Transcript: A Conversation with Dr. Sami Schalk and Jonathan D. Glater 
Presented by Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund 
April 19, 2023


CLAUDIA CENTER: This event is free to the public and if you want to help DREDF to attend our free events and services to the community, please consider a financial donation.  You can donate on our website, DREDF.org, or if you are here in person, you can place cash or a check in our donation box, which is located on the table to my left. Okay.  Onto the main event and why we are all here today. I am a huge Sami Schalk fan and I could not be more pleased and proud to host Dr. Schalk here at the Ed Roberts Campus. Dr. Schalk is an associate professor of gender and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her most recent book is called Black Disability Politics.  If you haven't read the book yet, I highly recommend it, it's very accessible.  It's also available free online in an open access format. Dr. Schalk identifies as a fat, black, queer, disabled femme and a pleasure activist.  She is active on Twitter with more than 40,000 followers. You can read more about Dr. Schalk online, including on our event page. Dr. Schalk will be interviewed by Jonathan Glater, professor of law at our own Berkeley Law. Professor Glater writes extensively in the areas of higher education law in policy and student debt and teaches many different subjects that intersect with Dr. Schalk's work, including critical race studies and disability law. And our mutual friend Rabia Belt says he's a real sweetie pie. We have them both together which I know will be an amazing conversation! Thank you, everyone!


JONATHAN GLATER:  All right.  With an introduction like that, I have to be really careful to live up to the sweetie pie! It's really an honor to be here with all of you this evening. Thank you for coming out. The book is a wonderful and I want to emphasize the point about accessibility, which I think we'll hopefully talk about in a moment. But I'm going to go straight to my list of questions, because you don't want to hear from me. We want to hear from Dr. Schalk who can explain to us some of the really kind of difficult concepts that she renders in, very understandable ways, in the book. And I think that was part of the project.  So my first question really is:  What prompted you to undertake this project?  And my second question will be.  And who is it for?


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  All right.  Oh, yeah, there we go.  Hi, y'all!  Thank you so much for being here, in-person and online.  Hi, people online! So, there's kind of the long and the short version of how I got to this project.  The long version is, in the most abbreviated form, I took my first disability studies in undergrad, I was lucky to do, it wasn't a common experience for a lot of folks, and after that first class, I took as many classes as I could on disability, because it just blew my mind that I had never been taught or taught disability as a political issue in the way I had talked to folks about race and gender sexual. And at one point I was taking a disability studies class and a black feminist theory class and thought it seems like these things should be talking to each other. It feels like this chapter on black women should be on disability studies and nobody is not and nobody is talking about black women over here. So at, like, 20, I was trying to figure out [clearing throat] -- excuse me -- the connection between these systems, because, to me, it seemed very clear and obvious and there was no scholarship that was really doing that. So, it's kind of been the thing that I've been trying to do for a long time. But in particular for this book, I am really trying to bring more folks who do black studies and critical race studies to come to disability studies rather than have disability folks dip their toe into critical race studies and as being the move. And I just want to bring more folks into the conversation.  And the book itself was sparked by reading Wanda Nelson's body and soul about the Black Panther and the studies, it was me looking at black health activism and where politics was being developed and not just about the studies. So for the audience of the book, I say implicitly, the book is for black people and black disabled people in particular, and I understand other people will read it and I want other people to read it. But it is not written to or for non-black people. The way I describe it in the book is imagine you have come into my living room and I am having a conversation with other black disabled people, you're welcome to listen and learn and maybe contribute sometime, but this is not your conversation.  I am having a conversation with other people. So, yeah, that's the hope to bring more black people in about disability justice and in disability studies in the hope we can start to understand how disability studies operates within black communities rather than simply borrowing from a predominantly white disability studies.


JONATHAN GLATER:  So you've already alluded to what professor call doctrinal line and critical race studies, disability studies. And the book, I think, really tries to trouble these distinctions, right, and forces us to question them. I have to tell you, as a law professor, that's really hard.  Because one of the things we do in law school is teach studies analogize and distinguish.  That's the game.  It's like some prior case that came out your way, like it's not some prior case that came out in the position you're in. And that whole project is something that is worrisome, to me, after reading the book. And I wonder if you can say more about the risks of trying to analogize and distinguish when we're talking about race and disability status as these theoretical categories.


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yeah, I think when we move toward analogies and comparisons, it makes hard for us to see the connections in the way that these systems are actually dependent upon one another, built upon one another. In the book I talk about TL Lewis's definition of ableism, I don't have it memorized so I won't be reading it for you, but the last line of the definition of ableism and engages concepts of productivity and excellence and normativety, and the last sentence is:  You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism. And that's where I think analogies fail, is that we know that ableism can be used against folks, whether or not they identify as disabled, whether or not they have a disability, because of the way they are perceived. And that perception is often based on race and gender and sexuality in the way we are outside of another norm, but then are read as lacking able mindedness, as not being as intellectually capable. And so then ableism is applying to us as well, even if we don't identify as having a disability. And I think we see that in all kinds of places, historically, you know, the DSM had homosexuality in it for a long time, that's obviously an example. But more recently the conversation around transfolks and trying to restrict trans-healthcare and the most recent law in Missouri is saying if you have depression or autism, you cannot receive care, because all of your co-morbidities have to be resolved before you transition. So we see the connection between the different systems are adding layers of ableism for folks whether or not they identify as disabled. So yeah, I think that when we compare, it treats them as distinct, right, and they are not distinct. Things, there's really significant overlap and mutual support happening between these systems.


JONATHAN GLATER:  So if I'm understanding you right, these systems of subordination along race and disability status are reinforcing. So there's a sentence in the introduction, ableism negatively impacts all black people whether or not you consider yourself to be disabled. And I wonder if you can take that apart a little bit for us so that we can understand how this works, that ableism can have along the lines of race and racism can affects along the lines of disability.


