BLACK HISTORY YEAR, by PushBlack
“The Erasure of Black Disabled Voices with Anita Cameron.” June 20, 2022
On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Vgwi1JmdEc
Jay:
What’s up, fam? This is Jay, letting you know that PushBlack has a new podcast called State of Criminal Justice. Every week, State of Criminal Justice digs into the most important events happening right now in the legal system. Listen, the future of our community depends on us understanding how injustice systematically operates in this country. State of Criminal Justice is here to ensure you’re always up-to-date on how institutional racism is impacting Black people nationwide. State of Criminal Justice is produced by PushBlack. You can catch it on our PushBlack YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Thanks for the support. Peace.
Jay:
Harriet Tubman, Bradley Lomax, Joyce Ardell Jackson, Denmark Vesey, these are only a handful of Black activists you may know, who rebelled, demanded justice, fought for freedom, and played unquestionably significant roles in the continued journey towards liberation. What you might not know, however, is that these and many more activists were disabled. I’m Jay from PushBlack, and you’re listening to Black History Year.
Jay:
So, today, disabled Black folks represent nearly half of us who are killed or brutalized by police, and their stories and their struggles are often overlooked when we talk about liberation. So, whether it’s a lack of awareness or perhaps bias, our guest today will shed light on this group that’s often made invisible, even within the Black community. As a disability rights activist and advocate, Anita Cameron has dedicated almost 40 years to community organizing and making sure that folks with disabilities have equitable rights in society. For protesting and civil disobedience, Anita has been arrested over 100 times fighting this fight. She’s also the Director of Minority Outreach at Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights organization that fights against physician-assisted suicide and the euthanasia of people with disabilities. Whether these disabilities be related to physical or mental health, many of these challenges go ignored, and it needs to be addressed. So, today, we’ll chat with Anita. Stay tuned.
Jay:
What does Black liberation look like to you?
Anita Cameron:
So, Black liberation, it’s gotta all of us because, unfortunately, as a Black disabled lesbian, I have found much ableism in our communities. It’s almost like we have to choose, what do you wanna be? Do you wanna be Black? Do you wanna be disabled? Do you wanna be LGBTQ? Then, it’s like I can’t separate any of that from my blackness. And so liberation has to include all of us. It has to be equitable, and all of us have to have a say in what our liberation is gonna look like.
Jay:
Absolutely. Can you define for us, what is ableism?
Anita Cameron:
Ableism is when you have negative thoughts about disability, when you presume incompetence with people with disabilities, when you erase our existence, when you say things like, for instance, a lot of us deal with depression, and when you say something like, “Oh, you just pray that away. That’s just the devil. You pray that away, you know. You, you get over it.” You know, that’s, that’s ableism. When, you know, I tell you, for instance, that I need a specific accommodation, if I tell you, for instance, for this platform, “Hey, the chats don’t work for me,” and you keep putting stuff into the chats, and I can’t see and I can’t interact with, that’s a form of ableism. So, there’s, unfortunately, many ways to be ableist and to say ableist things, you know, when you discount someone’s, you know, someone’s disability, you know?
Anita Cameron:
I’ll give you an example. I was going for the train to travel out of town, and I asked the conductor, “Which way do I go to get on the train, left or right?” And he said, “You come towards me,” and I’m like, “I don’t really know where you are,” and he’s like, “But you looked dead at me,” and I’m like, “That doesn’t mean I saw you. I’m looking at the sound of your voice.” So, when someone explains to you, you know, “I have this particular disability,” and you respond with, “You don’t look disabled,” or if I tell people, “I’m autistic,” and I am autistic, and you say, “Oh, well, we’re all a little bit autistic,” you know, or, “We’re all … We all have something wrong with us,” that’s just total ableism, you know? If you say, “That was stupid,” or, “That was idiotic,” you know, those are ableist terms.
Anita Cameron:
They’re the old terms, you know, of intellectual abilities, you know, and the, and, and the R-word and all of that. So, you know, we typically don’t use those, and if someone with a disability is telling you, “Hey, the words and the phrases that you’re using are ableist,” and you say, “Oh, whatever,” then that, in itself, is being ableist.
Jay:
Going back to your description of Black liberation and what that should entail, and now that we’ve set a foundation for an idea of what ableism is, in what ways do you work towards this future vision of Black liberation?
