Presenting: Be Antiracist with Ibram X. Kendi

0:15Speaker 1:Pushkin, Hey, Solvable listeners, we are hard at work on new episodes of the show, but this week we wanted to bring you something special that I am very excited about. It's a sneak peak of Pushkin's newest show, Be Anti Racist with Ibram x Kendy. You may have heard of doctor Kendy from his most recent nonfiction work such as Stamped and How to Be An Anti Racist, But for those of you who haven't heard of him, he is not only an author, but professor, activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy. At thirty four, he was the youngest person ever to win the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

0:56Speaker 1:I personally find his writing very approachable and his concepts of recognizing the assumptions of racism and ourselves easily digestible. He not only discusses the basics of bias and anti racism, but also provide optimistic solutions to fixed on broken system, which is what we love here at Solvable. On his new show, Be Anti Racist, doctor Kendey is continuing these necessary discussions on policies and practices that sustain injustice in our society and how we can dismantle racism and build a just, equitable world. His guests will include Julian Castro, Jamel Hill, Don Lemon, Heather c McGee, Mariam Kabba, and many more. Today, we're sharing an excerpt of an interview with Rebecca Cokeley, one of the country's leading voices on disability rights. Doctor Kendy and Rebecca have a frank conversation on the intersections of ableism and racism in America, the historic civil rights legislation governing both, and what we can all do to advocate for a better future for people with disabilities. Okay, here's a preview. You can hear the full episode by searching for be Anti Racist wherever you're

2:06Speaker 1:listening right now. Welcome to Be Anti Racist in Action Podcasts, where we discuss how to diagnose, dismantle, and abolish racism, how to save humanity from the divisiveness of racist ideas and the destructiveness of racist power and policy. How to free humanity through the unity of anti racist ideas and the constructiveness of anti racist power and policy. We were all born into a world of racist ideas, many of which I myself consumed as a young man in New York in Virginia. Throughout my life I've had to come to grips with some of the things that I imagine and thought were true about the world and the people in it. And like all of us, I'm still learning in my pursuit of understanding. I became an historian. I've written books, been on TV, taught at universities, lectured around the world. In the latest step in my journey is to help you on yours, for us to keep growing together.

3:19Speaker 1:On b Anti Racist, we discuss how to make the impossible possible and how to bring into being what modern humans have never known, a just, inequitable world. You ready, let's rollclusion finally come tumbling down. More than thirty years ago, then President George Herbert Walker Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. It came after a long struggle by disability activists to extend the protections guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act. This act is powerful in its simplicity.

4:07Speaker 1:It will ensure that people with this alies are given the basic guarantees for which they have worked so long and so hard. Independence, freedom of choice, control of their lives, the opportunity to blend fully and equally into the rich mosaic of the American mainstream. The signing of the ADA took place a lifetime ago, and it was the culmination of more lifetimes of struggle. But what kind of progress have we made? My guest today is Rebecca Cokeley, one of the country's leading voices on disability rights. I'm especially impressed by how well she centers race in her analysis and advocacy. She founded and directed the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress and served as the executive director of the National Council on Disability. Recently, Cokelely joined the Ford Foundation as the first program officer to lead a US based disability rights for Foli Leo. She's also a California native, a mother, and someone who served in the Obama administration from two thousand and nine to twenty thirteen. The day I sat down to talk with Rebecca happened to be the day that the closing arguments

5:24Speaker 1:in the Derek Chauvin trial were presented in Minneapolis. It was an intense day for both of us. Hey, Rebecca, Hey, how have you been? Man? Here's about a question, how are you really? I think I'm overwhelmed and traumatized and excited and outraged. It's this sort of weird mix of all of those emotions. What about you, how are you feeling in this moment? You know, I think I had done a panel at Netroot several years ago, was myself and a couple of folks from on the ground in Ferguson, and one of the things they said at the time that it stuck with me is that they believed that PETE PSD doesn't exist because what we're dealing with is a constant state of trauma, stress and disorder. And it has been probably one of the thoughts that has stayed in my head consistently since then, because the notion that there is a time and a space for recovery almost feels like a luxury exactly. It's trauma all around, exactly, and part of that, even as we talk, we have to be very cognizant about our terminology, and so I think, starting this conversation, how should we what terminology should we be using when we're thinking about disability or the disabled community.

