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| Meghan Schrader |
Meghan is an autistic person who is an instructor at E4 - University of Texas (Austin) and an EPC-USA board member.
Predictably, some of the leaders in the right to die movement thought that Hanania’s blog post was delightful. Canadian Queen of Expanding Euthanasia To Everything And Everyone Jocelyn Downie tweeted,
As we mark Juneteenth, I must admit I do not know exactly what solutions are the best for repairing the damage that both systemic racism and systemic ableism have done to the world, or how best to integrate anti-ableism with anti-racism. But, my relationships with people like Anita Cameron and others in the disability rights movement indicate to me that the process of doing that starts by compassionate listening and learning. It involves humility, open-mindedness and creativity. And integrating racial justice into disability rights advocacy involves a firm commitment to the ideal that no one should have to live in a world where they are so oppressed that they are encouraged to kill themselves. Marking the abolition of slavery should remind us that all people have an equal right to live with dignity and respect.
This week the country celebrated Juneteenth, a holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States. I thought it would be a good idea to do a post marking the holiday, discussing the history of disabled African American slaves, considering the experiences of disabled BIPOC people, discussing trends in intersectional justice advocacy, and discussing how the intersection of race and disability is relevant to efforts to oppose assisted suicide. I know that I cannot do as good a job at this as Not Dead Yet Minority Outreach Director Anita Cameron or Keith Jones from Krip Hop Nation, but I will do my best.
First I thought it would be instructive for me to share a summary of the parallels between ableism and racism from a disability studies scholar who has studied the issue extensively. In a 2011 Society of Disability Studies Conference Presentation entitled "Expanding Our Theoretical Toolbox: The Politics of Dis(Ability) in Black Feminist Scholarship" professor Sami Schalk distinguished ableism, or the privileging of able-bodiedness, from “disableism,” or the network of practices that discriminates against people with disabilities. Schalk asserted that:
One thing to note when celebrating Juneteenth is that most discussions of slavery, like most discussions of history, leave out the experiences of slaves with disabilities. I think many of the EPC’s blogs readers may be unaware that kidnapped Africans on slave ships who were found to have disabilities were thrown overboard as “defective merchandise.” Harriet Tubman’s disability isn’t typically addressed the way it needs to be. Growing up I remember learning that Tubman had a traumatic brain injury, but that injury wasn’t discussed in the context of what 19th century disabled people or disabled BIPOC people experienced as a group. Other scholars have noticed this problem as well. Disabled people are still struggling to make our communal history visible to the predominant culture, and I think it is reasonable to conclude that this invisibility is helping to drive popular support for assisted suicide.
First I thought it would be instructive for me to share a summary of the parallels between ableism and racism from a disability studies scholar who has studied the issue extensively. In a 2011 Society of Disability Studies Conference Presentation entitled "Expanding Our Theoretical Toolbox: The Politics of Dis(Ability) in Black Feminist Scholarship" professor Sami Schalk distinguished ableism, or the privileging of able-bodiedness, from “disableism,” or the network of practices that discriminates against people with disabilities. Schalk asserted that:
“Racism is discrimination against people of color while white supremacy is the overvaluing whiteness. Sexism is discrimination again women and femininity while patriarchy is the systematic privileging of men and masculinity. So, going back to those lovely days of standardized testing, we could think that disableism is to ableism as racism is to white supremacy and sexism is to patriarchy."Schalk has since written a book on racial and disability justice that can be purchased on Amazon. I think that Schalk’s summary is an instructive starting point for the EPC blog’s readers to think about the parallels between ableism and racism, and how they intersect.
One thing to note when celebrating Juneteenth is that most discussions of slavery, like most discussions of history, leave out the experiences of slaves with disabilities. I think many of the EPC’s blogs readers may be unaware that kidnapped Africans on slave ships who were found to have disabilities were thrown overboard as “defective merchandise.” Harriet Tubman’s disability isn’t typically addressed the way it needs to be. Growing up I remember learning that Tubman had a traumatic brain injury, but that injury wasn’t discussed in the context of what 19th century disabled people or disabled BIPOC people experienced as a group. Other scholars have noticed this problem as well. Disabled people are still struggling to make our communal history visible to the predominant culture, and I think it is reasonable to conclude that this invisibility is helping to drive popular support for assisted suicide.
If a disenfranchised people group’s history is erased from the public consciousness, lack of historical knowledge makes it easier for people to tolerate killing members of that group, and harder for people to think about how doing that will intersect with expressions of systemic racism. Lack of attention to how the history of slavery intersects with the history of disabled people is bad for disabled people of all colors, and for BIPOC people of all abilities.
Two other issues that Juneteenth provides the opportunity for EPC blog readers to think about are current trends in how intersectional justice advocacy approaches discussions about disability and race, and how people advocating for disability justice can best empower BIPOC people with disabilities.