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yeah, so, for me, I use an example frequently in terms of reactions to police violence.  Particularly in 2016, when everything happened that turned our world upside down! I had a lot of folks, non-black folks, talk to me about the fact -- I would talk about feeling very paranoid, frequently very paranoid, any time I saw a cop or heard sirens on the radio that wasn't like a real siren, my heart was in my throat, and there was a lot of anxiety and tension. And folks were, like, well, it's not that common and it's not going to be you and really dismissive of that fear, right, and that fear is then being phrased and interpreted as paranoia, as overreaction, as something that is a psych disability of some sort, a condition, versus a pretty rational reaction to the world in which we live. We've seen in a lot of cases where police violence where folks will say well, I thought this person was dangerous, right, I thought this person was out of their mind based on the way they were behaving, you know, which might be the person who was injured in a car accident and was seeking help, right, and then was shot because they were moving and behaving in a way that did not align with what folks were expecting. So, because our reaction to a racist world is read as inappropriate by a lot of people, as an exaggeration, then we're read as lacking able mindedness and in the world and that can be used against us in various ways, whether they have a psych disability or not. So that's one of the ways.  One singular way. I also think about, I was recently yesterday at UCSF talking to their medical school and there was a person there being taught as recently as 2013 that black people do not experience pain in the same way. That someone who just had surgery just needs Tylenol, they don't need drugs because they don't experience pain in the same way, right. So we experience this medical and sociablism, whether or not you identify as disabled, because our bodies and minds are being interpreted as being different than the norm as being, like, this white male able-bodied standard.


JONATHAN GLATER:  So I was going to pivot to police violence a little later.  This is the selection, but I feel like you've opened the door and I want to frame the question and I want to ask you to read that paragraph that I showed you in the book. And here's the question:  In the book, there's several points where Dr. Schalk talks about the tension between criticism of harmful conduct, right, and subordination or -- sorry, and subordination or marginalization of people who have disabilities as a result of harmful conduct.  To condemn the one without contributing to the subordination of the other. And she wrote it better than I can explain it, so I'm going to ask her to read one paragraph from the book.


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yep.  So this is in the Praxis Interlude, and in terms of the structure of the book, I deal with who historical organizations, the Black Panther Party and the National Black Women's Health Project and there's one where I attempt to talk about one of the lessons we can learn from the mistakes or missteps in the way the Black Panther can necessarily go as far as we want and this is an ample of responding to disabling violence. This is on page 75. There is much to say about the disabling police violence that Blake, Jacob Blake experienced and how his personal history and behavior at the scene was used by white wing and mainstream media as well as by the public to excuse this violence. For the purposes of discussing how to enact black disability politics here, I focus specifically how to apply the disabling violence in the contemporary case. I chose to include this contemporary example because when the news broke that Blake survived and could no longer walk, I saw CNN use phrases like suffering from paralysis and see social media folks say tragedy akin to death. The pain and discussion on Blake's -- this is Blake's media message via lawyer's Twitter account where he mentions he's in constant pain. Most news and media reactions failed to acknowledge anyone with or without a spinal cord injury would be in pain 13 days after being shot in the back seven times. The physical pain Blake was experiencing and continues to experience with the neuropathy is not synonymous with paralysis, spinal cord injury, or disability generally. But these things frequently get conflated in an ablest world that believes most or all disabled people are constantly suffering because of their disabilities. When it comes to Black Disability Politics, however, we must acknowledge and empathize without making pain the focus. As a black disability issue to focus on the excessive violence by police, two instances of tasering and seven gunshots to the back as the problem, the source of the harm.


JONATHAN GLATER:  So, when I read that, first I sat back and said wow!  But when I read that, I started thinking, okay, what do I need to do differently? I teach criminal law.  So we're talking about socially harmful and horrible fact patterns all the time in that class.  And I thought, okay, what can I do differently?  What should I do differently in distinguishing between the harmful conduct and the person who has been on the receiving end of that harmful conduct whose life may be irrevocableably changed. And I wonder if you have guidance for us in how should we engage in that parsing?


DR. SAMI SCHALK: Yeah, so I talk about a couple of things. The first is this thing of focusing on the violence as the harm, the violence as the problem.  The disability that results from the violence is not the problem. The violence, the harm, is the problem. But we can acknowledge there's harm there.  This is an access of Black Disability Politics that we can acknowledge that trauma and harm and pain and potential disability identity that results from that. Especially when someone has a newly-acquired disability. So we want to focus on that as the problem.  And I think the next stage is rather than just focusing on the pain that someone is in, the suffering that someone might be experiencing, again, directly because of this violence, not necessarily because of disability, is to focus on how do we provide long-term support? Right, often, and you can correct me on this, because I'm not a lawyer, right, some of these claims are based on, like, pain and suffering, this is what we're trying to get, like, retribution for. But if we focus on what are the real supports that someone needs and what does that cost, that's what someone needs.  They need the actual support to be able to live their life.  That means that Jacob Blake needs a new home and home care and needs significant therapy to get through the trauma, right. What if that were the focus of our efforts on how to actually provide support? In this chapter, I also talk about the fact that Jacob Blake's children were in the car when he was shot.  Those children also need psychotherapy, support, care, right, to care for the PTSD of seeing something like that. So if we can shift to the violence is the problem and how do we actually support these folks that have now been disabled by this violence, rather than just fixating on the fact that someone has been disabled, I think that's where we start to shift. So if we're in, like, a lawsuit situation, what's the long-term care that is needed that now needs to be provided by that police department financially to make sure that Jacob Blake can live a full life as a disabled person and go through everything that he needs to go through to get to that point, right, because we do experience transition with newly-acquired, especially traumatically acquired disability.


JONATHAN GLATER: You alluded to the book on these interlude and that was on my list and I'll follow your lead in our conversation. I was wondering if you could say a little bit more about the decision to structure the book that way.  Again, the accessibility seems to have been really important and is a real success, often kind of critical theory is difficult to access, and so the practice interludes I assume are a step toward promoting that and say a little bit how you thought about that.


