicate is presented to you, you take full advantage of it and use it to make your voice heard. I know it isn't easy. Being oppressed means that attempts will be made to instill the feeling in you that you are less than your peers, that you are lacking, that you don't, or can't. Don't ingest that poisonous rhetoric. How others see you is something you can build with your own will. Your will is prodigious. That is your strength and your genius. That indomitable will that never gives up the goal you set for yourself. Go after communicating son.  Make yourself heard. They can't speak for you if you have a voice that exists whether it comes through your vocal chords or not.

Don't allow anyone or anything to goad you into anger. Inciting anger is a trap that creates an excuse to harm you.

Mu with his second iPad AAC, wearing sunglasses,
trying to decide he really wants to leave the house. Yes, blue is
his favorite color; he's wearing his blue polo and gray
shorts. ©Kerima Cevik

This is a label that is forced on us, and we must not allow others to try and enslave us through this lie. We are not inappropriately angry people. It is not wrong to be angry about injustice, about harm, and about wrongs sanctioned by those who claim to wish to protect society and defend it. Anger in and of itself serves a purpose as long as it doesn't drive your actions. But anger should not be a badge forced upon us. Do not allow it son! You have the patience of Job. Remember to keep applying that patience to your life regardless of what people who may wish you ill try to do to push reactions from you. I know you can do this son! You are a great personality and I want everyone to know the depths of kindness and compassion you display. Remember what I said. What people try to label you is not what matters. Who you are and how you define yourself matters. Anger is meant to be a flash of emotion that passes like a lightning storm. You show us that the false stereotype of the silent, violent, autistic male is just that. Don't allow situations or people to gaslight you into accepting states of mind or states of being that are not in your nature.

Remind me and others that you are not a child.

All parents have to be reminded that their children are growing up and growing older. I will get nostalgic, I may waver. I may have the best of intentions but treating you like you aren't a teenager is wrong. It is your job to remind me. It is going to take more than your burgeoning mustache. You have to be courageous as you are son; and stand up for your right to increasingly have a say in your own life, even if that means standing up to me, your aging mother. That is your task my darling, to advocate for yourself. It is mine to get out of your way and allow you to do that as much as I can before I'm no longer here.

Never neglect yourself.

Care of self, remember Mu. The body you occupy is the only thing you have that is truly and uniquely yours for as long as you need it. It is your spaceship in this cruel, alien land. Take care of yourself and your home environment as much as you can. Take care of your mental health, your hygiene, your dental health. Do whatever you need to do to remind yourself you matter. Rest when you should. Health is something you can't regain once you've lost it. My life was at times very hard, and as you know, my health has suffered from this.

I am still terrified. Every day we step out of our front door. Into our backyard. I am afraid they will harm us. But I am also very proud of you. You are growing up.

I do love you with all my heart, my son. I don't know what the future holds for us. Things are looking very grim. But more than love, I respect you. Live the rest of your life knowing that if only me, your father and your sister respect you, that is more respect than most have all their lives and all the proof you need to respect yourself.

Have the happiest of birthdays Mustafa. May we all survive the next ten years.

Love, always,
Mom


NOTE:
The v-neck shirt is designed by Ruti Regan and available in limited edition lots at https://www.bonfire.com/real-social-skills-t-shirt/
Photographs are posted with permission of the subject

#AutisticWhileBlack: Justice For Marcus Abrams

Marcus Abrams after his encounter with police.
Image of the face of an African American male
with injuries to his face Credit City Pages

On Monday, August 31, 2015,  17-year-old Marcus Abrams, legally blind and autistic, was the victim of a catastrophic encounter with Metro Transit police in Minnesota.  Marcus, now accused of punching an off-duty police officer working security at a nightclub, is being scheduled for a competency hearing. He brought suit against the officer who was dismissed from the force and Abrams won a small settlement. Yet here is what the City Pages first reported about what happened back in 2015:

"Tuesday night after Black Lives Matter St. Paul wrapped up its protest of Gov. Mark Dayton, the group gathered in front of the governor’s mansion to hear sisters Jacqueline Vaughn and Neenah Caldwell recount a harrowing interaction between their 17-year-old brother and police.
Vaughn told the crowd that on Monday evening her brother, Marcus Abrams, who is legally blind and autistic, "was coming home from the State Fair and off of Lexington and University was beaten brutally by the police. He was beaten so bad he was in a seizure and declared dead for 15 minutes." She added that police accused her brother of being under the influence.
According to Metro Transit spokesman Howie Padilla, police were driving by the Lexington station at about 7 p.m. that day when they saw Abrams on the light rail tracks, “a dangerous situation for anybody.” Officers asked Abrams to get off the tracks, so the teen jumped back on the platform. Officers then began to question him.
What happened afterward is under review. Video footage of the station is not yet available to the public and Padilla isn’t ready to confirm exactly what led officers to take Abrams to the ground. He said the teen suffered a split lip, though if Abrams also went into a seizure, it would have been beyond the officers’ ability to recognize it definitively.
Padilla said officers eventually called medics and took Abrams to the hospital, where they discussed what happened with his mother. Abrams’ mother said she intended to file a complaint, though has not done so as of Wednesday afternoon.
“After the mother notified us of the teen’s challenges and issues, we determined that he should go home with his mother rather than the juvenile detention center,” Padilla says.
On Tuesday, Vaughn said it was a witness who called an ambulance to take her brother to the hospital."

