Speaker 1: Pushkin, Hey, Solvable listeners, we are hard at work on
Speaker 1: new episodes of the show, but this week we wanted
Speaker 1: to bring you something special that I am very excited about.
Speaker 1: It's a sneak peak of Pushkin's newest show, Be Anti
Speaker 1: Racist with Ibram x Kendy. You may have heard of
Speaker 1: doctor Kendy from his most recent nonfiction work such as
Speaker 1: Stamped and How to Be An Anti Racist, But for
Speaker 1: those of you who haven't heard of him, he is
Speaker 1: not only an author, but professor, activist, and historian of
Speaker 1: race and discriminatory policy. At thirty four, he was the
Speaker 1: youngest person ever to win the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Speaker 1: I personally find his writing very approachable and his concepts
Speaker 1: of recognizing the assumptions of racism and ourselves easily digestible.
Speaker 1: He not only discusses the basics of bias and anti racism,
Speaker 1: but also provide optimistic solutions to fixed on broken system,
Speaker 1: which is what we love here at Solvable. On his
Speaker 1: new show, Be Anti Racist, doctor Kendey is continuing these
Speaker 1: necessary discussions on policies and practices that sustain injustice in
Speaker 1: our society and how we can dismantle racism and build
Speaker 1: a just, equitable world. His guests will include Julian Castro,
Speaker 1: Jamel Hill, Don Lemon, Heather c McGee, Mariam Kabba, and
Speaker 1: many more. Today, we're sharing an excerpt of an interview
Speaker 1: with Rebecca Cokeley, one of the country's leading voices on
Speaker 1: disability rights. Doctor Kendy and Rebecca have a frank conversation
Speaker 1: on the intersections of ableism and racism in America, the
Speaker 1: historic civil rights legislation governing both, and what we can
Speaker 1: all do to advocate for a better future for people
Speaker 1: with disabilities. Okay, here's a preview. You can hear the
Speaker 1: full episode by searching for be Anti Racist wherever you're
Speaker 1: listening right now. Welcome to Be Anti Racist in Action Podcasts,
Speaker 1: where we discuss how to diagnose, dismantle, and abolish racism,
Speaker 1: how to save humanity from the divisiveness of racist ideas
Speaker 1: and the destructiveness of racist power and policy. How to
Speaker 1: free humanity through the unity of anti racist ideas and
Speaker 1: the constructiveness of anti racist power and policy. We were
Speaker 1: all born into a world of racist ideas, many of
Speaker 1: which I myself consumed as a young man in New
Speaker 1: York in Virginia. Throughout my life I've had to come
Speaker 1: to grips with some of the things that I imagine
Speaker 1: and thought were true about the world and the people
Speaker 1: in it. And like all of us, I'm still learning
Speaker 1: in my pursuit of understanding. I became an historian. I've
Speaker 1: written books, been on TV, taught at universities, lectured around
Speaker 1: the world. In the latest step in my journey is
Speaker 1: to help you on yours, for us to keep growing together.
Speaker 1: On b Anti Racist, we discuss how to make the
Speaker 1: impossible possible and how to bring into being what modern
Speaker 1: humans have never known, a just, inequitable world. You ready,
Speaker 1: let's rollclusion finally come tumbling down. More than thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: then President George Herbert Walker Bush signed the Americans with
Speaker 1: Disabilities Act into law. It came after a long struggle
Speaker 1: by disability activists to extend the protections guaranteed by the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Act. This act is powerful in its simplicity.
Speaker 1: It will ensure that people with this alies are given
Speaker 1: the basic guarantees for which they have worked so long
Speaker 1: and so hard. Independence, freedom of choice, control of their lives,
Speaker 1: the opportunity to blend fully and equally into the rich
Speaker 1: mosaic of the American mainstream. The signing of the ADA
Speaker 1: took place a lifetime ago, and it was the culmination
Speaker 1: of more lifetimes of struggle. But what kind of progress
Speaker 1: have we made? My guest today is Rebecca Cokeley, one
Speaker 1: of the country's leading voices on disability rights. I'm especially
Speaker 1: impressed by how well she centers race in her analysis
Speaker 1: and advocacy. She founded and directed the Disability Justice Initiative
Speaker 1: at the Center for American Progress and served as the
Speaker 1: executive director of the National Council on Disability. Recently, Cokelely
Speaker 1: joined the Ford Foundation as the first program officer to
Speaker 1: lead a US based disability rights for Foli Leo. She's
Speaker 1: also a California native, a mother, and someone who served
Speaker 1: in the Obama administration from two thousand and nine to
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen. The day I sat down to talk with
Speaker 1: Rebecca happened to be the day that the closing arguments
Speaker 1: in the Derek Chauvin trial were presented in Minneapolis. It
Speaker 1: was an intense day for both of us. Hey, Rebecca, Hey,
Speaker 1: how have you been? Man? Here's about a question, how
Speaker 1: are you really? I think I'm overwhelmed and traumatized and
Speaker 1: excited and outraged. It's this sort of weird mix of
Speaker 1: all of those emotions. What about you, how are you
Speaker 1: feeling in this moment? You know, I think I had
Speaker 1: done a panel at Netroot several years ago, was myself
Speaker 1: and a couple of folks from on the ground in Ferguson,
Speaker 1: and one of the things they said at the time
Speaker 1: that it stuck with me is that they believed that
Speaker 1: PETE PSD doesn't exist because what we're dealing with is
Speaker 1: a constant state of trauma, stress and disorder. And it
Speaker 1: has been probably one of the thoughts that has stayed
Speaker 1: in my head consistently since then, because the notion that
Speaker 1: there is a time and a space for recovery almost
Speaker 1: feels like a luxury exactly. It's trauma all around, exactly,
Speaker 1: and part of that, even as we talk, we have
Speaker 1: to be very cognizant about our terminology, and so I think,
Speaker 1: starting this conversation, how should we what terminology should we
Speaker 1: be using when we're thinking about disability or the disabled community.
