12 minute read
THE INTERSECTION OF DISABILITY, PEOPLE OF COLOR AND THE POLICE
A Personal Perspective, a Unified Objective
Joel reached out to Awareness Ties, with a perspective piece to share. Upon reading it, we saw things we were previously blind to. See what we mean and hear what needs to be heard in this powerful piece by Joel Cartner that inspires us all to demand justice. - Jack
Before I get into the why and the how of what I’m posting, I want to make one thing very clear. I am not saying that the Black Lives Matter Movement should take up any less space in the public consciousness to accommodate space for disabled lives. I’m a twenty-fiveyear-old white guy with two disabilities. I can only empathize with the experience of a Person of Color. People of Color and people with disabilities face many similar systemic issues. What I am trying to do is show a largely, as yet unseen facet of the systemic issues and murders that disabled people, of yes all races, but particularly People of Color, are facing. And it just so happens that I have the lived experience to put those issues into context. So with that said, buckle up and remember BLM!
A very brief description of myself and a non-medical description of my disabilities for context: As I said, I am a White, twenty-five-yearold male with two disabilities. I live in D.C., where I am trying to break into the public policy space. I have Cerebral Palsy Spastic Diplegia. Basically, my muscles are constantly being told to contract by my brain. I walk with a little bit of a limp, pain is my constant companion, standing for long periods is hard, I have difculty with balance, and I have a lot of muscle spasms all over my body. I also have Retinopathy of Prematurity, which means I don’t have peripheral vision.
I’ve stayed fairly quiet with regard to the murder of Gorge Floyd, Breona Taylor, and the Black Lives Matter movement in general because I felt it wasn’t my time to speak. I thought it best to quietly support the movement as best I could while staying out of the way and allowing People of Color to speak for themselves. Increasingly, however, I have seen people posting the statistic that half the people killed by police have a disability. (1) There’s actually a really good White Paper on the subject in the Wall Street Journal linked in the Vox article, but if you need to avoid a paywall, Vox does a good (and verifiable) job on its own. There isn’t a lot of solid data on the exact crosstabs between people that are both of color and disabled that are killed by the police, but factoring in the sheer number of People of Color killed by the police and some ancillary data see (2) the assumption that People of Color make up a higher percentage within the disabled percentage is not much of a leap. It is within the context of disability that I feel more comfortable taking some space. I have been followed by police and made to feel uncomfortable both by police and civilians (see below), but perhaps because I am White and was raised in North Carolina, no one felt the necessity to sit me down and talk to me about how to handle an interaction with the police should they approach me. I have felt the need to be twice as good (see below) and prove my worth on a daily basis particularly in a professional context, I have felt the disgust, horror, and shame as I realize someone equates my physical disabilities with a reduced mental capacity. But again, the issue is not so visibly systemic that anyone felt the need to do anything more than remind me that “some people are just ignorant,” the ADA and IDEA exist and remind me to use my rights.
While writing this, I toyed with the idea of shouting about why it is just now that we are turning our attention to the pure density of murders of people with disabilities by the police. In very brief, because my neuroses won’t let me ignore the discussion, that people with disabilities are, to the eyes of most of the world, difcult to look at, and therefore often overlooked in terms of justice (ADA, etc. notwithstanding) and social issues. (3) Here’s the thing though, 1) I’m tired. There’s a world-ending virus that seems specifically designed to kill me and people like me, which the general public can’t seem to internalize, see the public’s lack of willingness to wear a mask (the medical realities surrounding this are a whole other rant). My understanding of the data aside, there’s something uniquely terrifying about
seeing a group of people have to fight for their fundamental right to exist and know that, to some extent, you’re in that bucket. 2) I have to have this discussion in full view of family and friends that I already know worry about me, and that in turn makes me supremely uncomfortable, and 3) Most importantly: Not everyone that is part of a minority group wants to lead the charge on change. My life is hard. I do not want to spend yet more energy shouting into the void, trying to get the world to change around me to be fair. I have enough trouble navigating it as is. I want to work in public policy on many issues, not just social justice, and there I can, safely ensconced in the wings, work with people better suited and more comfortable with center stage to move the needle. But, it is not mine nor anyone else’s responsibility to lead the charge just because we happen to meet specific criteria. However, as it has been pointed out to me, much to the frustration of my friends and family, a person (me in this case) can take a stand on civil rights without ofering themselves up as a leader for a cause. So, here’s me standing not as a professional, but as just me lending my voice to the cause.