60 #BLM protestors marching to the Governor's office. Credit
City pages.

Marcus, now 19, suffered a seizure from the beating and was declared dead for fifteen minutes. Please explain how someone legally blind goes from being beaten to having to face charges of attacking an off-duty policeman and now facing a competency hearing? The rapid deterioration and perversion of this case force back haunting memories of the case of Neli Latson. Beyond tactile issues and issues of gait and sensory concerns that have very little to do with competency but are part of an Autism diagnosis, as someone who was blind for a time there is nothing more invasive than being touched without one's consent. It is terrifying regardless of the degree of disability to have some random hands laid on you by people who you may not be able to see well enough to identify. 

Note the lines I highlighted. 1. Abrams followed instructions but was later subjected to such a beating that he had a seizure. 2. The officers' ability to recognize a man having a seizure was said to probably be beyond their abilities. 3. It was a witness who called an ambulance to take Marcus to the hospital. Video footage was not released to the public. It would be revealed later that Marcus was placed in a chokehold preceding the beating.

I don't know if there is video footage from this latest accusation of assault where he was also tasered.
I can't imagine what a taser does to someone with a seizure disorder.

The story of Marcus Abrams is parallel to the story of Reginald "Neli" Latson. After four years of everyone sitting on their hands and Neli suffering the permanent effects of being placed in solitary confinement,  people came together to help Neli's attorneys and they at least freed him from one hell, that of the criminal justice system, but he is still being held in confinement within a facility in the mental health system when he should never have been in either place.

Will we sit on our hands and watch another young man, blind and autistic while black, have his life destroyed like Neli's? Someone has to act now. Someone needs to reach out to #BLM in Minnesota, to his mother and sisters, to his attorney. This time, let's do something before he is irrevocably harmed. 

Let's see how well the white activists who usurped the voices all too familiar with the narrative of the black disabled victims of catastrophic encounters with police step up to the plate now and fight for those whose victimization and subsequent unjust criminalization they've profited from. This is where the bill, for individuals who treat the black disabled body like data to be collected for discourse and display and the human victims of horrific harm like revenue streams and potential training, speaking, and writing for pay fodder can learn what true advocacy means. Marcu Adams should not be stripped of his civil rights and committed to a mental institution. Time to save a life about to be destroyed. 

DO SOMETHING. 

#SaveMarcusAbrams, #Blind and #AutistcWhileBlack

Resources:

The Case of Marcus Abrams

http://www.citypages.com/news/metro-transit-reviewing-alleged-beating-of-autistic-teen-marcus-abrams-7626159

http://www.citypages.com/news/black-lives-matter-shuts-down-the-governors-neighborhood-reveals-new-police-brutality-case-7622827

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/06/29/teen-suspected-of-hitting-officer-will-undergo-competency-exam

The Case of Neli Latson

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ruth-marcus-in-virginia-a-cruel-and-unusual-punishment-for-autism/2014/11/14/9d7f6108-6c3b-11e4-b053-65cea7903f2e_story.html?utm_term=.957b98e26dd5

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ruth-marcus-why-is-reginald-latson-being-denied-the-help-he-needs/2014/11/28/a6c5e2c0-771f-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html?utm_term=.69fe33fdbba3

Reginald Latson's case points to a major scandal in US prisons:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ruth-marcus-reginald-latsons-case-points-to-a-scandal-in-us-prisons/2014/12/23/ac64c6c2-8ae0-11e4-8ff4-fb93129c9c8b_story.html?utm_term=.bad24813f9e9

https://storify.com/kerima_cevik/freeneli-1

http://intersecteddisability.blogspot.com/2014/11/making-neli-latson-matter-invisible.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/01/08/virginias-governor-should-keep-an-autistic-man-out-of-prison/?utm_term=.fd0f2e275299

http://intersecteddisability.blogspot.com/2015/01/catastrophic-encounters-with-police.html

http://intersecteddisability.blogspot.com/2015/01/an-inconvenient-truth.html

https://www.change.org/p/terry-mcauliffe-grant-a-pardon-to-reginald-cornelius-neli-latson

Justice for the Dietrich, Idaho Assault Victim, Neurodivergent and Black

Mr. and Mrs. McDaniel with four of their 20 adopted children
©Washington Post/Getty Images

I'm going to mention a violent rape. I will try to be as brief as possible but please don't read on if this topic will upset you. 

I learned today that I can be disgusted, angry, and horrified all at once.

The victim, 18, psychiatric disability community member, one of 20 adoptees to the McDaniel family whose parents are white and live in an area with a predominantly white school, was abused by his own football teammates over a period of months and no one in the school administration or coaching staff acted to stop it. the victim was eventually lured into a locker room by three assailants where his teammates beat him and raped him violently with a coat hanger. 