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yeah, I mean, accessibility matters to me, as a disability studies scholar, and that means a lot of things, right, that means the open access version, which I strongly encourage you to get, share, tweet, put on your Instagram, Snapchat, whatever you use, please put it out there.  I paid my press a lot of money to make this happen, so I would love for people to use the open access version. But that also means using accessible language as much as possible, using plain language or at least breaking down the more complicated, more academic jargon, so the book is not just legible for people in the academy. For me, a book, in particular, that's based on activist history and includes interludes with activists, if the activists pick up the book and says what does this say?  That is a failure for me. It's an absolute failure if they can't see and understand their own quotes and representations in this book.  And I want it to be something they're proud of and able to share and circulate within their movement communities. So it's really important for me to write in a clear and accessible manner.  And then the practice interludes actually came from a suggestion from one of the anonymous readers, so anonymous reader, whoever you are, thank you. One of the reviewers for Duke, originally the book was set up in a very chronological order and all of these lessons were at the end with the chapter on the interviews of contemporary disabled activists, and the reader suggested I change that up. That I bring the contemporary and the activist elements, the how to earlier into the book. So that was the impetus for it, someone was, like, what if we rearrange how this happened?  I'm really glad they did, because I think it helps ground it in activism throughout rather than making it feel just like a history. Because I'm not a historian.  I think some historians are, like, what is this? It's not a history, I'm so sorry, that's not how I was trained, it's a theory book that uses history. So, yeah, that's how it came about.  I was also finishing the book in 2020, literally in June of 2020, that was my goal to finish the book, and so I was between being in the streets, finishing the final parts of the book, and so that was another reason, as I was involved in uprisings in Madison and seeing the way that black disabled folks were taking charge in this moment of making sure we were organizing in ways that were COVID friendly, COVID safe, COVID conscious, really inspired me to make sure I was putting that praxis element forward and be useful for people. I want us to change organizing.  I don't want us to lose things we were doing in 2020 just because the world says this is over. And even if one day COVID does not exist in our world, we still need more accessible organizing.  We still need to tell people hey, we're going to be walking for four miles.  Is that a thing your body can do? Or hey, it's really hot outside, so we brought some water.  Do you need some water? Little things that can change who can be involved and how people are involved and make people feel like they are wanted there, that they are important there, that they have a role. For me, I'm a person that can't walk four miles, but I was happy to drive my car in front of or behind the protesters.  And my car was full of food and water. And when we would stop, I would distribute food.  And that was my way of being involved with the body that I have and the risk I am able and willing to take, right. And there were other folks doing other things. So it was really important for me to bring that forward because I was seeing it and, you know, I think for many of us, 2020 was a moment of, like, urgency.  But it felt really urgent for me to put that in the book. It felt like I needed to make sure that we were remembering this moment and taking those lessons forward.


JONATHAN GLATER:  So, that leads me to the historical question, because there's a really kind of elegant through line, and I don't know if you intended this, but the praxis sections that connect us now or in 2020 and more recently to protests over Section 504, back in the late 1970's. So I want to ask you a little bit about that history.  Because you say you're not a historian, but there's definitely history here and there's history while some aspects are widely known, some aren't. But I want you to share what you found was surprising or what you didn't know when you dug into the relationship, for example, between the Black Panther Party and those protests in San Francisco.


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yeah, so the first chapter of the book starts off with this and it's great to be, like, in this area.  So talk about it.  And for me, what was surprising is that everything I had heard about the 504 through disability history was that the Black Panthers brought food, which is cool, that's cool. But when I actually dug into the Panther's archives, there was so much there.  They were writing.  They covered the story more than any other nationally-distributed newspaper. They were covering more disabled folks of color in the movement than any other paper.  Because most of the leaders were white, so those were the folks that were most likely to be interviewed. So, there was so much more that they were doing than just bringing food, even though that was very important, to feed people, and still remains important to feed people in our movement work. So, that was one thing that surprised me. And I really just -- I love the way that the Panthers used their knowledge of how to negotiate and be in contact with federal agents. So, Corbett O'Toole in her memoir talks about in one of the first nights the Panthers brought food, she was in the lobby and the Panthers got there and FBI said you can't bring that in here, you can't come in. And they said okay, we're going to get more Panthers and come back and then bring more until you let us set up the food and then we'll do that and FBI let them do that. So they didn't have interactions with the FBI and police to engage in a way that's not escalating but in a way of disability organizing. And I think that learning that happened between the groups through just the modeling, right, not a formal training that we did, but just watching people do things to say oh, yeah, we can do that, we can do it like that is really important. And it wasn't just hey, we gave some crips some food, it was a really much more clear exchange.  They interviewed people, right, they covered some of the hearings that were happening. So the Panthers did so much more and were also, themselves, learning in the process, right.  They eventually made all of their buildings wheelchair accessible. So there's things that exchange was happening through this movement work in a way that I think has been obscured in the history. And the Panthers, the scholarship on the Panthers, I couldn't find any of their involvement in the 504.  Nobody writes about it.  At all. And then in disability history, it tends to be kind of a footnote.  Only Sue Swartz, on Brad Lomax's article, that was the only article diving into that history. So, yeah, it just surprised me that there was so much exchange and yet it gets just, like, footnoted, like, "They brought us food."


JONATHAN GLATER:  So I'm told I need to hold the mic closer to my mouth.  Is this good?  Okay.  This is not how law school classes work, so I'm not used to this.... Part of the book is this very close read of the press coverage, right, by the Panthers of those protests.  And you are not... [Sighs]... you are critical, I mean, you are critical of some of the coverage, right?


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  [Nods head].


JONATHAN GLATER:  And I'm mentioning it because it points to the instability of the language that we use when we're talking about race and disability, right.  We use different words for concepts now than we did, even five years ago, right?


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yeah. 


JONATHAN GLATER:  And so I wonder -- and you're careful about passing judgment and saying that using the wrong terms means that this is not a potential ally. And I wonder how you reach the conclusion when what you've got is the news article, right, that's decades old, how we make -- how we draw conclusions about what someone's views are on an issue when they're using terms that are maybe not, right, the most sensitive and most nuanced terms. 


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yeah, for me it's putting those words into the larger context of the actions, the behaviors.  Again, the level of representation, the engagement that -- so the words that I talk about are they refer to Brad Lomax as suffering from MS regularly, which, again, is not a word that we would want used to talk about disabled folks. They also use the word inspiration to talk about the protests.  But I do, I push on that one because they don't use it to describe disabled people, they use inspiration to describe the protest and the success of the protest and one time to refer to the fact that folks were using the black civil rights song "We shall overcome" as an inspiration because of the protest. And I know we have a knee jerk reaction to the term inspiration and the way it's used, and I want to encourage folks to use to look beyond the word itself, especially when we're talking about communities that might not share the language, communities or individuals that are coming into disability consciousness. I think that knee jerk reactions to language can push people out. And I've seen it happen in disability organizing and in disability study spaces where, for example, you know, parents of a disabled child is trying to figure some things out and using language that we don't use in community and people are so quick to shut down the language without actually listening to what the person is trying to ask or say. And it pushes people, particularly folks of color, out. Because if you are a black mother trying to take care of your disabled child and you come into this very white space and all of a sudden a bunch of white people are yelling at you how ableism and terrible you are, we are not coming back to that space. We have disconnected a black disabled child into the community because of the way we're using the wrong language. Now, of course if we're correcting people and nope, I'm not going to do it, we can have conversation. But the knee jerk reaction to that language without actually listening to the content, to the intent, is really, I just think it's important as we are trying to bring more folks in. And I think about this a lot in the wake of Long COVID. We have a lot of new disabled people in this world. We have a lot of newly disabled people who are coming into this identity for the first time, coming into this experience for the first time, grieving the loss of whatever body or mind they thought they had, whatever futures they thought they had. And I'm seeing a lot of disabled people online being snippy with folks of, well, that's the way it's always been for us!  Yes, yes, and... these people have to go through their process and I think we're in a moment where it behooves us to welcome people gently, to not force identity labels on folks when they're not ready. But to allow people to learn from our community about the things that are important, right.  Like, hey, you're having trouble with your disability right now, here's a website with a whole bunch of pains. If you don't want to identify and you use a cane, use a cane. You need to rest and you need to negotiate some accommodations, you don't have to be ready for this label. But here are tools that are going to be really useful for you. And as people receive those tools and come into terms with their body, then maybe they will come into identity community, right. But we force people out when we force the labels and the words before the understanding and the experiences there.


