Sojourner Truth, Booker Wright, and The Question of Who Controls the Narratives of Disabled Black People

Image of Sojourner Truth, an African American woman
in a white bonnet and shawl and dark gown, seated in a
chair beneath the image, the words read "I sell the shadow to
support the substance, Sojourner Truth. circa 1870,
By Randall Studio - https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.79.220,
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77744170

I have been thinking about the conflicting, debated, censored, and sparse information about the life of Sojourner Truth.

I read the arguments in the debate about whether an illiterate disabled woman of color can have agency in what is said and written about her lived experience.

That got me to thinking about Booker Wright.

The story of Booker Wright, like the story of Sojourner Truth, has a central question: whose voice actually dictates the lived experience narratives of oppressed minorities when the very language and media used to tell such stories is completely controlled by the systems that oppress them?

Booker Wright was a Black waiter in a "white's only" restaurant in Greenwood, Mississippi. He was, in fact, the most popular waiter there. He was considered a "good Negro." He knew the hidden curriculum of Jim Crow well and his customers saw him as a "happy Negro."

It was 1965, and a documentary filmmaker for NBC was in Greenwood working on the white man's view of the Civil Rights movement. He heard that Booker Wright sang the menu, Mistral Show fashion, and he thought that an interesting oddity, so he decided to film it. When the camera rolled, the journalist got a surprise. After he was done reciting the menu, Booker realized he had a chance to speak about what life was truly like for him in the South and he did.

 That decision cost him his job, his business, his safety, and his life.

Booker Wright was a restaurant owner. His place was considered a safe space for Black families in segregated Mississippi. After his interview aired, his restaurant was destroyed. Booker Wright was pistol-whipped and hospitalized. Eventually, he was murdered.

His interview is considered the pivotal point of that documentary. It made the documentary a success for journalist Frank DeFelitta, but DeFelitta regretted publishing the interview because of the retaliation and harm Wright suffered as a result. DeFelitta claims he asked Wright whether he was certain he was okay with keeping the entire interview in the documentary. DeFelitta had a sense of what that might cost Wright, but he chose to air it anyway.

Yet, this interview was the only time Booker Wright was able to speak his truth in his own voice to the largest audience that might ever hear it. He thought of the better life he wanted for his children and their children and he did what was right knowing it would probably cost him his life.

Sojourner Truth, like Booker Wright, was trapped in the limitations of the times she lived in, despite "breaking barriers" by suing in court to gain her son's freedom, despite speaking at a women's rights convention before women had the right to vote. Everything she did, even as an emancipated woman, was informed by the limits society placed on her by keeping her enslaved, disabled by violence, illiterate, and limiting what any woman could do without a man's consent or protection.

Sojourner Truth's life story was whitewashed of any mention of sexual assault, despite historical evidence that her daughter Diana may have been the product of a rape by John Dumont. In the 136 years since Sojourner Truth's death, the systemic use of her narrative as a symbol stripped of many brutal realities of who she was have left us with yet another gap in American disability rights history. Sojourner Truth continues to exist as niche black civil rights and feminist icon, stripped of the disabilities that made her a complex, three-dimensional historical figure. To do what she did, when she did it makes the complete image of who she was something of critical historical importance. Sojourner Truth took her moment and spoke truth to power. Her example was there when Booker Wright saw his chance and made his decision to risk all and speak out.

Sojourner Truth was a radical activist. But the question of who controlled the narrative of her life experience as an emancipated activist can be answered by how strong her voice was in written versions of her speeches and the autobiographical book written on her behalf. There is a strong record of her active participation in Marius Robinson’s June 21, 1851 transcription of her speech at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio on May 29, 1851, for The Anti-Slavery Bugle. The 'Ain't I A Woman' version done by Frances Gage appearing in the April 23, 1863 issue of the New York Independent, is considered inaccurate. There is no record of Sojourner Truth's agency or participation in rewriting this version of the speech she gave. There does seem to be evidence in notes that she was an active participant in the drafts of her life story.

Truth's ability to gain a platform to speak her truth came at a cost. The resentment of southern white suffragettes and the demands of abolitionists who realized her story could be weaponized by ensuring the language appealed to illusions of what whites expected blacks to sound like. This was done to drive their cause forward.

Despite all this, Sojourner Truth, like Booker Wright, had her moment to speak her truth. No amount of rewriting and whitewashing has erased that event. It sits indelibly in both Black and Disability justice history as a triumph of the spirit. As does Mr. Wright's decision to speak outside the lexicon of his oppressors. In this era of fear and hatred, remembering the courage of all disabled people means the difference between courage and doom.


References:

Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (Norton, 1996), p. 19, and Margaret Washington, "Sojourner Truth's America" (Illinois, 2009), 51–52

Compare the two versions of Sojourner Truth's speech at The Sojourner Truth Project's page:https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches

PBS Interview about Booker Wright Documentary co-produced by his granddaughter and directed by Raymond De Felitta, son of the journalist who produced they original the original documentary. https://youtu.be/RxwLe7HapIA

#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