It may surprise some EPC blog readers to learn that BIPOC disability justice advocates have asked white disabled people to please avoid race and disability analogies. To many people these analogies seem fine; just a handy way of pointing out how bad ableism is. I think that these analogies are particularly enticing when one is interacting with a vocally anti-racist person who is a virulent ableist. And, in the spirit of honesty I must admit that I am often sorely tempted to continue doing exactly this, especially in regard to mainstream bioethics and the assisted suicide, which so many progressive-identifying people ignore or support. I find myself wanting to scream, “You mainstream progressives wouldn’t tolerate the Ku Klux Klan, why do you tolerate Peter Singer, who compares disabled people to chimpanzees and thinks it’s fine to rape us? You presumably wouldn’t tell an ablebodied BIPOC person to die by suicide, why do you think it’s acceptable to send that message to disabled people of all creeds and colors? WHY???
However, I’ve been trying to learn not to frame my criticisms of people’s hypocrisy in that particular way nowadays, because people like Anita Cameron have asked me to stop doing it. And I respect and admire Anita and these other disability justice leaders so much, that I’m trying to learn other ways of illustrating the moral perils of ableism.
Two other issues that Juneteenth provides the opportunity for EPC blog readers to think about are current trends in how intersectional justice advocacy approaches discussions about disability and race, and how people advocating for disability justice can best empower BIPOC people with disabilities.
It may surprise some EPC blog readers to learn that BIPOC disability justice advocates have asked white disabled people to please avoid race and disability analogies. To many people these analogies seem fine; just a handy way of pointing out how bad ableism is. I think that these analogies are particularly enticing when one is interacting with a vocally anti-racist person who is a virulent ableist. And, in the spirit of honesty I must admit that I am often sorely tempted to continue doing exactly this, especially in regard to mainstream bioethics and the assisted suicide, which so many progressive-identifying people ignore or support. I find myself wanting to scream, “You mainstream progressives wouldn’t tolerate the Ku Klux Klan, why do you tolerate Peter Singer, who compares disabled people to chimpanzees and thinks it’s fine to rape us? You presumably wouldn’t tell an ablebodied BIPOC person to die by suicide, why do you think it’s acceptable to send that message to disabled people of all creeds and colors? WHY???
However, I’ve been trying to learn not to frame my criticisms of people’s hypocrisy in that particular way nowadays, because people like Anita Cameron have asked me to stop doing it. And I respect and admire Anita and these other disability justice leaders so much, that I’m trying to learn other ways of illustrating the moral perils of ableism.
My friendships with intersectional justice advocates and my exposure to the field of disability studies has taught me that BIPOC people with disabilities have their own history and experiences that are distinct from what what a white disabled person like me might experience. The need to foreground the experiences of BIPOC disabled people is where the X hashtag #DisabilityTooWhite and Anita Cameron’s project We Were There Too: Blacks in The Disability Movement come from. My interactions with BIPOC and intersectional justice advocates have taught me that many of the BIPOC people killed by the police have disabilities, and that many BIPOC migrants and incarcerated BIPOC people have disabilities. As such, effective and equitable disability justice work accounts for these intersections. In my Special Education program at the University of Texas, I learned that educational researchers had developed evidence-based practices for instructing and assessing BIPOC children with disabilities, because instruction and testing that does not take disabled culturally and linguistically diverse students backgrounds into account can lead to poor learning outcomes for those students, or to those students being overdiagnosed or underdiagnosed with disabilities. Considering the specific needs and experiences of BIPOC people with disabilities is an important contribution to establishing disabled people’s equal human right to live, which is what anti-assisted suicide advocacy is all about.
So, what are the most direct ways that the intersection of ableism with racism is relevant to the issue of assisted suicide? According to a 2013 Pew Research poll, the majority of BIPOC people oppose assisted suicide, which makes sense, given that BIPOC people of all abilities have a history of being abused by the healthcare system. One can see the intersection of ableism and racism in the case of Michael Hickson, the quadriplegic black man who was forced to die in Texas during the COVID pandemic. Moreover, BIPOC people on Medicaid are more likely to be the target of futile care impositions, which provides a preview of how things would play out if people like Thaddeus Mason Pope get their way and the United States eventually allowing involuntary euthanasia. In considering the issue of race, disability and assisted suicide, it is also important to consider the issue of class. The fact that so many of the targets of futile care laws have been people of color on Medicaid indicates that while assisted suicide is supported by some middle and upper class BIPOC people, the practice would further oppress working class and disabled BIPOC people. All of these dynamics are why our Indigenous Canadian neighbors have generally come out strongly against that country’s “MAiD” program, and why Anita Cameron’s work organizing BIPOC opponents of assisted suicide is so important.