I’ve been walking around a grocery store, and I’ve needed to make several passes down an aisle. I don’t have peripheral vision. I literally can’t see both sides of the aisle at the same time. I do, generally, have to take a minute to find what I need. Combine that with the fact that I’m trying to navigate a cart, and not hit anyone that I haven’t seen, and keep my balance, and stop and stand and stop and stand over and over (which is tiring) and look for what I need. My shopping can look really weird. The number of times I’ve noticed an employee and then a security employee subtly trailing me is unsettling, if not entirely surprising. Now let’s suppose it’s dark out and I have to get these groceries home. I’m a guy that walks with a limp, can’t see well at night, can’t balance, and can’t walk in a straight line. Then consider that at times, if I’m tired or in a particular amount of pain, I can have a tendency to mumble. In those instances, it requires much more energy to control my voice, so if I’m not careful, that control slips, and I start to mumble. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been walking somewhere and thought, “is that person[read civilian, or police ofcer] following me?” “Am I going to have to explain myself??” “Do I look like I belong here (usually in some degree of covered in sweat)?” Then the conversation starts, if they come over here you have to focus, you have to speak clearly, everything else be damned. Because I probably don’t look like I belong, but if I’m stopped and I can’t control my voice as well as I should, or if I don’t comply quickly enough or in the way someone expects, that interaction could turn violent see (4).
In talking about disabled interactions with the police, it is also necessary to talk about the systemic disparities which lead to greater interactions with the police. Namely, employment, housing, and access to public transit. (5) People with disabilities are roughly 50% less likely to be employed than their non-disabled counterparts. (6) Yes, some of that is a circumstance of medical reality, but that does not make up for anything like the full picture. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have been second-guessed, ignored, and laughed out of rooms because of what I am. I have to be twice as good. The minute I walk into a room, I have to start proving people wrong. Then there’s the issue of disability disclosure. When do you do it? How do you do it? Do you do it at all? Say I’m applying for a position in a Congressmember’s ofce with a health care portfolio. I’m not an unqualified person for this sort of thing (I have a J.D., a publication, and five years of experience), and on top of that, I have spent my entire life navigating the American health care system. I have a deeply personal understanding of how it works, how it can be bettered, and how we can field the concerns of your constituents. There are any number of reasons that I haven’t been hired for that sort of position, but there is part of me that has to do the calculus of whether or not a disclosure, whether it makes me uniquely qualified or not, will help me or hurt any time I apply for anything. I can imagine someone who is Black or Hispanic, or Transgender feels roughly the same way. Do I check this box or talk about this thing? Despite whatever qualifications our backgrounds may bring, we live in a system that does not necessarily value that. Quite apart from the fact that no one wants to be an “Afrmative Action” hire or whatever coded messaging is getting thrown around these days. Everyone wants to be considered competent and hired on the merits, it’s just a matter of whether they’re given the chance to prove it.
