The Intersection of being Black, Jewish, and Disabled - Part 1

In part one of this episode, Mary and educator Love Wallace discuss the nuances and complexities surrounding intersectionality.

They also talk about Love's experiences as a Black, Jewish, disabled woman and why it's difficult to get every part of her identity recognized by some.

Love is a disabled Black and Jewish Higher Education administrator and educator. Love has led numerous trainings on creating inclusive communities and addressing internal and external biases.
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Love currently runs an Instagram account that focuses on issues facing the Black, Jewish, and disability communities at large. She is passionate about learning and justice. She has lived all over the United States and currently resides in New England.

You can follow Love on social media here.
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The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in both October 2022 and again in June 2023.

Transcript

[music playing as Mary speaks]

Mary: Hello everyone, and welcome to season two of The Politics of Disability. My name is Mary Fashik. I am the founder Upgrade Accessibility and your host. The road ahead is still a bumpy one and in fact, may be a bumpier one.  So, buckle up extra tight and let’s go.

[music playing]

Mary: Hello and thank you for joining me today. Would you please introduce yourself?

Love: Hello, everyone. My name is Love Wallace. I typically use she/her and her pronouns, but any pronouns used respectfully work for me. I am a Black, Jewish, disabled woman, and I have been dabbling in some social media education and community conversations for the past 18 months on Instagram and moving into some different, longer form platforms with a newsletter and some Patreon content.

Happy to be here with you, Mary.

Mary: Love, thank you so much for joining me today. You know how much I enjoy having conversations with you and I'm really, really looking forward to the conversation that we're going to have today. I've been asking all my guests this: we all have a moment on this journey, on our disability journey, that kind of defines us and our journeys.

Can you talk about a defining moment in your disability journey?

Love: Yeah, I think I have been disabled for most of my life, but like many of us, I don't think I really knew or identified as such for most of my life. Really, my journey began–and I really began to look at how society has treated me, has treated people like me, has treated people with different disabilities like me–when I discovered disabled Twitter, really. I don't even know how I really discovered it. But I am someone who generally thinks that they're pretty socially-just or at least -minded. And I like to think about justice and I like to think about how I can be a better person and how I can make a positive impact on the world.

And I came across some accounts and I just really was like, “Wow, I've never thought about myself from a disability lens.” I've never thought about some of the difficulties that I have faced due to disability and, and really due to people misunderstanding either what I am saying or how my disabilities have affected me. And so when I discovered a lot of activism and the great things that people were doing, I really thought, “Hey, I need to educate myself around this.”

And I think that just opened like a whole other world for me and in really understanding and learning about the politics of disability, if you will. And so I think that was like that key moment in my life, in my understanding, to really start focusing on disability politics and trying to learn as much as I can and help educate and learn with others.

Mary: And you and I both know just how political disability is, and disability justice is. On that same note, when I say the word intersectionality, what comes to mind?

Love: You know, Mary, I would really love the actual definition of intersectionality to come to mind when I hear that word. But when I do, I actually have a lot of almost like negative thoughts when I think about intersectionality. Because I think so much of how people have twisted this concept by Kimberlé Crenshaw and just made it into a pile of mush, I don't, I'm not even certain.

Intersectionality is a rigorous legal term that is meant to specifically talk about the compounding experience of being multiply marginalized and how that is different than one person holding any sort of marginalization. And the prime example, and the used example in the definition of intersectionality is specifically talking about Black women–who experience something different in the way that they are viewed by the world than white women and also then black men. But a lot of folks use intersectionality as a way to say ‘multifaceted.’ And it's interesting that that is how people choose to use the word, because I think some of the power goes away from it and people really water down the meaning, really, to make it seem like, oh, well, the famous example of, “I like pineapple on pizza, but someone else doesn't, so...”

That's the difference. And that's kind of what people make intersectionality out to be. But really it is something that is really important and I think when you're thinking about it from the political, from the legal, some of the most minoritized identities have multiple minoritized identities and the effects of law and society and ableism and discrimination and oppression, affect folks with multiple marginalities at a greater extent than folks that are individually marginalized.

And I think that that can be hard for folks to reckon with, especially when they are worried and concerned about their own oppression or ways that they are oppressed. And I think that with my particular identities, I can see that playing out in a lot of communities that I belong to. And because there's this lack of understanding of intersectionality, I think that it becomes harder ultimately for us to all work together to try to eradicate some of these systems that are collectively hurting all of us.

Mary: Okay, so debate this with me: intersectionality is not a buzzword. It’s only a buzzword to those who are not marginalized or multiply marginalized. 

Love: Yeah. You know, I also think it's not a buzzword for folks who are multiply marginalized. But I also think, sometimes, even some of the most marginalized folks with multiple minoritized identities, even some of those folks don't get it. And I say that in a very loving way. It's hard. We in society have been told that like disability is bad, you know, that the way to live in society is to like be busy all the time and work a lot and make a lot of money and own property and not think about the past and just pull it up by your bootstraps.

And there are some folks that really do think that that is the way that might be Black and disabled, that might be trans and disabled and, you know, also from a low socioeconomic background. Like there are people that might fit and understand intersectionality but not understand the application or might buy into the systems that are currently in power.

And so I think it's hard because like there are some people that may not have marginalizations that get intersectionality and there are some people that don't. And I think it's so much we've created this system where we don't really talk to each other and have genuine conversations. And so what I see sometimes is people will say, “Oh, well, this person's Black and disabled.

And they said this, so they must be right,” even though what that person said is so wrong. And so I know you said debate with me, but I'm kind of like, “yes, I agree. But then also here’s this other point as well.”

