Black Disability Politics is always intersectional but race/racism is still the major analytical lens since Black disability politics is often most concerned with how the material impacts of racism intersect with disability and overlap with ableism - this analysis doesn't always necessarily require the use of the words disability and ableism. While Black Disability Politics is also normally otherwise intersectional - feminist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, it primarily is antiracist politics operating in solidarity with disabled people

University of Wisconsin - Madison

1. Intersectional but Race Centered
2. Not Necessarily Based in Disability Identity
3. Contextualized and Historicized
4. Holistic

Four Common Qualities of Black Disability Politics

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

Black Disability Politics

Intersectional but Race Centered

Black Disability Politics is not exclusively enacted by Black disabled people, and can be enacted by any Black person who understands the intersection of racism and ableism and works to combat them both. 

Also, some Black people with impairments, disabilities, or illnesses do not use the disability identity label for reasons ranging from and beyond, lac of access to official disability diagnosis, services, resources, the traumatic or racism-based circumstances of their disablement, internalized ableism, identification with disability-specific identities and communities (e.g. Deaf, autistic, Mad, spoonie), potential of identifying with disability to further marginalization, lack of disability identity development within Black community and families of origin.

Not Necessarily Based in Disability Identity

Black Disability Politics and the cultural workers who make Black Disability Politics engage with disability in a way that pays critical attention to the current sociopolitical contexts as well as the historical circumstances that have shaped the understanding of disability in Black communities.

In particular, since disability is understood by disability scholars as unstable due to how disability is inherently defined by societal context Black disability politics look at how race shapes understanding of disability - currently and historically - and vice versa.

Contextualized and Historicized

The work of Black Disability Politics tends to address whole bodyminds rather than how historically disability activism and disability studies have overwhelmingly focused on exclusively physical disability 

Schalk also uses holitistic to reference the work of Black Disability Politics as work that is simultaneously occurring on the individual community level, and the societal, national, and international levels.

In addition, Schalk uses holistic to refer to the wide range of bodyminds addressed within Black disability politics and how Black disability politics are not limited to the official legal or medical definitions of disability. In particular, this is noted by hos Black Disability Politics often engage with health illess, disaes, and medicine even though these topics may  not be considered disability issues by the state, medical industrial complex, or the disability rights movement. 

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