JONATHAN GLATER:  So, if I'm hearing you right, this is a call for empathy, right, which is not something that's necessarily explicit in the book but seems to be one of the projects of the book, notwithstanding about who you said it's for. So I wonder if you want to say a little bit about empathy and the role of the book project in promoting empathy. I know I learned from reading the book and seeing, right, history through the eyes of, in some cases figures that have not gotten a lot of attention in the past. So, I assume this is an explicit goal -- sorry, I'm doing better with the mic.


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yeah, I mean... empathy and just expanding our understanding of, again, the ways that folks come to disability. You know, so in my own experience as a person who came into disability studies pretty young and into community young, but did not yet identify as disabled because I didn't know if I was allowed and I didn't know if it counted, because I didn't have a diagnosis and I wasn't on medication and all these other things that I used to say "I don't know yet." I had people that were, like, call me when you finally identify or, like, you know, really pushing it on me in ways that I was, like, [Sighs]... this feels icky. As a queer person, 13-year-old me didn't need someone saying you're gay.  Just let me figure it out on my own! So the folks that I most connected with were the people that offered me wisdom around chronic pain without requiring anything of me, right. Without judging whether or not I identified yet or the language that I used to talk about myself. And I think that that is what I want from more folks, right, is, like, gentleness with one another with the goal of building community. I think we're used to being harsh because the world is harsh to us, right. But when we're trying to welcome folks into our world and get folks on our side, I don't know that that harshness, those hard lines around identity labels and the words that we use, I don't know that that's the way. Again, especially in this moment where we have so many newly-disabled people.  Not just with Long COVID, right, also with folks who have had medical care put off or delayed because of lack of access to hospitals, right. We have folks who just couldn't get the care that they needed. So I think that there's a lot of disability growth right now; that this moment, in particular, it feels urgent to me, that we shift the way we are approaching disability identity and disability community, to make sure that folks are getting what they need and getting that raised political consciousness that brings us to identity, right. For me, identity is a community-building tool and that's it.  I care much more that people are getting the things that they need and they have that critical lens so they know they're not -- lens, so they know they're not alone and they know that when doctors are terrible to them and there's this larger experience they can put themselves in context with. And in doing the book tour the last couple of months, I have had black folks say, like, I'm rethinking how I identify or I'm seeing my family members in a different light because I didn't think of them as disabled but this is actually how this happened and there's a history in my family. And that is heartening to me because I think there's been this distancing because of this harm of racism that's put false labels on us to have folks come in and understand a disability that is not just defined as who is getting SSI or formal accommodations in school within the black community is really important.


JONATHAN GLATER:  So one thing I'm hearing that is that organizing around a progressive agenda is that at the end of the day, a pragmatic project, right, built on establishing these relationships and building bonds of community. So, first I want to ask, is that right?  [Laughs]


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yeah.  I mean, I think we have to be pragmatic in a moment where a lot of things are going wrong!  [Laughs].  A lot of things are going wrong! So if we want more folks on our side, so to speak, yeah, we have to be practical in the way that we approach people and bring them in. Because I think there are a lot of moments where people do associate disability with whiteness.  Or leaders in disability rights and disability organizing with whiteness. And then are less inclined to move on to disability issues and they don't see disability organizations responding to police violence, for example, or responding to violence particularly to communities of color. So I think it's important we are expanding our lens to bring folks in so that we can have this, like, again, I talk a lot about collective liberation in the book, right.  That for me is the goal.  There is no way for us to be free without all of us being free.


JONATHAN GLATER:  So then my next question is, what are the conditions or circumstances that facilitate, right, the building of those relationships and the establishment of those kinds of alliances? And I wonder about this because we're coming out of the pandemic, we're coming out of a period of protest that you describe in the book, which I would think, okay, this is exactly the kind of crusible I want, but I'm not so sure. I'm curious what you think.


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Okay, like, the question is what do we do?  [Laughs].  What do we do? 


JONATHAN GLATER:  Yes.


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Okay.  What do we do... there's a lot of things we can do.  So I think on a consciousness-raising level, I think that's kind of what this book is for me, it's a way of encouraging consciousness-raising around disability identity and experiences within black communities. And ideally also I hope it helps other racialized communities to help their own understandings of what does disability politics looks like for our community. So I think consciousness raising is -- I'm a gender study woman and that's a core part of it and educating. And making clear within all of our organizing work, the way it intersects with different issues. In Madison, I'm seeing more and more folks that are doing reproductive justice work talking about disability, really talking about disability, access to raising children as a disabled person, to being able to get birth control or resist being forced on birth control, right. Seeing more folks talk about the way that different changes in policies are also going to impact disabled people. I want to see that brought more into "other movement work." And so I think that's part of it, is that more, like, disability justice folks connecting with these other organizing to help folks have the language and the lens to understand it. But I think we need folks that are doing the bridgework.  I talk about this with Brad Lomax, that he was doing that bridgework to say I'm going to connect these two, I'm going to connect these two. And I will say, because I think that those of us who are, like, interested in this tend to burn ourselves out.  You don't have to do everything.  Like, I'm not a policy person, I can't tell you what policies are going to change the world. I have large beautiful visions, but I don't know what that's going to look like written in the words, right, written into law. But I know my role, I know my skillset, and that's what I'm going to use. So I also want to say that figuring out what's the thing that you can offer and doing that well rather than trying to be and do everything, and knowing when is your point to step back, right. When people ask you about things and you're, like, outside of my purview, and that's okay.  We can point to other people, but not trying to do and be everything. But be really good at the thing that we're doing, while lifting up the work of other folks. There are enough of us. One of the things I really like about the contemporary movement for black lives is the idea that we don't have a singular leader, right, you can't kill the one leader and you kill the movement.  We have lots of leader. We are leader-full. And so that's what I want to see more in disability justice, is us resisting the celebrity model of movement work and really understanding how we are all contributing in different ways and have our specific areas of what we're doing.


