Chronically Academic anti-Black racism statement

At the time of writing, worldwide protests are taking place against police brutality and anti-Black racial violence in the US. As a community, we at Chronically Academic condemn anti-Black violence and systemic racism. We support and stand in solidarity with our Black network members, colleagues, and students. Our mandate to support academics with chronic conditions and disabilities and to work to dismantle structures of academic ableism is intersectional; we cannot dismantle ableist structures without dismantling racist, sexist and colonial structures of white supremacy in the academy and beyond. We recognize that in academia, in the medical system, and in everyday life, Black disabled academics face a great deal more systemic oppression and direct discrimination due to the intersection of disability and blackness. Therefore they are more likely to face ableism and racism. This might include: being turned down for a job, not being able to access healthcare or disability accommodations, being racially profiled, being told that they do not belong in academia, not being believed when they speak up about being mistreated, being ignored, being silenced, being racially abused, being victimised. We also recognise that this intersectional lens has to acknowledge the oppression faced by Black trans people and Black queer people, who face disproportionately high rates of discrimination and violence.

We recognise that making a statement in itself is not enough, and strive to learn about how we can do better as a community and with this platform. We do not want to place the burden on BIPOC/BAME members of our community to educate us. Instead we encourage everyone in the Chronically academic community to join us in educating ourselves and fighting these inequalities.

We commit to the following actions:

1. Amplifying the voices of Black disabled students and academics and helping to increase representation.


2. Providing a platform for Black disabled students and academics (e.g. through our Twitter account, and through Twitter hashtags).


3. Ensuring that people in the Chronically Academic community are aware that we have a zero-tolerance policy to racism, ableism or discrimination of any kind.


4. Holding monthly Twitter chats about allyship and sharing resources about how to be an ally.


5. Looking at whether Chronically Academic needs to make any other changes at an organisational level to become more inclusive and anti-racist.

If you are a non-Black person, as a first step, we urge you to educate yourself on the key issues and how to engage on this topic, including taking note of what not to do. We as a team are committed to doing this self-education and self-reflection as well. Please see below a list of resources as a starting point. We welcome you to get in touch with us to add more to the list. It is OK to be outraged or upset about the injustices, but do not air your outrage or sadness with Black people and ask them to educate you about what you can do, or expect their emotional support. It is understandable that you may feel guilty and uncomfortable about your privilege, but ask yourself how you have benefitted from this privilege, why it makes you uncomfortable, and what you can do going forward to make things better for people without your privilege. Use your privilege to provide platforms for others without it. Do not ask for emotional labour from Black students or colleagues at what is already a traumatic time. Do not share graphic images or videos of violence against Black people, especially without a trigger warning. If you are an academic with seniority, support your Black students by thinking about what you can do practically to make your department actively anti-racist. Lastly, you may feel an urge to write about this movement as an academic, but reconsider: does academia need another non-Black perspective on Black issues? Instead, look at your archive and citations, consider what perspectives are missing and work to fill these spaces. We must all strive to continually do anti-racist work and uphold anti-racist practices, no matter our fields of study or the demographics of our classrooms and departments.

Blog posts, websites, twitter threads and articles:

Racism in academia

• Leading routes article and link to report about structural racism in academia.
• List of articles about racism in academia and the workplace.
• Information about the BAME attainment gap and continuation gap in UK higher education.
• Why do Black students quit university more often than their white peers?
• Runnymede trust report on race and inequality in academia.
• Racism in academia has impacts on BAME staff’s mental health.
• Race science and eugenics; how scientific racism still exists and may be making a comeback.
• The legacy of racism and Indigenous Australian identity within education.

Ableism and racism/racism in health and healthcare

• What is health inequality?
• Ethnic inequalities in health: the impact of racism.
• Racism and discrimination in health care.
• The updated Marmot review on health equity.
• Articles on how the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic has disproportionately affected Black, Asian and Minority ethnic individuals, and continues to do so: here, here, here and here.