Mary: And that’s why I asked you, because you have this point of view and you have this knowledge that so many people don't have. And when I said debate with me, I didn’t really mean debate with me, I just meant tell me your thoughts. Because I value your opinion and I value your thoughts and your experience. Because I’ve said to someone before, “I don’t have the choice to understand what intersectionality means, because of how that affects me.”

Talk to me about that intersection of being Black, disabled, a woman, and Jewish.

Love: Well, I think it's a big one. I think if I take any of my identities, like if I talk about my Black identity or I talk about my identity being a woman, or I talk about my identity being disabled, or my identity being Jewish, I think I have a really captive audience that of people that are similar to me, that can share in my experiences, that really appreciate what I'm saying.

I think one of the things that is unique about the work that I do on social media is that I really do try to overlap all of my identities. And what that looks like on my end is that I have people who follow me because I talk about disabled things. I have people that follow me because I talk about Jewish things.

I have people that follow me because I talk about Black Jewish things. I have people that follow me because I talk about being queer and being Jewish. Like there's a–I have like a range of people who follow me. And what I find is that when I say something that isn't confirming or in alignment with someone else's experience with one of my identities, most likely because I have another identity that impacts how I experience the world.

Sometimes I find that people don't really get that and feel a little bit of tension or maybe a little bit of confusion. Depending on my relationship with that person, maybe there's a little bit of like anger or a lack of ability to sort of like understand where I'm coming from. And so I think that that is super interesting.

I also think because of my identities, I often find myself feeling as though people only care about me because of the identity we share. And I've been feeling that way a lot more. I think, as living through COVID 19, we have just seen people not care about folks who are disabled. I have seen this in my personal life.

I have seen this 100% through at least one of my employers. And I am someone who holds multiple jobs. And the response to COVID and my concerns about COVID from one of my jobs has, in my opinion, been terrible and from another one of my jobs has been really great. And the ironic thing is that the job that has been terrible has been one that you would think would be great and the job has been great has been one that you think would be terrible. And so, it's kind of interesting just to see how different people are expressing their lack of care about the disabled community. And that has been pretty painful, especially when you're in spaces of justice work. And so, all of my identities, I think there are Jewish activists, there are Black activists, there are feminist activists who are talking about things but rarely do I see folks who are not also disabled talking about the disabled communities within those spaces.

February is Jewish Disabled Awareness Month, so it is specifically a month just to bring awareness of disability within the Jewish community and the most popular Jewish activists haven't said anything about it, and I think that's telling.

Mary: I wasn’t aware that that was a thing, just… you know. And I thank you for bringing that to my attention and the audience’s attention. I want you to talk about when people don’t believe that you’re Jewish because you’re Black. 

Love: It's interesting because I think what happens online and what happens like in real life is very, very different. And I talk about this all the time with my like in real life Jewish friends. Is like: looking online at what people say about like the Jewish community, you would believe that no Jewish person has ever said that they were white ever in the history of the world, and that, like every Jewish person is like supportive of patrilineal Jews.

For those of you who are listening, a patrilineal Jew is someone whose father is Jewish but whose mother is not Jewish. And like a very brief understanding of Jewish history is very similar to how Black Americans were treated, whereas if your mother was Black, you were considered Black. In Jewish lineage, most of Jewish lineage, if your mother is Jewish, you are considered Jewish.

But if your father is Jewish, you're not necessarily. But in an online space, you would see like all patrilineal, Jews are very loving and accepted. You would also see that like Jews of color, meaning Black or Asian or any other sort of non-European Jews are wonderful and welcome and accepted, and I have found that that is not the case in real life.

I think that like as an adult and as I have become more observant and as I have interacted with Jewish communities, I think it's less that people don't necessarily think that I'm Jewish, but I think it's more that people believe that I have come to Judaism and to the Jewish people by conversion. And so I think the assumption is that the only people that are Jewish ethnically have white skin. And that is just not true.

And if I could wave a magic wand and have people understand one thing about the Jewish community, it would be the Jewish diaspora. A lot of people don't know that “diaspora” is a word that was specifically created for Jewish people to describe how Jewish people left Judea or modern-day Israel. And that has then been applied to a lot of other communities, such as like the “Black diaspora.”

And people don't understand that. And so that's really interesting how people don't understand linguistics. But also, I think that's why people don't understand that like Ethiopian Jews or Beta Israel Jews.

And so, people don't understand, like the different diaspora communities. And so, people are very confused. In the United States, where most Jewish people are Ashkenazi, there's a hard time understanding of how Ashkenazi Jewish people are not just European and white, because they have usually come to the United States from Europe. Because there's not an understanding of what diaspora means.

And so I think all in all, if you're in a place where race is the foundation of this country, which it is. And race, to this country means what your skin color looks like, then you can begin to see how Jewish people who have been discriminated against in many different societies, including this one, even with white skin, how that can be confusing to some other people who have some more specific marginalities, and also how both, if a Jewish person is looking at me as someone who has dark skin and is visibly Black, they might be confused because I don't look like they do.

But on the flip side, I also, when someone else who looks like me, right, looks at me, they don't necessarily peg me as someone who is Jewish either. And so that can have pros and cons depending on whether someone is an anti-Semite, whether someone is trying to hurt me for my identity and what identity that might be. So it's really like a complicated situation, but I think it's at least in the United States, it comes from a place of people just really not knowing anything about being Jewish.

And that honestly includes Jewish people.

Mary: I knew that this was going to be an amazing conversation and I was right because I have learned so much, and I hope that the audience has learned a lot too. This is amazing.

Mary: We’re all out of time for this episode. I know, I know. Just when things were getting good, too. That just means you’ll have to come back for part two.

[music playing while Mary speaks] Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Politics of Disability Podcast. As you navigate your journey, remember: disability is political; disability is messy; disability is not palatable--nor does it have to be.

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