“We are at war, I don’t know why you are looking at me with such a friendly face? (…) Ideological falsification that suggests we have peace is so that everything stays the way it is!”
– Ailton Krenak(@ailtonkrenak), environmentalist, Indigenous leader.
When I came across this phrase from Ailton Krenak I stopped laughing immediately, because he simplified in a real way what we live, we Black and Indigenous people, in this racist country. WAR!
Black Consciousness Day had been getting lighter but today was a heavy day, a day for us not to forget what they did to Zumbi on this day. They cut off his head and hung it in a square so that all Black people would remember that here, freedom and equality are not for “Black” people.
Consciousness Day is a day to look at ourselves. I am not going to say what whiteness has to do to please me; I am going to strengthen our own and resolve our rough edges among ourselves.
Black People with Disabilities exist and resist✊
We need to mobilize! We are being made invisible and shouting in a non-place.
We do not want this place, we want what is ours by right: access to diagnosis, plausible explanations for why our people are being committed and institutionalized in asylums, foundations, homes? Why are we being killed without the right to answers? Why does our life have no value? Why do we people with disabilities have to submit to hypermedicalization and abusive treatments, without questioning? Why are we misdiagnosed and go unnoticed?
There are many questions, many questions that need to be answered.
I return to the initial question: BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS DAY FOR WHOM?
We are at war, and we need to be close to our own and fight alongside our own.
Is your movement/organization accessible to us? Black people with disabilities? Have you ever asked yourself why there are no Black people with disabilities at your meetings and events? If not.
It is not enough not to be racist. You have to be anti-racist!
It is not enough not to be ableist. You have to be anti-ableist!✊
