Moving Away From The Neoliberalism of Disability Justice
It’s time to build upon disability Justice to create something more radical and sustainable. Neoliberalism will not create the change we want to see in the world.
I owe a lot to disability justice and especially to the Black, Queer, Trans, GNC, and native disabled folks who have done so much of the work and labor, often without the same acknowledgment as white cishet disabled organizers. We have this because of you and I’m eternally grateful of disability justice as my lens to view the world and my organizing.
The first time I encountered the Disability Justice- A Working Draft from Sins Invalid and Patty Berne I was so surprised, yet happy, to find something like this. I never really felt represented as a whole in many organizing spaces, and for once I found spaces where this wasn’t the case. This piece is not a flat-out criticism of disability justice, nor is it even a condemnation of the very things disability justice stands for. I have learned so much about the world and myself that I would have not without disability justice and BIPOC organizers.
However, this piece aims to criticize and condemn those who have taken disability justice away from its more radical roots and have morphed it into something that can be achieved through voting, legislation, neoliberal politics, and the continuation of our world exactly like it is.
This is not the disability justice I practice. Disability justice is about the dismantling of all systems of domination that threaten everyone’s existence, it’s about intersectionality and cross movement solidarity, and we cannot achieve these things by looking to such flawed systems that threaten our existence. Disability justice means the rejection and abolition of the prison industrial complex, military industrial complex, medical industrial complex, settler-colonialism, imperialism, and most important of all anti-blackness and anti-indigeneity. It means prioritizing this in tandem with your disability justice work. A glaring example of one my qualms with “disability justice” advocates is how when the word disabled was briefly uttered in the elections through #CriptheVote white disabled folks were celebrating the most.
A few problems with this:
- Anyone in office in the U.S., no matter how “progressive” you imagine them to be, will harm disabled folks globally and perpetuate anti-Blackness (which is mutually inclusive with ableism). The government and this country (U.S.) are inherently ableist, there is no changing that no matter how much “recognition” disabled folks get on air if the abolition of such a system is not in the works.
- They want to continue funding the police whom harm Black Disabled folks the most, so no, them mentioning #CriptheVote and briefly talking about disabled folks is not at all a celebration for Black disabled folks at large because their life is still threatened by state-sanctioned violence in more ways than that of their white disabled counterparts.
- For disabled (and non-disabled because disability justice is not just about justice for those who identify as disabled) Black and non-Black Indigenous POC in the U.S. AND abroad, that are also trans, GNC, non-binary, low-income, undocumented, incarcerated, suffering under patriarchy, imperialism, and capitalism, CNN and politicians mentioning #CriptheVote does not help the most marginalized in being respected, seen, or heard. It is the bare minimum, and we need more than that to live. We cannot applaud the bare minimum anymore.
As someone who is surrounded by disabled Black and non-Black Indigenous POC that are poor, undocumented, incarcerated, and QTGNC (queer, trans, gender non-conforming), we know what’s worthy of celebration. Our lives are still up for debate everyday, so representation and words spoken don’t mean much when the abolition of the systems that threaten our survival has not happened.
This is why I urge folks who claim to be about true disability justice, to be about radical and critical disability justice. You have to be explicitly anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist. You have to reject notions of US centric models (many different communities understand disability differently, some don’t have a word for it, and that is okay) and understandings of disabilities. Look at disability justice from an internationalist perspective, if something benefits us here but harms our disabled family elsewhere it is not justice. You have to be concerned with our disabled family outside of the United States. We are not simply fighting for those who proudly claim disabled but are fighting for all who suffer from oppression, that is true disability justice. Just because we get what we want, does not mean we should stop fighting and amplifying those who are nowhere near close to their goals. We have to do better.
I always had my problems with disability justice but felt them grow stronger after seeing what I’ve seen on social media, and also after reading The Right to Maim by Jasbir K. Puar. I started to see how much of my organzing around disability justice in the beginning was centered around, things that mattered, but in the greater schemes of things were less important. I become disinterested in slur discourse, medical vs social models, and person first vs identity first language when thinking about how colonialism, U.S. imperialism, and anti-blackness where harming our disabled and non-disabled family more than saying “the weather is so bipolar” was.
“In a context whereby four-fifths of the world’s people with disabilities are located in what was once hailed as the “global south,” liberal interventions are invariably infused with certitude that disability should be reclaimed as a valuable difference — the difference of the Other — through rights, visibility, and empowerment discourses — rather than addressing how much debilitation is caused by global injustice and the war machines of colonialism, occupation, and U.S. imperialism” (Puar, p.14).
Puar said a lot of what I was already thinking in my mind but couldn’t quite articulate in the eloquent way that they did. Something important all disability justice advocates, organizers, and activists should recognize is what Puar explains as “debilitation”, which is harming both disabled and non-disabled folks more than anyone cares to notice. Debilitation is more like a slow death and an ongoing weakening of certain populations (Black and Brown folks mostly). It is more endemic and a permanent ongoing weakening. It’s like why this predominantly black and non-black POC community in a poorer city have breathing problems developing from a young age, as they are surrounded by horrible air quality because of industrial capitalism and globalization. It’s why these BIPOC QTGNC folks have more mental health problems than their white U.S. cishet counterparts. It’s why some of my family has long lasting physical and mental health problems because of U.S. military occupations and interventions within their home countries in Latin America. It’s how people become injured, chronically ill, disabled, mad, etc.. Sometimes disability does come about without these things, but this isn’t a trend I see often in Black and non Black communities of color. Especially when looking further into our lineage, ancestry, and our community histories.