JONATHAN GLATER:  So I'm mindful of the time.  But -- no, I'm okay?  Okay. So I want to ask a slightly different question about the way you're thinking about yourself and your role in these efforts may have evolved over the course of the book, because you've talked to people in various contexts or activists, you've looked at the history. And what you just articulated about recognizing this is what I can do and that's what I'm going to do and I'm going to do it to the best of my ability, is that how you came to the book? Or is that how you left the book? 


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  I... yes and -- yes and yes. [Laughter]  You know, I went into the book wanting it to chart this activist history to show that black people have been doing this.  We have been doing it.  It just doesn't look the same.  It doesn't use the same words, but it's there, right, it's an investment in addressing disabling violence and ensuring quality medical care and healthcare and larger supports. And, again, trying to address the way that racism is disabling.  And fighting against that disabling violence. So, that was, like, the goal. But I think in the wake of 2020 and that was the first time, for me, that I was really on the ground in a concrete, consistent way.  'Cause what else was I doing in June of 2020 but sitting in my house?  So I was in the streets. So that, for me, changed, changed it from what was more of, like, an intellectual research, speaking to an academic audience, to really about the praxis element.  So I think the praxis is what shifted in writing the book. Also I mentioned my own identity process, so I did the interviews in 2019.  And I was already identifying as disabled to friends, but I wasn't really public about it. Again, was still on the fence about claiming it publicly. And doing these interviews with black disabled activists is what tipped to for me, really talking to folks about what's the value of it? Again, if I'm not getting any formal accommodations and I'm not -- so what's the point of doing this?  And so many of the black disabled activists I interviewed talked about the same thing, if not forcing identity on folks, but understanding it as a tool to come into community. And so that tipped it for me. So, for me, coming out of the book, there was much more of an activist approach and the approach that just came out of the process and the time that it was being written. And now I feel like, as I go on tour with the book and talk about it, that that -- that this is part of the advocacy work, is me talking about what has happened with the book, but making sure that people know that it's open access, encouraging people to read it, to use it in, like, reading groups and book clubs. Using it in non-profit settings and getting it out there and hoping it reaches more black people than an average academic book might reach.


JONATHAN GLATER:  So in terms of reaching people, I have a note here, you have a lot of Twitter followers.


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  [Laughs]. 


JONATHAN GLATER:  And so I wonder if you want to say anything -- I mean, the book is one medium for reaching people, right, and helping to build these relationships that is essential to the progressive alliances we're talking about. How do you think about Twitter?  And how do you think about Twitter now versus not that long ago?


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yeah, I mean, tomorrow the checkmarks are going away and it's just going to be the Wild Wild West, so who knows? Twitter has just been my preferred medium as a person who prefers writing over anything else.  So it's just been the platform that I've used the most. And I do feel like it has connected me to so much organizing.  I mean #disabilityTwitter has taught me so much, it's a place that I often go when I'm seeking advice and perspectives and resources. So, I get a lot out of it, but I do think it has become a way for me to circulate the work and the ideas from the work, make connections for people. Like, if something is happening in the news or in pop culture, I might say, oh, like, well, hey, if you want to read more about this, here's a chapter. And I can link directly to that downloadable chapter. So the public work for me has really been an important part of this. I'm grateful for, you know, these platforms and folks inviting me to talk about it. And so for me, they all kind of feed into one another. I think that people know about me and invite me to places because they've seen me on Twitter and then because people see then my name associated with, like, various universities and they follow me on Twitter and it just becomes a cycle. But it's a way of getting the work out there. So, for me, it's just another tool to distribute the work.  And as an academic who is ambivalent of being an academic, I never thought about it and seeing people like me, I thought I will stop working until it fails, but it hasn't yet. But at any point, I'm willing to step outside of the academy, I'm not married to this for my whole life. But I want the work to get out there. That's what I care about. I want the ideas out there. I love research and writing. And so Twitter is another tool to, like, distribute that information. And I've just met a lot of great folks that way. You know, Alice Wong I have only known online but I got to meet her coming here, so I got to actually see her in person.  So there are these real, sustained connections that has taught me so much that I have gotten out of those spaces as well.


JONATHAN GLATER: Okay.  I have one more and then I'm going to pivot to questions.  And that is in pragmatic terms, again, for folks who are here, for folks who are watching us, are there particular takeaways that you would want to emphasize for them?  And in the book, I know you say that people should take what they need, which I really appreciated. But I suspect you have ideas for how you want this to -- this conversation to influence us. 


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  I want people to know that black people have been organizing around disability issues for a very long time.  I say in the book, you know, I start with the Panthers because that was the organization that I started the book research with. But this exists long before the Panthers too, right, this is not the only example and there are great scholars doing that.  You can look at the footnotes to get all of those details. That's the first thing.  We are not new to this and no matter what the disability rights history height look like on paper right now. So I think that's one thing. And then yeah, that last point of TL Lewis's definition, you do not have to be disabled to experience ableism, it doesn't matter how you identify, this system is going to get you. And so it behooves all of us to have that critical eye and start resisting it, rather than trying to prove that we are not disabled in whatever ways or we are not as disabled in whatever ways and actually resist that oppression rather than trying to step away from it and let it hit somebody else.


JONATHAN GLATER: Okay.  Can I pivot to see whether we have questions in either here or online?


CLAUDIA CENTER:  Hi, yes.  We have questions from the room.  We've passed out cards.  And Erin will collect. And we have questions from the Zoom room.  And so Erin and Tina and -- they are collecting the questions and we will give them to Jonathan to take a look.


JONATHAN GLATER:  I didn't realize I was curating too! That's additional pressure!


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  [Laughs]. 


JONATHAN GLATER:  Okay.


CLAUDIA CENTER:  This is Claudia.  Erin, you can use some -- you can put the good ones on top, if you have ideas. [Pause]. 


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Do you want me to, like, do something while you read those?  [Laughs]. No?  You've got it?