Anita Cameron:
In my day job, if you will, I am Director Of Minority Outreach for an organization called Not Dead Yet, and Not Dead Yet is a national grassroots disability organization that fights against and speaks out against euthanasia of disabled folks. We work against these doctor-assisted suicide bills coming out in the states because what we’ll … in various states because what happens is is that disabled people and particularly disabled elder sick people who are BIPOC, Black Indigenous People of Color, are at particular risk, and in my case, you know, I concentrate a lot on me being Black, and I concentrate a lot on how this will affect Black people, and with the racial disparities in healthcare and how that will make it, unfortunately, more likely that Black disabled will be subject to euthanasia practices, eugenics practices, what we call, futility laws in medicine, medic- medical rationing, you know. As it is, we Black people get inferior healthcare in comparison to whites, and so in my job, I really work to bring awareness of how racism plays a part in disability discrimination in healthcare.
Anita Cameron:
As, you know, a disability activist, you know, I try to make sure that things that we do our work in a intersectional way because, like, in the disability community, I mean, unfortunately, the face of disability is white, the face of disability community in activism and all that is white, and so as a disability justice activist, I try to bring awareness of the fact that Black people, especially, were involved in disability history, in disability rights history, and so what I have focused on doing is lifting up our stories.
Anita Cameron:
A lot of people don’t realize that, as we were fighting for Section 504 to become law, which is part of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, when those folks took over the offices in California, a lot of people didn’t realize that the Black Panthers not only fed those folks ’cause when people here do hear, they hear, “Oh, the Black Panthers fed them,” yes, that is true. The Black Panthers fed those activists, but the Black Panthers participated. There were disabled Panthers that participated in that action, and Brad Lomax being one of them, and so what a lot of people don’t realize is that, when those meetings happened in Washington, D.C. with the Health Education of Welfare, Joseph Califano’s office, that there were Black Panthers involved in that meeting, that Brad Lomax was one of the people who went to the meetings in Washington, D.C. and helped to secure this. Now, we were fighting for the Americans with Disabilities Act, the passage of that, in 1990. A lot of people don’t realize that there were many, many Black folks involved in that.
Jay:
So, I mean, from your perspective, what are the root causes of, you know, where society is on this issue of disability justice?
Anita Cameron:
Society has this attitude of better dead than disabled. I’d rather be dead than be you, and in my job, fighting against doctor-assisted suicide, a lot of times, the people want it, and the proponents of this would say that it was pain or the fear of pain, bad deaths. They’d seen people, family members, die horrible deaths. Unfortunately, the data that exists tells us that the five main reasons that people ask for assisted suicide have to do with disability-related stuff, you know, a loss of dignity, the loss of autonomy, the loss of the ability to do things that you used to could do before that you love, the feelings of being a burden, whether financial, emotional, physical, and also the inability to control bodily things, and I’ve heard not only ordinary people, you know, doc- doctors and whatnot who say, “If I develop a terminal condition or a chronic illness, and I, you know, start needing help to, toilet myself and all that, I wanna die,” and so it’s also believed that disabled people don’t have a good life. So, that factors into that.
Anita Cameron:
In fact, there was a Harvard study done last year. Over 700 doctors were surveyed around the country. 84% of those doctors felt that disabled people had a worse quality of life than non-disabled. Less than 60% said that they would welcome a disabled person into their practice. 79% of those doctors felt uncomfortable working with disabled people because disabled people were seen as problems, broken things to be fixed, were not really seen as human, if you will, and, a lot of doctors, they’re into fixing things. They wanna make things better, and if they can’t fix you or cure you, then they have an issue with you, and, unfortunately, that’s the situation that we disabled people face.