“The (largely unmarked) Euro-American bias of disability studies has had to confront itself, as the production of most of the world’s disability happens through colonial violence, developmentalism, war, occupation, and the disparity of resources — indeed, through U.S. settler colonial and imperial occupations, as a sign of the global reach of empire” (Puar, p.16).
Conditions I inherited from my mom and dad’s side were not out of the blue. They were poor brown immigrants who were forced to be separated from their family in order to survive. They endured a lot on their journey here. They still do as they have to navigate differently, and in worse conditions, than their white U.S. born counterparts. They had long lasting effects from the capitalist exploitation they endured as immigrants back in the day. They didn’t come to the U.S. because they wanted to but because they needed to. Medical conditions I have that are not so new are not simply because I was “predisposed” to it, but because I’ve grown up in a world that was never built for all of my identities or my family’s. It put a strain on us physically, mentally, and spiritually and we suffered immensely and still do.
We have a long lineage of suffering, and this is where my major conflict comes with liberalized notions of empowerment and “pride.” When I take pride and empowerment in my disability, I am also taking pride in what created it and exceptionalizing these harmful systems of domination. I am, as Puar continues to explain in their work, “producing debility and sustaining its proliferation” (Puar, 13). Debilitation, capacity, and disability are not mutually exclusive from one another. Disability and the prolonged process of debilitation to render certain populations weak, fighting for survival, and fighting for each other is not something out of the blue. It is strategic and the casualties benefit empire, in my case U.S. empire. If I’m taking pride in conditions I have at the hands of this empire, this empire bears no responsibility or accountability according to them. They want you take pride, feel empowered, if it means ignoring abolishing the conditions that made these things necessary. I cannot take pride in both the quick and slow deaths many of my family was subjected to.
This is not to say finding pride and empowerment in your disabled experience is all bad! We do need to find a bit of light in our disabled experiences and the insight it has given us we wouldn’t have otherwise, but complete pride and erasure of the systems that create them is not what we should do either. If we are erasing the greater perpetrators, the greater threats the most marginalized face abroad and globally, and instead focus solely on U.S. legislation, coddling with politicians, state rights, ableist language and slurs, and identity language etc. we are not practicing true radical disability justice. We can discuss these things too because they do matter to some extent, but we have to find a balance and give our attention to more pressing issues like anti-blackness, police brutality, U.S. imperialism, and settler-colonialism.
Disability can be an empowering and valuable difference that we adjust to living with, but if adjusting to our disabilities means also adjusting to white supremacy, industrial capitalism, neoliberalism, anti-blackness, police brutality, U.S. imperialism, settler-colonialism, etc… there is nothing empowering about it. Maybe for some white folks it still will be, but for me and many others it will not.
Disability is a part of me and my life. I have a love-hate relationship with it but have learned to see a lot of worth in myself where before I couldn’t find any because of internalized ableism (which I still struggle with). There are a lot of beautiful things it has given me. A lot of great insight and new perspectives I would not have otherwise.
For me and many other QTGNC Black and non-Black Indigenous POC taking pride in disability can bring threats of harm, abuse, and shame. It’s hard to be prideful and open about it for various reasons, and insisting every disabled person should be prideful and empowered ignores this fact as well. Pride and empowerment are not a universal experience everyone is afforded, and not everyone wants to partake in, and that is okay. In some spaces I can be more prideful and open, in others I can’t. Don’t assume everyone has to accept these liberal frameworks of pride, empowerment, and acceptance in order to be validated as a “disabled person.”
I don’t wish to change my disability, or me, as it has become an inseparable part of me but that does not mean I am accepting and adapting to the systems in which create and sustain debilitation and ableism, systems in which some of my conditions were created and also simultaneously worsened. Disability, neurodivergence, and more will exist without systems of domination but the things is these systems should not be proliferating, worsening, and creating these things. We should not have to live under constant harm and life-or-death ultimatums.
That’s what U.S. empire is doing.
We should aim to create a world, not where disability and neurodiversity don’t exist (because that is straight up eugenics if you’re thinking that), but where we can exist comfortably, and other systems of domination are not hindering us and our futures. We should all be able to live in a world, or worlds, that affirm all of our identities and actively strive to contribute to our happiness and survival. ADHD and many other disabilities will exist without capitalism, industrialism, colonialism, and more. We shouldn’t see any disability as a tragedy, an imperfection, or a defect that needs to be erased. Again, eugenics. People are not defects or a tragedy. Disabled people aren’t here for inspiration porn and to make abled folks feel better about themselves. We simply exist as we are, and we shouldn’t have to feel that is a threat or abnormality. We should be able to live happily and fully as we are. However, that does not mean the conditions that sustain and create disability and debilitation shouldn’t be seen as threats we need to focus on. It’s hard to untangle the two from each other, I get it, but if we accept and seek out the systems that necessitate our struggle for “change and affirmation” we will get nowhere.
I want to see us all survive and live. I want to see a better world, maybe not a perfect world, but it has to be better than this. We will not find this in liberalizing disability justice and watering it down to fit accepted liberal notions of “justice.” For those that care I urge you to stop contributing to the liberalization and whitewashing of disability. Be about radical and critical disability justice. Be about global liberation, which will not be found in current or future administrations at this rate, but in us and community.
Special thanks to Jasbir Puar’s Right to Maim, Capitalism and Disability by Marta Russell, and Leak Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha for inspiring this piece, and also to my team at Spoonie Uni. Please follow us on Twitter @spoonieuni for more on critical disability justice and mutual aid, and also check out these books and more that are about critical disability justice!