JONATHAN GLATER:  I've got a winner here on the first one, so I'm good with… Yeah, no, I'm -- these are already thoughtful questions. So you've talked about race studies needing to bring in elements of disability studies. Can you expand on your thoughts of disability studies to include critical race studies.  There's a parenthetical, I ask about critical race studies continue to be white centered


 DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yeah.  Well... I think that, for one, it would just be helpful if people who are doing disability studies, that their study is based on all white whatever it is, all white text, all white media, all white participants, just say that.  Just say this is a white study. This is a study of old white text.  This is what old white dead men said about disability.  Great, we know that, right.  Rather than say this is how disability has been said in literature.  No, in old dead white literature.  That would help. Say that sometimes and know that might not be applicable. Otherwise, you know, I am really hesitant to encourage disability studies scholars that do not have any training in critical race studies, do not have connections to communities of color, deciding to just start doing race. I think that there are folks who have done it really well, but I would prefer to see more folks coming to disability studies and learning disability studies approaches who already have that basis in critical race studies. I say, for example, you know, the folks who are doing black history, it's already in the archive.  All they need is the lens to suddenly look differently at the material and they will see disability in there. And so just having more folks come in. So I think I want disability studies folks to -- white disability studies folks to just know that you don't have to do it all, you can actually just step back and let other people do things, collaborate with people, and, again, name when your work is white.  Just name it. I think a lot of my academic career and a lot of my publishing has been, like, here's this concept from disability studies that we talk about being, like, universal way of thinking about disability and how's how it doesn't apply to black literature and black experiences and consciously and saying that's really white and that's really white and that's most of my work!  [Laughs]. Yeah, I just want people to be able to name it and not name it in shame and there are various approaches.  Just name it rather than leaving it unnamed and assuming that it applies more broadly than it might.


JONATHAN GLATER:  Really you're talking about positionality, right, if I'm understanding correctly. This is an easy one:  Are you planning on releasing an audio version of the book?


DR. SAMI SCHALK: Audible, yeah, Duke, they have a relationship with Audible, they made an audio book for my first book, I asked many questions, I have someone in mind to do the voicing of it, but we have not heard back. So if anyone has connections with Audible, please let me know, because we're trying to make it happen.  But it's something that is outside of Duke's ability to produce their own, so they have to rely on someone else doing it. So it is something that we want to do that I wish could happen sooner, but it is outside of my hands.  But, yeah, something we're working on.


JONATHAN GLATER: Okay.  You discuss the Panthers and the NBWHP.  If you had a magic wand and could update the strategic vision of one black wellness/activist organization, which one would you choose, and why?


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Like, in the book or in general?  In general.  Hmm... that's a lot of options.... I mean... so, I think that reproductive justice movements, when I think about sister song, now I see disability showing up, but I would love to, like, go back and wave that wand and make disability far more integrated into the reproductive framework earlier because I think it's so obvious, right. If we take reproductive justice right to have a child, not have a child, raise a child safely, right, there's so much around disability justice that could be in that. So I think that I would love to have seen that be more prompt independent earlier on in the reproductive justice movement, which to me is a black lives movement, like folks like Loretta Ross and in sister song, I would love to see it explicitly in there earlier. But every time I see something that Loretta Ross writes, disability is a part of it.


CLAUDIA CENTER:  This is Claudia. We're going to have one oral question from the audience.


WILL: Hello there, my name is Will, I'm a Ph.D. student from UC Berkeley.  I have two questions. I'm a historian and I'm going to come at it from a different angle. As you were speaking, one of the things we have access to is add verts of run away slaves and the way they were described as slaves is to make comments on their disability, so and so had a scar here, so and so was whipped on his or her body or their body. And so I'm wondering how then that works in this history? And then moving from that, within the context of slavery, we start to understand how black people with disabilities, disabled black folks become terrorized by the slavers and I'm at Berkeley and saying I'm disabled and asking for accommodations terrorizes the instructors. And I want to learn enough from slavery this disabled black bodies and terrorization. And my final comment, when you're a historian or in theory in history, you have to be careful not to archive, what I mean by that is grandize historical activism where you forget about contemporary activism. And I'm wondering how you talk about the Panthers and how great they are, how do you make sure one does not silence the other?


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Well, so for the point around slave, run away slave advertisements, there are some folks who have written about this.  So I'm gonna blank on her last name, but Jenifer something with a B, somebody in here might know, one of the articles is mothering the useless, in scare quotes, and there are folks that have written about this history and identifying the way that disability was used to identify folks, but also critiquing the idea that disabled slaves were just, like, tossed to the slide or were considered less worthy. And actually finding examples of disabled slaves put in other work, not necessarily in the fields, but being forced to work at the same pace and disability was not negated at all in that context. I think it's there.  It's not my area of expertise, right, that part of history, but it's definitely there in the way that a lot of... the way that blacks folks show up in the archive, right, there's a lot of black disabled folks showing up in the archive. And we see a way that disability was forced on enslaved people as punishment for running away. So it's both and, right, folks in working context and also as a punishment and cutting the Achilles tendon, right. In terms of -- I say in the book, the goal is not to aggrandize or trash, right, the goal is to say here's some things that are important and interesting that we can learn from and here's some things they could have done better. Whether or not they knew, but here are some things that they learn. So I talk about missteps, right, things that could have been different in a way that I hope shows that I value and respect and see the things that we can learn and build upon. And for me, it's more about building that connection, seeing that, for me, the roots of disability justice are in some of this work. It's already there.  Like, we can see that history that I think is just so important to say that this didn't just pop up in 2005 when we coined the term disability justice, this has been happening in communities of color for a long time, even if it's imperfect. So I hope I get that across in the book that, yeah, it wasn't perfect.  There are things we can go in and critique, but that doesn't diminish the reality of the clear way that the Panthers were making connections between ableism and racism and making connections between the refusal of the Government to, like, provide enough funding to actually support people, right. That was there and that was still valuable even if it's not exactly what we would want to see today. In the hopes that we continually engage in movement work to say we're not perfect yet, here's some things that could be better and here are some things that are good and here's how we will keep learning and growing from that. I do think the Panthers get book in this iconic hero position that can be a little bit problematic.  They weren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but not to demonize them either. And I talk about how the Panthers show up in our memory and Beyoncé and the Super Bowl performance and the way that people responded to that.  To say they hold such an iconic position for us in ways that I think is polarizing and I would like to see a more balanced approach to understanding their history and their organizing.


JONATHAN GLATER:  Okay. I'm going to combine two questions now, because they seem to me to move in a similar direction. First, can you talk about bringing the praxis and pragmatism to personal and private life and how you change your relationships to reflect the ideas? And the question I view as related is how do you respond in a manner acceptable to value a context, i.e. being a trans lawyer masking for a client when you constantly see humanizing violence?


DR. SAMI SCHALK: That's a lot... oh, okay.  Can you read them again?