Anita Cameron:
And then you have this attitude, almost like, “Oh, you all get everything,” and we don’t. We have to fight for everything. We have to fight for our wheelchairs, for our equipment, so that we can get out and about. We have to fight to remain in the community. They have something called the institutional bias, where the only right a disabled person have is to be taken care of in a nursing home or another, other institutions, and these institutions, even in times of financial crisis, they get monies, they have the infrastructure and all, whereas it’s far cheaper to care for someone in their own home. Yet, those programs are optional, and so if your state is going through budgetary crisis, the first programs that go are the optional programs, which usually means programs that help people with disabilities remain independent, and so, often, we’re, you know, in the situation where we are relegated or placed into institutional settings even though, in 1999, on June 22nd, 1999, the Supreme Court put out the Olmstead Decision, which says that unnecessary institutionalization is discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Anita Cameron:
So, to place somebody with a disability into an institution just ’cause you don’t think we should be in a community or supposedly your state doesn’t have the money or whatever, that is, that is discrimination. It is illegal, and we should have the right to be in a community and all. However, just like with the Americans with Disabilities Act, there’s a lot of legislation that affects people with disabilities. They … There are unfunded mandates that usually our community have to be the watchdogs over, and so that’s just even some of, you know, kind of what ableism is, how our community is affected, and, you know, I’m not sure why it is in our community and the Black community there’s so much ableism. I mean, it’s … We disabled often get left out of things.
Anita Cameron:
And I remember when I was trying to work with other movements involving Blacks and disabled. When we were approached, we were being told that, “No, you’re making this about you. No, you know, you’re taking it off of Black people and making it about disabled,” and it’s like, “So, wait a minute. Black disabled people don’t exist? Are we not a part of our communities?” So, like, for instance, police brutality against Black folks, a lot of people don’t realize that 30 to 50% of those people, who were either murdered or brutalized by the police, are disabled, and we’re talking Black folks alone. 30 to 50% of the people murdered or brutalized by police, Black people, are disabled.
Anita Cameron:
Oftentimes, it’s not apparent disabilities, like mental health disabilities or autism or other non-apparent disabilities, diabetes, asthma, whatever, but sometimes people, you know, using mobility devices or prosthetics are also brutalized and murdered by police. We disabled, we’re part of our Black community. Why aren’t we accepted? We really need to be accepted, and it shouldn’t be a matter of us always the onus on us always being, having to reach out, reach out, reach out. We need to be reached out to, you know, because if we’re reaching out and reaching out, then that’s sending a message to us that we’re not welcome, that disabled people, disabled Black folks aren’t welcome in the Black community, and that we don’t deserve to be a part of the Black community, and we have things to offer, we have gifts to offer, we have wisdom to offer.
Anita Cameron:
You talking about liberation for Black people. Is there a as- an asterisk that says, “But only for able-bodied, non-disabled, only for straight people, heterosexuals, only for Christians, only for those Black people that look and act respectable and whatnot.” So, we shouldn’t have to beg to be a part of the Black community.
Jay:
So, in what ways have you seen it modeled when Black folks with disabilities are brought into the conversation or the actions around liberation?
Anita Cameron:
I haven’t seen it yet in the Black community overall. I see it in Black disability organizations. So, from what I’ve seen, it’s been Black disabled folks coming together, usually Black women or Black non-binary, you know, and no disrespect to the Black disabled men out here, you know, making it work, but it seems to me that a lot of the Black liberation work in the disability community is being done by women and non-binary, and, you know, that’s neither good, nor bad. It simply is, and I think, you know, it’ll, it’ll take us women, you know, to reach out to and embrace, you know, all of us. So, you definitely gotta be in on the ground floor. In the disability community, we say, “Nothing about us without us,” which means that, you know, you can’t talk about doing something for us. We have to be at that table, and we have to be the ones to tell the community at large, “This is what we want. This is what is good, you know, for us. This is what liberation for us looks like.”
Anita Cameron:
So many times, we are deemed to be incompetent, that we don’t know what we talking about, that we don’t know what we want, that we don’t know ourselves, our bodies, our communities, and that’s just not true, and we really need to be listened to and not gaslit or erased or passed over. I think in our community, Black liberation in the disability community is definitely … It’s the Black disabled and non-binary folks who are kinda leading that.
Jay:
So, for folks who are listening now that may not be aware of these challenges and maybe getting this information for the first time, but want to be supportive and inclusive of those members of our community who have disabilities, what type of support is needed? How can folks be thinking about this?