Speaker 1: You know, to me, I love the word disability. I
Speaker 1: love it because of the beauty of the elasticity of
Speaker 1: the term a It was a word that was chosen
Speaker 1: by our elders and it was the first time that
Speaker 1: people with disability is formally declared what they wanted to
Speaker 1: be called. And then in the crafting of the ADA,
Speaker 1: the definition is any mental or physical impairment that impacts
Speaker 1: activities of daily life, a history or a record of
Speaker 1: such impairment. And so the definition is broad enough to
Speaker 1: encompass the children in Flint, Michigan that are still several
Speaker 1: thousand days without clean drinking water and have acquired learning
Speaker 1: disabilities as a result of it. It's broad enough to
Speaker 1: include elders like Fanny lew Hamer who are involuntarily sterilized.
Speaker 1: And it's broad enough to include people living with long
Speaker 1: haul COVID that are still trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: they navigate this space and time. To me, so often
Speaker 1: definitions are so restrictive, and this is instead about does
Speaker 1: it impact how you eat, how you live, how you
Speaker 1: engage with your loved ones? And the beauty of that
Speaker 1: is that it varies with each person definitely. And how
Speaker 1: would you define I always go to the definition by
Speaker 1: my colleague Talila Lewis and Dustin Gibson that talks about
Speaker 1: ableism as a system that places value on people's bodies
Speaker 1: and minds, based on society lee constructed ideas of normalcy, intelligence, excellence,
Speaker 1: and productivity. These ideas are deeply rooted in anti blackness
Speaker 1: and eugenics, colonialism, and capitalism. And you don't have to
Speaker 1: be disabled to experience ableism. It's really grounded in the
Speaker 1: notion of who is valuable and worthy based on a
Speaker 1: person's appearance and or their ability to produce, reproduce, excel
Speaker 1: and the term that they use, and I think is
Speaker 1: really powerful and or behave. Somebody might not have a
Speaker 1: choice how they appear in public, how they engage in public,
Speaker 1: but the way that society responds to them, if they
Speaker 1: walk with a limp, if they speak with us matter,
Speaker 1: if they use a communication board to communicate, All of
Speaker 1: those things fall under the behavior piece, which I think
Speaker 1: is really critically important when we think about what it
Speaker 1: means to live in society. Wow. And it of course
Speaker 1: makes me think about how people respond to certain people
Speaker 1: because of the color of their skin, because of the
Speaker 1: texture of their hair, because of the culture that they practice,
Speaker 1: because of the language that they speak. And then when
Speaker 1: we start thinking about the intersection of ableism and racism,
Speaker 1: I think that's when it becomes tricky for many people
Speaker 1: because I think in many ways many Americans don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have a clear definition of racism, nor do they have
Speaker 1: a clear definition of which then prevents them from understanding
Speaker 1: their intersection. And so how should we understand their intersection?
Speaker 1: I mean, they're roots of the same treat It's funny.
Speaker 1: I actually went back through your book after reading it
Speaker 1: the first time, and every time there was something there
Speaker 1: that I was like, oh, it parallels here. I literally
Speaker 1: like drew a picture of a tree, thinking about even
Speaker 1: from the days of slavery and the discussion of things
Speaker 1: like drape to mania, the psychosis that went along with
Speaker 1: runaway slaves, the development and frankly still continued use in
Speaker 1: many circles of phrenology, the examination of the physicality of
Speaker 1: a group of people in order to determine superiority or not.
Speaker 1: Many of those things are still common discussion today. Individuals
Speaker 1: who are slaughtered by law enforcement at least fifty percent
Speaker 1: are people with disabilities, whether it be a mental illness,
Speaker 1: whether it be a speech impediment, whether it be substance use,
Speaker 1: which counts if somebody is in recovery. Even with the
Speaker 1: Derek Schouven trial, hearing the reliance on ablest language as
Speaker 1: a justification for the numerous deaths of African Americans with disabilities.
Speaker 1: But then you have some who say, well, why are
Speaker 1: we still talking about disability? You know, indeed the ADA
Speaker 1: was passed in nineteen ninety. Aren't we living in a
Speaker 1: society where folks with the disability, you know, have rights justice,
Speaker 1: black and brown and indigenous and people of color have
Speaker 1: their rights. So why are we talking about this? What
Speaker 1: do you say to those who who make that claims?
Speaker 1: I see you're already shaking it because it's the same
Speaker 1: thing with post racial society, right it is, we still
Speaker 1: deal with a seventy percent at least unemployment. Right we're
Speaker 1: the only community that it is actually grounded in statute
Speaker 1: that it is perfectly legal to pay disabled workers two
Speaker 1: dollars and fifteen cents or less a week. Well, disabled
Speaker 1: people still, if you're on supplemental security income, you can't
Speaker 1: get married or you'll lose your health health insurance. We
Speaker 1: don't have marriage equality yet for disabled people in this country.
Speaker 1: You aren't allowed to maintain more than two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in a checking account in a lot of cases. Yes,
Speaker 1: the ADA is thirty years old, but eighty percent of
Speaker 1: polling places are still inaccessible to us in one way,
Speaker 1: shape or form. Progress has been made, but there has
Speaker 1: never been the level of enforcement that we need to
Speaker 1: actually see people with disabilities come anywhere near the level
Speaker 1: playing field that the law has fired to all those
Speaker 1: years ago. You can listen to doctor Kenney's full conversation
Speaker 1: with Rebecca Cokeley over on the Banta Racist Feed, on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.