Prison abolitionist and prison scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore coined the term "organized state abandonment" to describe how the continuous histories of colonial dispossession and descent into late-stage capitalism have led to racial capitalist states that are callous and purposefully neglectful to either all of or a subset (often a racialized subset) of their citizens. Disability Studies scholars have used the term state abandonment to encapsulate environmental racism and other disabling effects of White Supremacy on communities of color, especially Black communities, and how this ties to institutional ableism, institutionalization and the American history of "Ugly Laws" and other policies that abandoned and cast disabled Americans, especially disabled individuals of color, out of society.

State Abandonment

Schalk notes that disability in publications like Body and Soul was often put in passive language and talked about as a marker the government could put on someone rather than a community and identity category. There was little to no discussion of disability as a political identity or discussion of the similarities of a broader disability experience of ableism between individuals who were chronically ill, had diabetes, had HIV/AIDS, etc.

The NWBHP's Avoidance of Disability Identity and Pan-Disability Identity

Schalk notes that while the NBWHP engaged heavily in the third tactic of not requiring individuals to use the word disability to describe themselves in order to participate in or receive support from Black disability cultural work that the NBWHP could have done more to engage in the first two tactics - for instance the NBWHP could have further encouraged members with HIV/AIDS chronic illness and psychiatric disabilities to understand themselves as disabled and the legal protections that come with that understanding. 

Comparing Contemporary Tactics to the Work of the NBWHP

Schalk argues that while the NBWHP names in their health book Body and Soil that Black people are more likely to be rejected for disability benefits like Social Security, by not mentioning the ADA or who is covered under it the NBWHP did not give individuals the full knowledge of the resources available to them to fight for access to legal benefits and legally challenge discrimination.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

While the NBWHP established their Public Education and Policy Office in Washington D,C, in 1990 the NBWHP did not have an active involvement with the passage of the ADA. The legislation's passage was not covered in Vital Signs until four years after the legislation went into effect. 

The National Black Women's Health Project and the Americans with Disabilities Act

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

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