White Supremacy on Wheels
Confronting Oppression at the Intersection of Systemic Racism and Disability
Reyma McCoy Hyten & Ami Hyten
Lois Curtis Center
Topeka, Kansas, USA
Join the co-founders of the ONLY disability service provider in the US that is openly and freely operating at the intersection of systemic racism and disability in a presentation on the manifestation of white supremacy that nobody wants to talk about.
Full Session Description
#BigDisCo, or the disability services community, is a 200 billion dollar industry in the US. It is absolutely dependent on the exploited labor, or taxpayer-funded servitude, of Black and Brown women. It absolutely shuts out disabled Black and Brown people, which results in the overrepresentation of disabled melanated people in incarcerated settings. It is white supremacy on wheels. And it's time we, as a society, talk about it.
People with disabilities, including people who have aged into disability, are capable of engaging in marginalizing, oppressive, and otherwise disrespectful behavior and should be held accountable.
However, because our society has been conditioned to view people with disabilities as either incapable of being abusive, or exempt from accountability, this leads to personal care attendants, who are predominantly melanated women, being subjected to oppressive behavior from consumers without hope of any recourse. It is, in fact, a major, albeit unspoken, cause for the extremely high attrition rates for direct support professionals in the US.
We at the Lois Curtis Center assert that this situation is unacceptable and are committed to speaking out about it, even if no one else will. ESPECIALLY because no one else will. We recognize that this manifestation of white supremacy is hidden in plain sight for many reasons.
In this session we will provide context and factual information to support participants understand what we at the Lois Curtis Center call "wheelchair accessible white supremacy", and what they can do address it.
Presenter Bios
Reyma McCoy Hyten is the co-founder of the Lois Curtis Center, a physical and virtual hub for services, supports, and expertise at the intersection of systemic racism and disability.
She is the first Black woman to ever serve as the US Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner for the Administration on Disabilities and was an Antibigotry Convening Fellow with the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University as well as a recipient of the 2019 AT&T Humanity of Connection award. Additionally, her 2018 run for office was endorsed by the Working Families Party. Her work has been featured in Vice, TIME , The Guardian, and USA Today.
Reyma lives at MisFit Farm, an organic garden and sanctuary for unwanted creatures in rural Kansas, with her wife, Ami, their daughter, numerous cats, waterfowl, and a deafblind albino Great Dane named Rufus.
Ami Hyten (static pronouns: she/her/hers) is a member of the sovereign and unceded Kingdom of Hawa’ii and a resident of Kansas, the ancestral lands of the Kiikaapoi. After more than three decades of community organizing and service work ranging from non-violent civil disobedience to local, state, federal, and international policy work with a largely disability framing, Ami translated that work into the development of the Lois Curtis Center, a virtual and physical hub offering resources, services, supports, and guidance at the intersection of systemic racism and disability. An attorney by training and an activist by temperament, Ami lives with her wife and their youngest daughter on a sustenance farm where their work is to rescue, repair, and reclaim the stolen cultural, social, and political legacies of Black and Brown people.
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