Racism throughout history (the legacy of racism)

• Historic England’s website on racism and resistance in Britain.
• David Osoluga’s article on the legacy of racism in Britain.
• Dr Amy Kavanagh’s blog post on the Edward Colston statue in Bristol.
• Twitter thread on racism in the UK from @ObiomaUgoala.

Theories

Intersectionality:

• Dr Kimberle Crenshaw’s 1991 article Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics and violence against women of color, Stanford law review.
• Interview with Dr Crenshaw about intersectionality.

Critical race theory:

• Purdue OWL’s explainer and reading list on Critical race theory.

Resources and guidance on action

Resources on allyship and being a good ally:

• Dr Addy Adelaine’s article on the importance of good allyship.
• Twitter thread by Mya Robertson on how to support our Black colleagues and students.
• Ally Henny on the question many people ask: What can I do?
• Do no harm: guidance for White allies who are trying to help.
• Summer May Finlay’s article on how to be an accomplice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia.
• 7 Examples of What Being an Ally at Work Really Looks Like from @betterallies.

Why just showing that you are an ally is not enough:

• Holliday Phillips on the harms of performative allyship.
• Black Girl Dangerous on what Ally Theater means, and how to avoid it.

How can I teach my students about race and racism?

• Teaching about race, racism and police violence.
• How should I talk about race in my mostly white classroom?

Books:

• How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
• Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
• Women, Race and Class by Angela Y. Davis
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Du Bois
• Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
• Superior: The return of race science by Angela Saini
• So you want to talk about race by Ijeoma Oluo
• Brit(ish): On race, identity and belonging by Afua Hirsch
• Ain’t I a woman by bell hooks
• The Master’s tools will never dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lorde
• Why I’m no longer talking to White People about race by Renni Eddo-Lodge
• Insurgent Empire: Anti-colonial resistance and British Dissent by Priyamvada Gopal
• The colour of Madness: exploring BAME mental health in the UK by Samara Linton and Rianna Walcott
• The end of policing by Alex S. Vitale (ebook available for free at the time of writing)
• Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter Edited by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton (ebook currently free on verso books)

Useful websites and organisations to follow:

• Black Lives Matter
• National Black Disability Coalition
• Intersectionality network
• African American Policy Forum
• Runnymede Trust
• Leading routes
• Ladders4Action
• Advancing health equity

Helpful reading lists shared by people on Twitter:

• A primer on race/ism by Dr Shay-Akil McLean
• Dr Adrienne Keen’s course on Critical Race Theory
• Google doc of anti-racism resources by Sarafina Nance
• Google drive folder about black history and activism

Podcasts:

• Intersectionality Matters
• NPR’s Codeswitch
• Sandy and Nora
• About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge
• We Live Here
• Blacademia: yarns with Australian First Nations/Indigenous academics

Twitter hashtags to follow:

#BlackLivesMatter
#DisabledPeopleforBlackLives
#BlackDisabledLivesMatter
#BlackTransLivesMatter
#SayHerName
#ShutdownAcademia
#Strike4BlackLives
#BlackInTheIvory
#BlackAutistics
#BlackInAcademia
#BlackInSTEM
#BlackBirdersWeek
#BlackAFinSTEM
#diversityinSTEM
#ShutdownSTEM
#AmplifyBlackSTEM

Academia Won’t Change By Itself

Written by Manya Singh 

My first year of college was my first experience with using disability accommodations.

I didn't tell anyone I used these accommodations.

Luckily, the classes I shared with friends tended to be big lecture classes, and if anyone mentioned not seeing me in the lecture room, I'd make an excuse about wearing black, or sitting in the back... and then I'd change the subject. I was so embarrassed.

My university had a policy that you had to submit accommodation letters to faculty in person, and my anxiety would bubble just under the surface as I arrived at office hours, quickly shoved the letter towards the professor, and attempted a smile before leaving without making eye contact. I knew that these professors got these letters each year, and they had already received the electronic version of mine from the coordinator, and still, the experience of having to identify myself in that moment was awful.

And then, out of nowhere, I started falling asleep.

I can remember the first time very clearly. I was in an advanced math class, as I'd qualified to skip regular algebra, and I was the youngest in that class. The teacher was great, and a legend among the students. I had always done well, especially in math, but I really wanted to impress this teacher with my attentiveness and work ethic.

