5SR - June 23, 2023

Qudsiya is the creator and host of the podcast, Down to the Struts, which explores disability, design, and intersectionality. She’s thrilled to announce that the seventh season is dropping in July 2023, just in time for Disability Pride Month! You can also subscribe to Qudsiya’s newsletter, Getting Down to It, for updates. When she’s not podcasting, Qudsiya loves organizing adaptive sports adventures through the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes.

The Continuation of Slavery: The Experience of Disabled Slaves During Emancipation (Disability Studies Quarterly)

If you are a lover of history, particularly the stories that never really got told, this long read is for you.

It describes how even emancipation was a project designed to advance capitalism and economic productivity, with the Union army favoring the freedom of able-bodied enslaved people, often leaving disabled enslaved people behind on plantations to continue to work for their masters long after the Emancipation Proclamation.

This article made me think about the concept of freedom, and how society decides who deserves to be free.

How Racism and Discrimination Robs Black People of Their Time (Vox)

As a disabled person, I am intimately familiar with the ways in which discrimination can waste hours of a person’s life. From figuring out how to navigate inaccessible websites to trying to get through airports while blind, I’ve probably lost years of my life trying to exist in a world that is not designed for me.

Still, this likely pales in comparison to the amount of time that Black people, especially Black disabled people lose to racism, ableism, and discrimination. This article puts some numbers to this loss, chronicling decades of research on the very specific ways discrimination shows up for Black communities on a daily basis.

Woman Jailed Over Abortion: An Expert on What UK Law Actually Says, and What Needs to Change (The Conversation)

As we pass the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs that overturned Roe v. Wade, this article offers fascinating insights into the existence of restrictive abortion laws around the world, including in the UK.

I always assumed the UK and much of the EU had progressive reproductive laws and policies on the books, and this article really collapsed that assumption, describing the 28-month sentence that a 44-year old mother received for not following England’s 160-year-old draconian abortion protocols. Reading this reinforced for me how much the battle for reproductive freedom goes beyond borders.

Bad People Took Pity on Us (Disability Debrief)

The Disability Debrief presents disability news from around the world. I’m a very dedicated reader, and this issue spotlighting the experiences of disabled people in Ukraine, the migration experience in Mexico, and higher education in Brazil is a great compendium of the kinds of stories the debrief has to offer.

I highly recommend a paid subscription to this newsletter.

Useless Jobs and Getting Away with Doing Nothing at Work (Vox)

I can’t say I’ve ever had this problem, but what I found most interesting about this article is the angst that some people who find themselves with little to do at work have about this fact. It’s reflective of how much American culture and identity is tethered to occupation, and to what extent Americans derive self-worth from their profession.

Until March 2020, I would certainly count myself among those whose identity was wrapped up in their profession, but if the pandemic left me with one core lesson, it’s that life is far too short and uncertain to put all of my eggs in the work basket.