clair083

" Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." James Baldwin Image of the author in profile, an Afro-Latina disabled woman with gray natural hair,  looking sadly at something in the distance. Image rendering Prizma credit K. Cevik Unless you are one of us,  a person carrying the label of being disabled while Black, you cannot possibly understand the visceral nature of moving through space with a target on your backs, and knowing your body is in constant jeopardy because you are both Black and disabled. It isn't the same if you are disabled with racial privilege. It isn't the same if you are another intersectional combination. Because there are those hundreds of years of struggle to prove we weren't chattel while simultaneously trying to prove that as disabled people we have a right exist as well. There continues to be experimentation and involuntary sterilization and redlining and all the systemic racist ableism in be...

I wrote this for my son on his birthday last December. It was painful and personal, and I withheld it for this many months without publishing it because it hurt so much to write it. My son, surveys his backyard kingdom, holding his iPad AAC device and wearing a sky blue t-shirt that reads "Noncompliance is a social skill" available @RealSocialskills photo © Kerima Cevik  I was in doubt of many things after some post-election ugliness had visited our town, a sign of worse things to come. I remain concerned for his future and ours. Happy Birthday Son, I n the 14 years since your birth, I have been forced to witness and experience some pretty sad and disturbing things. We are living in some very polarized, hate filled times. How will I be able to talk about this transition to your teens you are making that changes everything? But I must. Not because it will help you manage the legacy of trauma that is a part of from our racial heritage, but because talking about this is the onl...