The McDaniels have an additional five children born to them. I'm not certain how they are able to manage the safety of disabled children of color in a family of 25 children. But there is something more urgent here and that is that Judge Randy Stoker handed down a sentence of 3 years probation to defendant John Howard the main perpetrator of the assault, at the behest of Prosecutor Hemmer. The prosecutor explained to the Judge that the assault was not a rape, hate crime, or any category of sexual assault, but in face a case of bullying, and let the rapist off without jail time. Of course, because Howard was allowed to plead to a charge that was not rape or a hate crime, he will not be a registered sex offender and will be free to assault other African American victims. Co-defendant Tanner Ward's charge of forcible penetration with a foreign object was reduced to a lesser charge and he is being tried as a juvenile. The court and prosecutor also decided Wards actions were not a hate crime. 

When is the disability community going to fight for justice for the Black disabled victims of ableist hate crimes? Are they not aggressively pursuing this because these victims are not white? This is a very sore point for me. I'm tired of seeing this happen time and again with victimized disabled youth of color.

Judge Stoker should be removed from the bench. I will be including links to the Change.org petitions calling for his removal at the end of this blog. Moreover, Prosecutor Hemmer, (who orchestrated the plea deals and reduction of charges, used the victim's disability as justification for why the final horrific assault should not be classified as a sexual assault or a hate crime) should be held accountable. David Perry explains this very clearly in his excellent article on the Dietrich assault in Pacific Standard which you can read here.

The victim never had a chance. He is the victim but being both disabled and Black in an all-white town with parents who cannot teach him about racism because they are white and do not experience it means he was unprepared and also emotionally violated by the judicial system, the school where he should have been safe, and the football team coaching staff who encouraged this abuse. According to the Superintendent of the schools' disclosure of the district's investigation, one teammate tried to stop the attack but was threaten with the same treatment if he interfered. No other classmates fought for him. This is what it means to be Black and disabled in America.

The question is, are there people in the wider world who believe that justice is the entitlement and human right of every citizen in every nation on this planet? Are there people who believe hate crimes are hate crimes when the victim is Black and disabled? 

If you are one of these good people,  please help me step up now and make this right. Because this is an abomination. And if this judgment stands, all disabled children could be next because disabled teens are easy targets and we are living in a time of inflated hate. 

If those families with white disabled loved ones believe that because their children aren't Black, they won't  be targeted next, they are in for a very unpleasant surprise. Once people know they can abuse disabled youth without serious repercussions they will escalate and not stop at Black disabled youth. Our children are just the first targets. They are never the last.

Speak out! Protest this verdict. Justice for the Dietrich, Idaho assault victim! Or sit silently now and wait until your loved ones are the newest targets and it is too late to fight.

My son is nonverbal. Had he been victimized in this sustained and escalated fashion, he could not have told us or defended himself. This is why I am so outraged and so horrified that months of sustained harm get a slap on the wrist. The victim of this sustained series of hate crimes will need therapy for the rest of his life. 

We must act to make this right or we have no purpose in advocacy nor can we call ourselves activists against violence to disabled youth. 

---------------------------------
Resources and Calls To Action
(with thanks to some incredible activists for research, updates, and support)

The Terrifying Story of The Dietrich, Idaho Assault Victim
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3616523/Rape-allegation-race-glare-national-media-divide-town.html

How a Prosecutor Decided That an Attack on a Disabled Black Kid Was Just Bullying
David Perry for Pacific Standard:
https://psmag.com/how-a-prosecutor-decided-that-an-attack-on-a-disabled-black-kid-was-just-bullying-51ab84a258a5#.nnt8yqcu4

School Superintendent Investigation Report of Details in the Case Heavily Redacted by School District legal counsel: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3115343-DIETRICH-MOTION-DISCLOSURE.html

John R.K. Howard was not charged with a hate for sex crime"
http://m.boiseweekly.com/boise/prosecutor-says-dietrich-high-assault-not-sex-or-race-crime-teen-pleads-guilty-to-lesser-felony/Content?oid=3948761

Co-defendant Tanner Ward not facing felony charges and case to be tried in juvenile court
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/state/idaho/article104466831.html

Attorneys for McDaniel family petitioning court for unredacted documents. Willing to allow them in the public record to expose cover-up and actions of defendants in their civil case against School district:
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/state/idaho/article104466831.html

Petitions about the McDaniel hate crimes in Dietrich, Idaho to sign and share:

Change.org Petition: IDAHO JUDICIAL COUNCIL: Remove Judge Randy Stoker from the bench for decision in John Howard rape case  https://tinyurl.com/zwc3zf

MoveOn.org Petition to DOJ: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/demand-justice-department-1?source=c.em&r_by=8228761.

For further public action:

Please direct public comment about this unfathomable injustice to:

Office of the Attorney General Lawrence Wasden
700 W. Jefferson Street
P.O. Box 83720
Boise, ID 83720-0010
Phone (208) 334-2400
Fax (208) 854-8071

Comments can also be submitted on  the official website here:

http://www.ag.idaho.gov/index.html

What else can you do?
Consider sending an email expressing your concern about the miscarriage of justice in this adjudication of this case. You can do so here:
https://gov.idaho.gov/ourgov/contact.html