Law Prof: “Black Americans are Disabled”
Kari Donovan
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Pigmentation may soon be listed as a disability if this Associate Law Professor has her way. Kimani Paul-Emile seeks to create a new legal strategy toward enacting protections for the black community against “unconscious bias, stereotyping and structural inequality.”
According to Fordham Law News, Emile is:
A foremost thinker and writer in the areas of law and inequality, race and the law, law and biomedical ethics, and health law, she helps lead Fordham Law’s Center on Race, Law & Justice.
In THIS article, Emile claims that her ideas about race as disability is the “intersection of ethics and the life sciences.” A longtime student Emile, “received a Ph.D. from New York University, a J.D. from Georgetown, and a B.A. with honors from Brown.”
That is a lot of time to spend on a College Campus. Expensive too.
Emile has also spent time helping medical professionals use the Civil Rights Act to sue their employer over “Racists Patients.” She describes in this training for John Hopkins University. Racists have requests about preferring certain types of doctors, citing that some patients ask for “American Doctors” and what Muslims and people of color can do to demand their rights to treat people or have them removed.
Emile cites the medical professional’s rights to Social Justice, that they should decide whether or not to serve oh.. say… a 57-year-old White Man who likes to watch TV..
Here Emile talks about more intersections :
The Intersection of Criminal Law, Health Policy, Bioethics, and Inequality
So, discrimination, or requesting a certin type of medical profressional at a hospital is racism. And racism causes blacks to have disabilities. And the Federal government is responsible to make all of these experiences fair.
In her soon to be released paper “Blackness as Disability“, Emile wrote:
“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.
Understanding Blackness as disabling, however, brings to the fore a surprising new approach to addressing discrimination and systemic inequality that has been hiding in plain sight: disability law. A range of statutes, most notably the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Rehabilitation Act), which together I will refer to as “disability law,” were drafted to remedy interpersonal and structural discrimination against individuals with disabling conditions. Disability law does so by targeting stigma and addressing conditions that “substantially limit a major life activity.”
At the Intersection of Logic and Common Sense
Is going to the Hospital for treatment and requesting a Doctor a “Major life activity”?
So if we are to view black as having an automatic disability, it may be logical to anticipate that patients may choose to not want black medical professionals. Emile may be creating an unconscious bias.
A new system may be to allow patients to choose professors by blind MCAT scores. Eyes closed and no color. Just an idea.
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