JONATHAN GLATER: I can read them again.  I see these as linked because they are talking about personal incorporation of some of the lessons, okay. Can you talk about bringing the praxis and pragment in personal and private life and the ideas.  And how is it acceptable in certain context i.e. a trans lawyer when you're masking for a client when you constantly see humanizing violence. Mia Mingus and building relationships where we are healing each other accountable in real ways, not in cultures and social media and exaggerated ways but a real person that I'm going to sit down and be like you and talk about what's happened. And make sure that the harm is addressed.  And so building those communities and those relationships, that's where I'm at in that interpersonal level is really investing in people that want to be held accountable, want to learn and grow, and will do the same for me. My biggest fear is becoming, like, an out of touch full professor that doesn't understand the world anymore.  I really want to make sure that people don't let that happen to me, like, keep holding me accountable when I say wild things. So, that interpersonal level, like, who are the people that want to learn?  You know, especially once we're out of, like, learning context, who's the person that's going to send me that video? Do you want to watch this video together and learn together and do this? That's where I'm at on the interpersonal. And when it comes to survival, I think, for me, it's a matter of reminding myself why I'm doing it and deciding when it is worth it. There is going to be a point where things aren't worth it.  It's not worth the amount of violence and masking or misgendering or whatever is happening to me, it's not worth it anymore. And only you can decide where that is for you, right, like what level is okay.  But for -- well, not okay, but is able to be tolerated. And I think, for me, it's having folks around me that can remind me that this is something that is happening because of oppression, not because of me.  And that I have space where I don't have to do that, right. So, for me it's like I need people that are not academics in my life where I can just, like, not be the person in front of the room with the microphone, I can just be the person, like, in the corner having a drink.  I need spaces where I can be myself, be comfortable. And so creating those spaces outside of whatever that work space is that might be harmful and oppressive I think is another thing. But, yeah, nobody can tell you what level of acceptable is.  Like, what other people can deal with, because of the other things they might have in their life, right, other privileges they might have, they may be able to tolerate some things at work that are not tolerable for other folks. So I don't think anybody can tell what you you can do, what is necessary for survival. Yeah, I just -- I don't think anybody can.  Because there's so many factors involved in, like, money and accommodations and other kinds of support that you have to negotiate that within your own life context. Yeah, what is tolerable, what is necessary for your survival. And on, like, beyond just a bare minimum bodily level also in terms of, like, your heart and mind and pleasure, what is necessary and in what ways can you steal moments of liberation within it. This is, like, a very minor example, but I recently put a couch in my office.  To be able to lay down when I'm having a lot of pain between meetings is a game changer.  And not lay down on the floor, which is what I used to do, lay down on a tile floor.  Not great! So, just stealing these moments of, like, on the clock time of I'm going to take ten minutes, just ten minutes to close my eyes and lay down and just get the pressure off my back, it makes a huge difference. So I also encourage stealing [laughs] moments of liberation inside of your work space or school space.  Just take it wherever you can; yeah.


JONATHAN GLATER:  I'm going to use my moderator's privilege.  In the book, you also talk about the focus on self-care, that for a time, it was an institutional objective, and I wonder if you want to say more about how that came to be? And then came not to be with the growth of the organization. And forget me, I'm blanking –


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  National Black Women's Health Project.  Yeah, so the National Black Women's Health Project had this concept of self-help and they formed for black women, about three to ten black women that would meet on a weekly basis in someone's home, in a church basement, or in some space in community. And the goal was for women to talk and share about their health experiences, what's going on in their lives, and to support one another. So this concept of self-help really came from what do we need to change internally or address internally to make positive changes in our lives? So that might be talking to someone to realize, like, oh, there's another way of approaching this or I'm not alone in this.  Just getting advice and dealing with internalized oppression was one of the big goals of the self-help groups. So I really consider them also to be very consciousness-raising groups. And that faded from the organization's primary programming because of funding.  And this has come up in a couple of my talks that people have asked more about it.  But essentially as they relied on more federal and foundation funding, they were unable to support the self-help groups so much because they couldn't document the change in this, like, calculable way, right. If we're meeting every three weeks and I have diabetes and you have hypertension and we're not, like, measuring my sugar, we're not, like, putting out numbers for the meetings.  The meetings are supposed to be confidential. And the organizer was saying yeah, we met this many times and this many people came and you couldn't note what change there was in cholesterol and that's what funders wanted, they wanted concrete, hard number evidence. And it was harder and harder to prove and they did things like the walking for wellness program where they could say we had 50 black women walk five miles, right, here's some numbers for you and it faded because of that, which I think any of us who tries to get funding for anything, we know it's hard to get funding for anything that demonstrates a clear, concrete, visible outcome. But the organization talked about that, of being, like, this work might not have an effect immediately and people might even reject what we're offering, and that is all fine. Like, this is part of the work. And I do think that we can see from the organization how many black women went on to do other kinds of organizing.  It was really, like, a training hub in many ways. But, again, that concrete outcome and funding I think a lot of us can create to struggles with getting funding to the thing that we actually want to do because we have to prove some sort of impact that might not be as able to be demonstrated.


JONATHAN GLATER:  Okay.


CLAUDIA CENTER:  This is Claudia, I just want to let you know that it's 8:15, this is going brilliantly, we love it.  And we wanted to let you know that Jenifer -- oh, wait, what's the name again? -- Jenifer L. Barclay is who you were thinking of. 


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  I said Jennifer B. I was close. 


CLAUDIA CENTER:  Someone texted that to me. 


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Thank you, that someone!


JONATHAN GLATER: Okay.  Back to questions. Back to analogies.  Can you please speak a little bit more about how the experience of disability and more specifically being black and disabled is ignored because folks are trying to analogize to white or non-disabled folks' experiences?  That can also be seen as an accessibility tool and are there analogies that are not generalizing?


