Abstract

Excerpted From: Beth Ribet, Surfacing Disability Through a Critical Race Theoretical Paradigm, 2 Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives 209 (Fall, 2010) (163 Footnotes) (Full Document)

From its inception, a number of the founders of Critical Race Studies (CRS) have articulated a praxis and methodology acutely focused on race, and also intently conscious of intersectionality. Disability prospectively merges with the project of producing knowledge within a CRS frame both as part of the study of intersectionality, and also as part of the pedagogical and theoretical goal of “comparative subordination.”

Relatively few CRS authors have explicitly taken up the challenge of articulating disability in CRS scholarship. For instance, I interpret Adrienne Asch's work as an example of disability-focused CRS scholarship primarily based on a “comparative subordination” approach. That is, Asch relies on analogy and application of racially based analysis to disability, interchanging disability as a category of oppression with race as a category of oppression.

Although some aspects of this kind of analysis can be productive, I also note its limitations. This kind of comparative analysis, as represented in Asch's work, often treats race and disability as relatively discrete categories, focusing on how the two compare, and in some moments degenerating into a debate about which oppression or experience is harder or worse. The unspoken and presumably unconscious assumption in this kind of analysis is that disability is within the terrain of Whiteness, and is either not experienced or not worth articulation for People of Color. More broadly, one might imagine a White disabled person sharing notes with a non-disabled Person of Color, with each noting, “yes, I too have struggled with equal access to bathrooms and water fountains,” “yes, I too have sought remedies through civil rights legislation, with disappointing results,” and “yes, people perceive me as lazy, or deviant, less worthy, less capable.” In addition, points of contrast certainly can (or should) emerge. For instance, the denial and erasure of disabled people as sexual is a related but different form of sexual oppression than exoticization or demonization of the sexualities of some People of Color. These demographics--the Person of Color without disability, the White person with disability--are the only ones that fit this kind of discourse, because only when the categories are strictly separated or constructed unilaterally does comparison alone, rather than intersection, make any sense.

Were the conversation taking place between People of Color with disabilities, the focus would often be on the echoing, resonant, compounded experience of oppression on multiple fronts: (a) The use of disability as “proof” of racial inferiority or as a basis to deny the reality of racial discrimination (i.e., “it is not racism, you're just truly less capable”), (b) ongoing exclusion or marginalization based on a medical condition or status that originated in experiences of environmental racism, malnutrition or medical neglect, and (c) stereotypes grounded in ableist racism or racist ableism regarding inferiority, incompetence and unworthiness, which are impossible to effectively combat without a dual analysis of both White supremacy and the social construction of normalcy.

The complexity of being simultaneously the target of sexual exoticization and sexual erasure represents an exponential and interactive experience of oppression which neither disability nor racial analysis in isolation can capture, which is compounded further for some by the stigma of deviance, perversion, or disease directed at queer populations. I acknowledge again, that parts of the strictly comparative analysis are productive, and sharpen recognition of the dynamics and mechanisms of subordination across demographics. However, in pursuing a CRS approach to disability, I seek a more deeply intersectional analysis-- one that surfaces and acknowledges the salience of disability from multiple experiential standpoints and specifically unmasks the function of ableism within White supremacist systems.

A few authors have already advanced pieces of a more intersectional discussion. Most notably, Dorothy Roberts and Jennifer Pokempner's article, Poverty, Welfare Reform and the Meaning of Disability, particularly addresses the role of racialized and gendered poverty in creating new physical, emotional and socially inscribed disabilities among poor people, particularly children. Citing the disproportionate rates of certain disabilities among African Americans, they invoke the Disability Studies literature on ““emergent disabilities,” which stress the salience of disability as the consequence of injuries and deprivations rooted in racial and class oppressions. Roberts and Pokempner scrutinize the overlap between social services related to welfare and disability, noting the fusion of poverty and disability not just relative to poverty as a disabling force, but also to the use of (or invention of) disability diagnoses as a basis to make claims for resources, which, prior to welfare reform, were more rooted in socio-economic status. As a backlash ideologically and practically similar to (poverty-based) welfare reform is increasingly directed towards disability benefits--in part to mitigate against its use as a remedy for deprivations stemming from poverty and racial subordination--the interaction between disability, gender, race, and class is predictably charged, and laden with compounded stigma.

In this paper, referencing Roberts and Pokempner's work as one model of more intersectional scholarship, I explore additional possible directions for an analysis of disability within Critical Race Theoretical (CRT) frameworks, and I consider the potential interaction between Critical Disability Studies and Critical Race Studies.

[. . .]

If I have done my work in this paper at all successfully, the dynamics of racial disablement and ableist racism should be--very initially--surfacing as systems embedded in a wide range of institutional and social practices. Ableism/racism is interdynamic with class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and related bases for subordination, and pervades the lives of affected populations. The social and political consequences of recognizing emergent disabilities, disablement, and race deserve more contemplation here. It is not without political and emotional repercussions to confront the fact that family and community members are sick, pained, or dying prematurely in the context of disabling violence. Though the recognition that White supremacy and imperialism are deadly is not remotely new, focusing on disability politicizes impairment, pain, and suffering in a context that makes the psychologically and medically destructive mechanisms of White supremacy ultimately more visible. It also enables the recognition that in various ways, racial narratives and analyses are sometimes already about disability and disablement, but without thorough consideration or claiming of the space of “Disability Studies” or ““Disability Theory,” and certainly without adequate validation by recognized disability scholarship and disability rights movements.

The insight that mainstream disability rights movements and disability studies have a race problem--or more specifically that they have largely reflected and accepted a White-dominated conception of disability should not be entirely shocking, at least to theorists who are already sensitized to racial politics. However, I also suggest that a race-conscious analysis of emergent disability sheds new light on why it matters. Again, whatever disability rights are in U.S. law and policy--to the extent that they are accessible and enforced (which is in itself contested and variable)--they are the rights that people who have been injured, sickened, or impaired by White supremacy--and by intersecting patriarchal and capitalist systems--can conceivably claim. The fact that disability rights, politics and advocacy movements do not adequately embrace the imperatives of populations disabled by violence, racism, and subordination means that to a substantial extent, the survivors of disablement by White supremacy disappear from legal conception and framing. The challenges for Critical Disability/Race Theory therefore involve a deeply critical engagement with law itself, an evolving and complicated engagement with and expansion of the recognized social and legal meanings of intersectionality, and a cautious but diligent reconstruction of the meanings of disability.

Beth Ribet. Ph.D. University of California, Irvine, J.D. University of California, Los Angeles. Beth Ribet is a Visiting Scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, and a Research Associate at the Burton Blatt Institute in the Syracuse University School of Law.