A professor at Fordham University School of Law wants African-American students to claim a “disability” for their race.
Kimani Paul-Emile, in an article published in the Georgetown Law Journal, claims that “Blackness in the United States has an independent disabling effect distinct from the effects of socioeconomic status.”
According to Paul-Emile, being African-American “is disabling in a myriad of specific ways. To be Black means facing increased likelihood, relative to Whites, of living in poverty, attending failing schools, experiencing discrimination in housing, being denied a job interview, being stopped by the police, being killed during a routine police encounter, receiving inferior medical care, living in substandard conditions and in dangerous and/or polluted environments, being un- or underemployed, receiving longer prison sentences, and having a lower life expectancy.”
“Although race law has been relatively effective at countering intentional discrimination, such as Jim Crow, it has failed to combat the predominant forms of discrimination that now harm minority populations: unconscious bias, stereotyping, and structural inequality,” she explained.
The solution for combating “structural inequality”? Students should see their race as a permanent disability.
“Understanding Blackness as disabling,” she said, “brings to the fore a surprising new approach to addressing discrimination and systemic inequality that has been hiding in plain sight: disability law.”
“Rather than focusing on malicious intent, disability law accepts the impact of even neutral actions, policies, and programs, directly confronting the ways in which social structures, institutions, and norms can ‘substantially limit’ a person’s ability to perform ‘a major life activity,’” she wrote.
While discrimination remains a problem, calling it a personal “disability” – and then demanding special privileges to “combat” said disability – is outside the realm of mainstream thinking, even as it may be gaining traction in academia.
AAN Staff
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