NDY’s Director of Minority Outreach Anita Cameron is often interviewed by both disability and mainstream press. She has a long history of activism on behalf of disability rights, especially in her decades of work with ADAPT to get lifts on buses as well as major increases in home and community-based services that help older and disabled people stay out of nursing homes. Media outlets often contact her as a spokesperson about that history.
Since Anita joined NDY’s staff in 2017, media have also contacted her about NDY issues, especially during 2020 concerning COVID crisis standards of care.
When articles quoting Anita don’t include NDY issues, NDY doesn’t typically mention them in this blog. We don’t get comments about them. An example would be a recent Time magazine article. But this week, apparently in response to that article, NDY received a comment that is horrific and cannot be ignored.
This comment was submitted on a blog featuring Anita’s October 2nd testimony at ADAPT’s virtual People’s Hearing on home and community based long term services and supports:
“The USA needs an all out race war and n***** wh***s like you need to be hanging from trees!”
This is an outrageous call to bring lynching back! It descends to the grotesque depths of human capacity for hatred and violence. And it’s one of too many comments NDY and Anita have received in recent days. There have also been many Facebook comments and Anita Cameron has reported receiving death threats by direct message.
I know there are people out there who will want to know more, trying to find some way to shift some blame to Anita for becoming a target of racial slurs and death threats. When Time contacted Anita about being interviewed, she was told the article would be about disability representation more broadly and not all about Helen Keller. Her only statement about Helen Keller – “I don’t have a perspective on Helen Keller. She’s just another, despite disabilities, privileged white person” – is simple fact. Keller’s family was well off.
NDY will continue to work in solidarity with the disability rights and broader community to combat racism. We raise our voices to support Anita Cameron and all who have experienced racial injustice in all its forms.
NDY condemns these outrageous comments and the social/political climate that gives them any form of permission to be expressed. They are unacceptable. They must not be tolerated. Whenever racism rears it’s ugly head, many say this isn’t who we are, this isn’t our country. But it has been from the beginning. We must acknowledge this and then work harder to end it.