Disability is a Racialized Concept
“The relationship between Blackness and disability is especially important to investigate, because it explains so much about how we ended up where we are. Just like prisons and policing are related to slavery, so is the way we think about disability…(Dustin) Gibson discusses the 1840 census, which was the first time there were questions about both disability and race
That census says that the majority of free Black people were “insane” and “idiotic”, to use their language, while saying that the majority of people that were still enslaved were sane. So it’s creating this idea that to be free and Black, and to have the urge to want to be free and Black, is deemed to be a mental illness.
There was even a medical diagnosis for slaves who had the overwhelming urge to run away: drapetomania. This shows that medicallization has always been a tool of white supremacy in the United States.
Race—and specifically Blackness—has been used to mark disability, while disability has inherently “Blackened” those perceived as unfit. Black people were—and continue to be—assumed intellectually disabled precisely because of race. —Work in the Intersections: A Black Feminist Disability Framework by Moya Bailey and Izetta Autumn Mobley
In other words, white supremacy means that Black bodies are seen as inherently disabled, and disability is inherently bad. Ableism and racism are often used as pretexts for each other, which is why it’s so important that we use for the intersectional approach that disability justice calls for.”
—A People’s Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice by Katie Tastrom