Anita Cameron:
Don’t ever let us be an afterthought ’cause we just keep seeing how we’re an afterthought, how nobody thought about us until we said something or we showed up. Normalize including disabled people in whatever plans that you’re doing. Normalize having disabled friends. Talk to disabled folks. Now, that doesn’t mean that you see a disabled person on the street and you start asking them questions that you would not ask any other stranger, like about, “How does your junk work?” or, “What do you, you know …” because we do get asked that, you know? We’re not talking about being inappropriate with us, you know?
Anita Cameron:
We’re talking about if you’re gonna have a meeting at a place, make sure that the place you’re meeting at doesn’t have steps so that if somebody, you know, who’s using a wheelchair wants to come, that they can come. If you have a large public event going on, you know, that you expecting, you know, 100 people, you know, or more, whatever, put it out there. Make sure that you’re holding your place because this is the law. You hold things in a public place, they have to be accessible so that everybody could get in. Make sure that you have a way to have ASL interpreters or a CART situation where you have something on the screen that’s putting the words so that people can read it if they have a hard time, you know, hearing.
Anita Cameron:
In every state, practically almost every city, there is what they call Centers for Independent Living. What they are is they are non-residential places or places that you go if you’re a person with a disability to get help, to get advocacy, to get information on benefits or whatever, and these places are ran by people with disabilities, and their boards are fi- over 51% of people with disabilities, and you come there, for instance, someone came to the CIL that I was working at called Center for Disability Rights, and they said, “We got a bunch of blind people at this stop, and there is no way that a blind person can safely cross the street. Can you see about getting a light, a traffic light that talks?” And we said, “Okay,” and I actually went to the county, and we discussed that, and I told the situation, and about a couple of weeks later, they installed a talking traffic stop at the intersection where our CIL was so that blind folks, and that included me, could safely get, you know, across the street, catch the bus, and all of that, so those kinds of things.
Anita Cameron:
Always be thinking about how could you welcome someone with a disability. How do I make this accessible for disabled people? And don’t be afraid to use the word disabled. It’s not a cuss word. It’s not a negative word. Certainly more preferred that than differently-abled, handi-capable, all these silly little euphemisms. Disabled. Say the word. That’s okay.
Jay:
So, what does the world look like for us if we don’t approach this issue as a community in a different way, if we don’t challenge, you know, any ableism that we may practice as a community? What are we missing out on on this road towards liberation?
Anita Cameron:
If you’re leaving out disabled people, you’re really not working for liberation, to fight for us and include us in liberatory practices and in that, that liberatory fight because our community will miss out. We will be all the worse if we don’t include the disabled folks in our fight for equity, for rights, for justice. Would you leave us out? You, you we’re just, as a community, not complete. We’re totally incomplete, and so that means that all of us disabled, no matter what our disabilities are, we must be valued, you know? We have value whether we have intellectual disabilities, mental health disabilities, physical disabilities, mobility disabilities, processing disabilities. So, whether you, you know, use a wheelchair because you were a veteran or you were born with a disability or you’re autistic or you have severe intellectual disabilities or you’re deaf or you’re blind, you know, or you have chronic conditions and all, you know, we are all valuable to our community.
Jay:
All right. Anita Cameron, I appreciate you joining us on Black History Year. I know I’ve learned a lot. I gained some helpful insights. I appreciate you sharing with our community.
Anita Cameron:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m really honored, and I really appreciate it.
Jay:
And just like that, we’re at the end of this episode of Black History Year. This podcast is produced by PushBlack, the nation’s largest nonprofit Black media company. At PushBlack, we agree with Marcus Garvey when he said, “A people without knowledge of their past, history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots,” and I’m guessing you probably feel that’s important, too. I mean, here you are at the end of a podcast about Black history. You matter. Your choice to be here matters. It lets us know that you value this work. PushBlack exists because we saw we had to take matters into our own hands, and you make PushBlack happen with your contributions at BlackHistoryYear.com. Most people give about five or 10 bucks a month, but everything makes a difference. Thanks for supporting the work.
Jay:
The Black History Year production team includes Tareq Alani, Leslie Taylor-Grover, Brooke Brown, Shiavon Chapman, Abeni Jones, Briona Lamback, Garciella Maiolatesi, Zain Murdock, Tasha Taylor, and Darren Wallace. Producing the podcast, we have Sydney Smith and Sasha Kai Parker, who also edits the show, and Black History Year’s executive producer is Julian Walker, and I’m Jay from PushBlack. Peace.