DR. SAMI SCHALK: I'm not saying that analogies have no place in our world, right, but the examples that I can give that I think can be problematic, so there are examples in Disability Rights organizing, for example, in getting access to public transit, where there were signs that white disabled activists had that said we can't again get on the bus which has the suggestion that black people have already gotten their rights, right. And this is a discourse that comes up kind of frequently in the organizing that disabled people are the last people to get the rights and black people already got it so this eliminates anything we're still dealing with racism. But also the challenges specifically to black disabled people, right.  So these kinds of analogies where it's comparing in order to kind of denigrate, right, intentionally or not can be a problem. I also see on the other side that I've had a lot of black folks say well, just being black in general is a disability.  I get it, it's a disadvantage, there's all this stuff coming with it, but saying it's a disability doesn't actually help us then understand the distinction of what disability is in our culture and what it is like to be a black disabled person. So those are the kind of, like, analogies I'm talking about, where we're kind of comparing two experiences in ways that kind of reduces the real tangibility of one experience in the name of lifting up another or highlighting another. But I do think that there are other ways that we can make these connections by talking about similarities, right. I think that that can be useful. You know, when I talked about, for example, my reaction to any kind of engagement with police, as being called paranoid, right, it doesn't mean that I am saying I have a diagnosis on this, but that it is -- that there's a relationship between these things. So I think when our analogies emphasize relationship rather than comparison in a ranking kind of way, that's where we can have more nuance. But any time we analogize there are ways we talk about and continuing to see white disabled people talking about blackness as if we have gotten everything that we need, you know. There was a disability studies journal not that long ago that had a special issue titled Disabled Lives Matter and I'm, like, yeah... and we don't need to borrow and steal in these ways and there are other ways we can emphasize these connections.


JONATHAN GLATER:  There was a relatively law article titled blackness as a disability, so it's both ways. Do you think people/countries with a history of colonization have parallels with black communities struggle of identifying with disability?


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Absolutely, yes. 


JONATHAN GLATER:  Okay. 


[Laughter]


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Yeah, 100%. Colonization in so many ways, like, has done harm to people's bodies, minds, right, so there's this direct physical violence that has happened for folks. There is the trauma of potentially being denied access to your culture, to your language. So 100%. I think that colonization and peerism in general is disabling forces as well and have direct connections to ableism that colonizer said that this group of people or thing you do in your culture is inferior, right. It's another way of adding this label of inferiority that gets associated with disability. So I think that absolutely we see that. There are other folks that do this work, but, yeah, I think that there are many ways that in a very literal sense, colonization results in disability and in these, like, metaphoric senses, we see the way that ableism and labels of disability gets used in racialized ways in this context to justify other forms of violence and segregation and harm that's occurring.


JONATHAN GLATER:  Okay.  This has four questions on it, but I'm only going to ask one, with apologies to the author of the four questions. What might a volume on queer disability politics look like? 


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Well, I would recommend reading Robert McGur's Work Crip Theory, but I think queer disability politics would have to engage in both gender dysphoria and homosexuality in the DSM and engage in the history of AIDS organizing. As clear histories of queer disability politics and organizing.  So those would be the ones that I would highlight. And I think in a contemporary way, I don't have, like, recent data on this, but I do wonder if anyone is looking at the queer community response to monkey pox and the quick way that so many of us got vaccinated. And the fact that a study that I saw a couple weeks ago indicated that the folks that were most impacted by it were black folks.  I think that there's some queer disability politics in that moment that seems to have, like, disappeared from our minds entirely, what was it, like, last year? So, yeah, those would be some things that I would want to see.  But I think engaging with the way that queerness at large and gender non-conformity at large is reflected as lack of able mindedness is super important. And again I think disabling violence.  Like, I think -- not conservation... the other word... conversion?  There we go, conversion therapy -- I was, like, conservation therapy? -- conversion therapy I think is disabling violence. I think it's so harmful.  I was raised Catholic, we had, like, someone come as a converted gay and talk to my high school when I was 16, how he used to be gay and he's not anymore.  I think it's super, super harmful. So there are lots of ways, I think that queer disability politics would do this work and in some ways it overlaps with the health activism, that's really important particularly in terms of HIV AIDS 


JONATHAN GLATER:  When researching (black) history did you find written documentation to be from non-BIPOC folks or not?  If so, not, lack of equitable access to publishing or something else?


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  So, yes and no.  The things that I was looking at in terms of the two organizations, the Black Panther and the National Black Women's Health Project, the work that folks are doing is by black folks primarily but not just on disabilities and I'm reading academic articles on those books and bringing the lens of disabilities to them and reinterpreting it in the book. Again, there are folks that are doing this work, they are just not bringing that lens as explicitly, which is what I hope this book can help people do. And then the work that has been done that I was drawing from disability studies yes is primarily done by white folks writing about black disabled history. At least in the time period I'm doing.  There are some folks that are doing things in a more distant past. But, yeah, mostly white people in disability studies still. 


JONATHAN GLATER:  I want to come back to the second part of the question.  Do you, if so why.  And is it lack of equitable access?


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Oh, well, hmm... I think that... I think that disability studies is primarily white because for a lot of white disabled people, that is their marginalized identity.  That is the identity that they organize around.  That is the identity that is most impactful for them because they don't think about their whiteness or straightness or cisness in the same way. And white folks walk through disability studies that I don't think the way that black disabled folks did and have.  They stayed in black studies and other realms. So I think it's about the ways in which we identify. There's some work by some disability studies folks about consciousness raising and how a lot of disabled folks of color, race was their primary organizing lens and folks of color and not having any connection to a disability community. Some of us are raised by people that don't look like us and have the same experiences. So if that is the only political lens you have, you'll find the other folks.  But if you have that black political lens, you might stay in that area. So I think it's that difference in experience, but then not just access to publishing, I think access to higher education in the first place to become an academic, to do the research, to do the publishing, I think it's much harder to be a disabled person of color and get through secondary school, let alone higher education. So I think it's not just the publishing element, I think that there are folks that are kind of eager to publish this work; it's just to actually get folks through all the other hurdles of academia is incredibly difficult.


JONATHAN GLATER: Okay.  I'm going to come back to the fourth of those four questions.  This seems like a good one to perhaps close, if there aren't -- I don't know if there are more questions, okay -- which mainstream media outlets have featured you and which ones need to?


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  [Laughs].  Let's see... the book was featured in Ebony, which was really exciting to me, because I really -- that was, like, the first time a black-specific mainstream featured my work. That was real exciting. I was on the podcast Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, that was super fun. So, let's see... where else...? I would love more black specific mainstream, whether that's digital like Blavity or something else, I just want to see more black works and mainstream media outlets covering disability in a more critical way rather than just these uplifting and heartwarming stories. So any of them would be great. But, yeah, Ebony was the one that was very exciting for me, I still have the screen shot of it pinned on my Instagram, because it was a happy moment to finally get it there. 


JONATHAN GLATER:  So I want to thank Dr. Schalk, this has really been an honor to participate in the conversation with you. 


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Aww... 


JONATHAN GLATER:  To hear how you're thinking and hear so many pragmatic suggestions on what we all picked up on and to work on our professional lives. 


DR. SAMI SCHALK:  Thank you.  Confirmed, sweetie pie, you've made it!  [Laughs]


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