One of the most illustrative examples of the intersection between ableism and racism that I have come across is the work of Richard Hanania, a right wing conservative supporter of assisted suicide who used to be a fellow at the University of Texas’s conservative think tank the Salem Center. In a blog post entitled “Canadian Euthanasia As Moral Progress,” Hanania wrote:
So, what are the most direct ways that the intersection of ableism with racism is relevant to the issue of assisted suicide? According to a 2013 Pew Research poll, the majority of BIPOC people oppose assisted suicide, which makes sense, given that BIPOC people of all abilities have a history of being abused by the healthcare system. One can see the intersection of ableism and racism in the case of Michael Hickson, the quadriplegic black man who was forced to die in Texas during the COVID pandemic. Moreover, BIPOC people on Medicaid are more likely to be the target of futile care impositions, which provides a preview of how things would play out if people like Thaddeus Mason Pope get their way and the United States eventually allowing involuntary euthanasia. In considering the issue of race, disability and assisted suicide, it is also important to consider the issue of class. The fact that so many of the targets of futile care laws have been people of color on Medicaid indicates that while assisted suicide is supported by some middle and upper class BIPOC people, the practice would further oppress working class and disabled BIPOC people. All of these dynamics are why our Indigenous Canadian neighbors have generally come out strongly against that country’s “MAiD” program, and why Anita Cameron’s work organizing BIPOC opponents of assisted suicide is so important.
One of the most illustrative examples of the intersection between ableism and racism that I have come across is the work of Richard Hanania, a right wing conservative supporter of assisted suicide who used to be a fellow at the University of Texas’s conservative think tank the Salem Center. In a blog post entitled “Canadian Euthanasia As Moral Progress,” Hanania wrote:
“One could just as easily say that people who want to kill themselves after becoming disabled are seeing things more objectively, and when they accept their condition they’re coping and living under a kind of false consciousness. I’m pretty sure I would want to kill myself if I was ever paralyzed, and I grant it’s possible that maybe I would change my mind after a while. But I wouldn’t want to become reconciled to living with such a condition. The idea that I might accept it would for me be even more reason to commit suicide, lest I get used to accepting a defective version of myself.”In response to this post, professor of Mental Health Law Isabel Grant tweeted,
“How is this not hate speech?”
Professor Trudo Lemmens tweeted back,
“I thought the same. His vile suggestions about who is better off dead would definitely be treated as hate speech if you change who he is talking about. Yet some of our colleagues endorse this crap with enthusiastic fervor.”Another X user called Brendan wrote,
“This is honestly the most disgusting piece I’ve ever read on the topic of MAiD. I was half expecting the phrase “lebensunwertes leben” to show up somewhere in the piece.”
Lemmens tweeted back,
“It is there, just not in German, worded slightly differently, and adding “choice” to turn it into a liberal ideal.”Exactly. Hanania’s pro euthanasia screed is hateful. He may as well republish the text of Life Unworthy of Life verbatim. And that’s not ok, even if Hanania doesn’t want to round unwilling disabled people of all creeds and colors up and gas them in vans.
Predictably, some of the leaders in the right to die movement thought that Hanania’s blog post was delightful. Canadian Queen of Expanding Euthanasia To Everything And Everyone Jocelyn Downie tweeted,
“This thread. This piece on Substack. Antidotes to the recent waves of misinformation and flawed analysis of assisted dying in Canada.”Downie was unaware of the rest of Hanania’s background. In 2023 The Huffington Post did an expose on Hanania that revealed that he had posted on white supremacist websites under a pseudonym, and he lost his post at UT. (In the tradition of disabled people being left out of social justice efforts, Hanania of course did not get in trouble for his retread of lebensunwertes leben, because apparently no one at the Huffington Post or UT thought to consider how that attitude affects BIPOC people with disabilities.) So, Downie wound up boosting the work of a white supremacist because the surrounding culture has enabled her to think that systemic ableism is fine. Hanania’s attitude towards disabled people of all colors and BIPOC people of all abilities elucidates what leading scholars of race and disability studies and the history of eugenics tells us: the legacies and ideologies of racism and ableism are intertwined like the roots of a tree. A government policy of helping disabled people die by suicide and the worst expressions of racism that disabled BIPOC people experience are part of the same ideological phylum: hating or ignoring the members of disenfranchised groups so much that you don’t mind if they die.
As we mark Juneteenth, I must admit I do not know exactly what solutions are the best for repairing the damage that both systemic racism and systemic ableism have done to the world, or how best to integrate anti-ableism with anti-racism. But, my relationships with people like Anita Cameron and others in the disability rights movement indicate to me that the process of doing that starts by compassionate listening and learning. It involves humility, open-mindedness and creativity. And integrating racial justice into disability rights advocacy involves a firm commitment to the ideal that no one should have to live in a world where they are so oppressed that they are encouraged to kill themselves. Marking the abolition of slavery should remind us that all people have an equal right to live with dignity and respect.
1 comment:
"hating or ignoring the members of disenfranchised groups so much that you don’t mind if they die."
This applies equally to the unborn.
The author claims to not know the solution to these complex problems and suggests new attitudes which could only be defined as "virtue"
She is correct: The solution to sinful attitudes is the cultivation of virtue. This can only be achieved by acknowledging a higher power: God as revealed by Jesus Christ.
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