Tied to the issue of employment is the issue of housing and transportation. To be fair, with regard to public transit I’m mostly speaking from anecdotal personal experience as a person that cannot drive and therefore needs public transit to get around. This discussion also sets aside the reality of someone living outside a metropolitan area. Having grown up in a rural area and knowing the data on just how diferent the realities between the two are, I feel that warrants a discussion all its own not well suited to this piece. (7) You can Google to your heart’s content to find top ten lists of the cities with the worst and best public transit, but there isn’t a lot of practical data out there. In reality, there are only a handful of cities in the U.S. that I could live in and have similar autonomy to someone that can drive. Of those cities, still fewer have transportation systems not led by buses. While, as this article points out, (8) a bus system can make for good public transit. A bus system that runs inefectively is next to useless and unfortunately, inefective bus systems are still far more common. Yet, for both disabled people and people with lower incomes, public transit is often our only option. Uber has been a godsend, but imagine having to pay $15 every time you turn on your car to go anywhere. It’s not feasible. Of course to efectively use public transit you need to live near(ish) to it, especially if you have ambulatory issues, and housing gets more expensive living nearer to public transit. (9) Nevermind the potential for a person to need specific things in their housing which makes finding everything someone needs even more difcult. Now consider that there is an incredibly well-documented housing inequity among People of Color (10). What job opportunities might a person miss, or not even look for, because they either can’t aford housing, can’t work there, or can’t live there with any sense of autonomy? Imagine asking yourself, as I have, “I want to go see this movie. Can I aford/is it worth the $30 just to go?” Or “Do I want to commute to work an hour a day by bus?” (For general information on the history of public transit, see (11).
Apart from not looking as though “we” belong somewhere whether that is because of disability, skin tone, or both, the factors above also contribute to increased interactions with the police. Either because of where someone lives, their socio-economic circumstance, or what their circumstance does to them on a physical, mental, and/or emotional level. These social and societal realities need to be dismantled:
People of Color face greater housing disparities. (10) People of Color face greater educational disparities. (12) People of Color face greater employment disparities. (13) People with disabilities face all of these things too. (ed. (14) Emp. (6) see also, (6). H.(15) Disabled People of Color face all these things at the same time. (16)
I’d like to leave you with this: I get followed around the store because I walk funny and it takes me too long to find the garlic. A Person of Color will get followed around the store because they walked into the store in the first place. That’s it in a microcosm. I face many similar systemic issues that People of Color face, but they will have it worse than I will and Disabled People of Color will have it even worse because they are in the crossfire of two systemic forces. So yes, please help, protect, and support us because yes 30–50% of police killings are of people with Disabilities, but be aware that this is just one facet of larger systemic issues. The systemic issues that afect us all are deep, varied, and broad. Continue to demand justice.
1. https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13161396/disability-police-officer-shooting 2. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database 3. Web player: https://podplayer.net/?id=100209244 see also, https://themighty.com/2017/01/when-being-in-a-wheelchair-made-me-feel-invisible/ 4. https://time.com/5857438/police-violence-black-disabled/ 5. https://www.apha.org/policies-and-advocacy/public-health-policy-statements/policy-database/2019/01/29/law-enforcement-violence 6. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/disabl.nr0.htm see also, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/07/25/only-four-out-of-ten-working-age-adults-with-disabilities-are-employed/ 7. Take as a very small microcosm for the differences in social determinants in rural vs. urban areas, this article on health care: https://hpi.georgetown.edu/rural/ 8. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/7/18131132/public-transportation-bus-subway-america-us 9. http://www.reconnectingamerica.org/assets/Uploads/TransitImpactonHsgCostsfinal-Aug1020111.pdf 10. https://www.brookings.edu/research/time-for-justice-tackling-race-inequalities-in-health-and-housing/ 11. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-31/why-is-american-mass-transit-so-bad-it-s-a-long-story 12. https://uncf.org/pages/k-12-disparity-facts-and-stats 13. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472910/systematic-inequality-economic-opportunity/ specifically referencing Black employment 14. https://ncd.gov/rawmedia_repository/f4a8d429_aff8_4d8a_90bb_a178a4b23222.pdf 15. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/restricted-options-evidence-housing-discrimination-against-people-disabilities 16. https://nisonger.osu.edu/sites/default/files/u4/the_double_burden_health_disparities_among_people_of_color_living_with_disabilities.pdf
Joel Cartner is a lawyer and public policy professional with Cerebral Palsy Spastic Diplegia and Retinopathy of Prematurity. Cartner has a background in public health, disability, and education law and policy. He received his J.D. from Quinnipiac University School of Law and his B.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Cartner currently lives in Washington D.C. where he works as a Document Review Attorney while seeking legislative employment. Connect with Joel on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/joel-cartner-j-d-esq-34396b94
