Schalk observed that Black Disability cultural workers tend to use the words D/disabled and disability to describe themselves and the work they were doing. Contemporary Black Disability cultural workers also used the term disability while understanding the historicized and contextualized reasons why Black people may avoid identifying as disabled, and simultaneously work to bring more disabled Black people into politicized understandings of disability identity.

Differences between Contemporary Black Disability Cultural Workers and the work of the Black Panther Party and NBWHP

Schalk interviewed contemporary Black disabled cultural workers to get a more holistic sense of how Black individuals think about and theorize about disability.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Schalk posits that more modern Black disability politics should have and does have more explicit engagement with disability as an identity. Still, we have to keep in mind we don't just want to force Black disabled people into ways of talking about/relating to/embodying disabled identity that have been solely made by the predominantly white mainstream disability rights movement.

How Modern Black Disability Politics Addresses Disability Identity

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

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