Building Black Krip Radical Tradition from Past to Present (podcast)
Link to Soundcloud Audio

Can Black disabled people in history and today add to The Black Radical Tradition from Harriet Tubman to Elias Hill to Cecil Ivory to Brad Lomax to Fannie Lou Hamer to Al Hibbler to Blues disabled musicians to the real Jim Crow to internationally like Margret Hill in London to Shelly Black in South Africa to todayBlack disabled movement in Brazil? How do we learn and Krip the Black radical tradition? First we must come together and shake off this ableism and so much more than rebuild ourselves in what our Black disabled ancestors left us and continue to build our own communities, futures, art, music and politics in a radical way! Of course we must define what was the Black Radical Tradition then try to Krip it into a Black disability perspective back then to today. Let’s build together!

After years upon years of researching, reading, some times interviewing all around Black movements, Black cultural movements, Black studies, Black thinkers, disability movements, disabled culture movements, Disability studies, disabled leaders and Black disabled movements in the US & internationally and being involved in some of these movements, I have of course realize in 2024 Black and disabled communities have been separated in the past and today including cultural expression like in music, visual arts, literature, dance to movements like Black Arts Movement to the recent explosion of disability cultural movement and the list goes on and on.

To be fair Black disabled people and Black parents have tried over and over again to get the disabled movement to recognize their advocacy, how racism in the movement affect the growth and using disability terminology, philosophies, culture, histories, studies and arts to advocate and uplift Black disabled stories through histories like the models of disability to independent living philosophy and more. However, only very recently a small group of Black disabled scholars, artists, authors and professors are connecting Black disabled people, movements and arts to Black movements especially for here Black radical thinking, arts beyond the well known Black Panther Party involvement in the 1977 San Francisco 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

We are missing the chance to look for other Black disabled people who played a part in Black Power Movement, Black Arts Movement, Black Radical Tradition up to Hip-Hop and to apply what came out to these Black movements to Black disabled life. To be honest this workshop, Building Black Krip Radical Tradition from Past to Present, is only in the beginning stages for myself and I want to go beyond blaming either communities, leaders and institutions to help open up new avenues with others because it’s not only me who is doing this work.

First, we must leave our 2024 shoes and try to place ourselves back in the times before disability rights, culture, arts etc.. A time that you had to hide your disability especially being Black so know that there was no political viewpoint of disability but with that we also need to point out Black disabled resistance in places like Jim Crow Black blind/Deaf schools, large warehouse institutions and Black disabled activists back then like Jazz singer, Al Hibbler, blind Blues artists like Blind Willie Johnson and their lyrics and activists like Fannie Lou Hammer’s protest to resistance to Brad Lomax’s Black Pantherism activism and in an artistic ways like graffiti artist, Kase2. All and more can be the basis of the making or pulling together Black Krip Radical Tradition past and present for today’s and future disabled and Black scholars inside and outside of academia.

What was and is The Black Radical Tradition? From internet sources it says:

The Black Radical tradition is a philosophical tradition and political ideology with roots in 20th century North America. It is a “collection of cultural, intellectual, action-oriented labor aimed at disrupting social, political, economic, and cultural norms originating in anti-colonial and antislavery efforts.” It was first popularised by Cedric Robinson’s book Black Marxism.

In the 2021 article entitled: Cedric Robinson and the Black Radical Tradition:Cedric Robinson proposed that the Black radical tradition was necessitated into existence by “racial capitalism it described more fully as follows:

The Black radical tradition is a rich and vibrant tapestry woven by the blood, sweat, and tears of so many Black people. The term was first introduced to us by Cedric Robinson; archivists, historians, and ordinary people have since sought to uncover who its protagonists actually were. Beyond highlighting the stories of individual Black radicals—such as a non-gender conforming women from Angola standing up to the Portuguese inquisition or a Black a communist woman playwright standing up to the FBI—this intellectual tradition seeks not to atomize these individuals as lone heroes defending themselves from an amorphous and transhistorical force, such as anti-Blackness or racism. It seeks instead to situate these individuals within a tradition which first determined them as being “Black,” a word that ultimately was a pejorative, but which became a clarion call for liberation—as was the case when Haiti declared in its constitution that even the white Poles who fought for the island’s freedom could be considered as Black….. If the Black radical tradition most certainly encompasses slave revolts, the creeds of the Black church, and anti-colonial rebellion, it really took shape ideologically “in the twentieth-century setting of the post-slavery world order,” where “Black radical ideologues could not be other than strangers,” according to Robinson.

So the work is huge by Kripping the above history and discovering Black disabled stories, art, writings and political thinking of that time and from now that can be in the terms Black Radical Tradition in our 2024 perspectives through Black disability politics, activism, art and the forming Black disabled radicalism. To be continued! I end with some of my suggestions and a letter to my ancestor, Cedric Robinson.

More Than Resistance
By a Black disabled activist/artist/scholar

First, self empowering by finding others
Second, resistance
Third, becoming political
Fourth, realizing ancestors and their accomplishments
Fifth, reclaiming and building on
Sixth, creating language, art, music aka cultural expression
Seven, group consciousness building
Eight, community education locally and internationally
Nine, building new organizations
Ten, mentoring, spreading to the next generation

Dear Ancestor, Cedric Robinson,

First thank you for your work! I have learned so much. As a Black disabled man I have questions. I listened to your seminal book, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition and I wonder what your thoughts are about the Black disabled body and mind? I realize you are arguing against Karl Marx and Marxism so I wonder if you share Marx’s view on the disabled body and the social model of disability? I know in your time (1940-2016), the disability movement only started in the 1970’s. Knowing that you grew up in Oakland, California, I wonder did you know about the disability rights movement? You knew about the Black Panther Party so I wonder if you knew of Brad Lomax and the involvement in the disability movement? It’s interesting that you attended UC Berkeley in 1963 and were involved in campus activism for Black studies and advocating for Malcolm X to speak on campus because only a couple years later after your attendance came a White disabled young man, who organized a group of disabled, Rolling Quads (which I think they started out all White) and Ed Roberts of 1969. Interesting connection.

I want to return to your book, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. I have noticed that Karl Marx had thoughts about the disabled body relating to capitalism. I won’t go deep into his perspective on the disabled body in capitalism, but in short because the disabled body was seen as a “non-worker,” his writings on the disabled body are basically seen as a result of pushing the non-disabled body until it becomes disabled through unsafe working conditions. Knowing that the social model of disability was created by a White UK man, as I have written in my thesis, I wonder how disability would be seen through the lens of the Black Radical Tradition? This is my work, to try to put your ideas into conversation with today’s growing Black disabled politics, activism, art, music and radical and academic thinking. By writing and organizing in the Black community, and in academia, my aim is to bring Black Studies together with Disability Studies with the radical goal of disability justice for Black and other marginalized communities worldwide.

R.I.P. Cedric Robinson