6:53Speaker 1:You know, to me, I love the word disability. I love it because of the beauty of the elasticity of the term a It was a word that was chosen by our elders and it was the first time that people with disability is formally declared what they wanted to be called. And then in the crafting of the ADA, the definition is any mental or physical impairment that impacts activities of daily life, a history or a record of such impairment. And so the definition is broad enough to encompass the children in Flint, Michigan that are still several thousand days without clean drinking water and have acquired learning disabilities as a result of it. It's broad enough to include elders like Fanny lew Hamer who are involuntarily sterilized.

7:48Speaker 1:And it's broad enough to include people living with long haul COVID that are still trying to figure out how they navigate this space and time. To me, so often definitions are so restrictive, and this is instead about does it impact how you eat, how you live, how you engage with your loved ones? And the beauty of that is that it varies with each person definitely. And how would you define I always go to the definition by my colleague Talila Lewis and Dustin Gibson that talks about ableism as a system that places value on people's bodies and minds, based on society lee constructed ideas of normalcy, intelligence, excellence, and productivity. These ideas are deeply rooted in anti blackness and eugenics, colonialism, and capitalism. And you don't have to be disabled to experience ableism. It's really grounded in the notion of who is valuable and worthy based on a person's appearance and or their ability to produce, reproduce, excel and the term that they use, and I think is really powerful and or behave. Somebody might not have a choice how they appear in public, how they engage in public,

9:04Speaker 1:but the way that society responds to them, if they walk with a limp, if they speak with us matter, if they use a communication board to communicate, All of those things fall under the behavior piece, which I think is really critically important when we think about what it means to live in society. Wow. And it of course makes me think about how people respond to certain people because of the color of their skin, because of the texture of their hair, because of the culture that they practice, because of the language that they speak. And then when we start thinking about the intersection of ableism and racism, I think that's when it becomes tricky for many people because I think in many ways many Americans don't necessarily have a clear definition of racism, nor do they have a clear definition of which then prevents them from understanding their intersection. And so how should we understand their intersection?

10:06Speaker 1:I mean, they're roots of the same treat It's funny. I actually went back through your book after reading it the first time, and every time there was something there that I was like, oh, it parallels here. I literally like drew a picture of a tree, thinking about even from the days of slavery and the discussion of things like drape to mania, the psychosis that went along with runaway slaves, the development and frankly still continued use in many circles of phrenology, the examination of the physicality of a group of people in order to determine superiority or not.

10:45Speaker 1:Many of those things are still common discussion today. Individuals who are slaughtered by law enforcement at least fifty percent are people with disabilities, whether it be a mental illness, whether it be a speech impediment, whether it be substance use, which counts if somebody is in recovery. Even with the Derek Schouven trial, hearing the reliance on ablest language as a justification for the numerous deaths of African Americans with disabilities.

11:17Speaker 1:But then you have some who say, well, why are we still talking about disability? You know, indeed the ADA was passed in nineteen ninety. Aren't we living in a society where folks with the disability, you know, have rights justice, black and brown and indigenous and people of color have their rights. So why are we talking about this? What do you say to those who who make that claims? I see you're already shaking it because it's the same thing with post racial society, right it is, we still deal with a seventy percent at least unemployment. Right we're the only community that it is actually grounded in statute that it is perfectly legal to pay disabled workers two dollars and fifteen cents or less a week. Well, disabled people still, if you're on supplemental security income, you can't get married or you'll lose your health health insurance. We don't have marriage equality yet for disabled people in this country.

12:14Speaker 1:You aren't allowed to maintain more than two thousand dollars in a checking account in a lot of cases. Yes, the ADA is thirty years old, but eighty percent of polling places are still inaccessible to us in one way, shape or form. Progress has been made, but there has never been the level of enforcement that we need to actually see people with disabilities come anywhere near the level playing field that the law has fired to all those years ago. You can listen to doctor Kenney's full conversation with Rebecca Cokeley over on the Banta Racist Feed, on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.