Schalk connects the understanding of intersectionality by contemporary Black Disabled Cultural Workers to the critique she offered the Black Panther Party which was that to address disabling violence and avoiding an attempt to distance Black political leaders put in psychiatric institutions to other individuals in those institutions that the Black Panther Party should adopt a understanding of racism and ablism as co-constructive.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Schalk notes that contemporary Black Disability Political Praxis tends to uphold an understanding of intersectionality that places racism not being a more preeminent system of oppression than ableism, but instead understanding racism and ableism and intertwined and mutually constructing. Schalk contrasts this understanding of intersectionality with understandings of the intersection of disability and race by the Black Panther Party or the NBWHP that looked at racism and ableism as two separate systems of oppression that compound when they affect the same person. 

Contemporary Black Disability Political Praxis and Intersectionality 

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027003

Black Disability Politics

Connection to Critiques of the Black Panther Party

Schalk highlights how Contemporary Black Disabled Cultural Workers who engage with Contemporary Black Disabled Political Praxis adopt an understanding of how the formation of racism, in particular anti-Black racism, and ableism in America are inherently tied together with how pathologizing of Black individuals was supported by ableism. One interview subject TL Lewis said "there is no racism without ableism."  Contemporary Black Disabled Cultural Workers also use this understanding of racism and ableism to locate themselves within an activist legacy of understanding the ties between capitalism, imperialism, racism, colonialism and ableism.

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