But one day, I woke up to someone shaking my shoulder, and as I jerked back into reality, I caught the disapproving glance my teacher sent my way. My peers around me tried to hide their chuckles, and the student behind me told me my teacher asked her to shake me awake. I was humiliated and shocked, and I'm sure I left without giving the teacher an explanation... because I didn't have one.

For the next seven years, I would try a million things: increasing/decreasing sleep, giving up coffee, different protein powders, yoga, CrossFit, various vitamin regimes, and lots and lots of medical testing. I probably got tested for anemia, thyroid problems and diabetes every three to five months. Nothing ever worked and testing was always negative. I fell asleep almost every day, in almost every class. I was so embarrassed, especially in college. I knew that professors were thinking that I had stayed up too late partying or cramming or watching TV, when really, I had been in bed by 10:30. I sat in the back of the classroom and rarely participated, because I felt terrible.

I felt like I was inhabiting the body of someone else, a body that would not cooperate with me.

At 19, I was tested for sleep apnea, and I started treatment for that. It had been ruled out initially because I tested negative as a kid. The sleep apnea treatment helped a little, but I still fell asleep in classes. For two years, I waited for my "sleep debt" to end, but it never did. There were some other big changes in my life around this time, including having committed to coming to graduate school. I was tired of being tired, of feeling like less than a whole person, always embarrassed and anxious and hating myself. I started treatment for more severe, clinical sleep disorders.

And it worked. It's not perfect, and the effectiveness of my treatment depends on me committing to my routine, and to maintaining my health more rigorously than the average able-bodied person. My body isn't like most people's bodies, and that's frustrating, but I'm grateful that I've found effective treatment, and I'm okay with this being my reality for the rest of my life.

(It takes an average of seven years to diagnose sleep disorders, since the symptoms overlap, and tend to be ignored or dismissed. sleepfoundation.org is a good place to start if this resonates.)

The experience of my disability contributed to me feeling embarrassed and ashamed of it, but the reality is that there are many disabled people and students, with all kinds of disabilities, who feel the same way. For large segments of society, disability is bad, and we are meant to be embarrassed for being bad. Disability is not bad, but this notion being false, does not lessen the impact.

In academia, this is best represented by the statement: "Well, nobody needed accommodations when I went to school." Impostor syndrome impacts everyone, but it is different for disabled students because it interacts with, and is intensified by, the history and continuation of ableism in academia.

In college, I was co-president of the disability club on campus, and I helped a lot of students navigate accommodations. I would often get a message like, "[Insert example of not complying with official accommodation letters here], is that legal?"

I feel disgusted that there is a need to talk to students about how to negotiate accommodations, as if they are being held hostage, when they've already jumped through administrative hoops to get official accommodations. Each time I've had to do that in my own life, I have felt smaller, and I hate watching others feel that way too.

You feel like you don't belong,

like academia would be happy if you just gave up and left,

like "accommodations didn't exist back in my day" because disabled people have never

and will never be welcome in academia.

An administrator once told me that academia would improve in the next ten to fifteen years, as the people within it filtered in and out. I remember thinking: Is all we can do wait? Did we say the same thing ten years ago?

Have we always been waiting for academia to change on its own, rather than actively trying to change it?

When do we accept that hasn’t worked?

About the Author

Portrait picture of
Manya facing the camera
and smiling.

Manya Singh is a doctoral student in botany studying how drought impacts plant-soil feedback in invasive grasses. She has been active in student advocacy, with a focus on disabled students, since 2017. Follow her at manyasingheco.wordpress.com.

An Unreliable Mind: Being OCD in the Academy

Written by Clare Griffin 

I am writing the first draft of this on a flight home, feeling emotional after a crappy connection. Is it a good idea to start writing this now? Is it a good idea to write it at all? To publish it, where anyone could read it? What do I hope to achieve by this? How much will it hurt me to publish it? How much good could it possibly do? For me, or for anyone else? Do I mean everything I am saying? And will anyone believe it?

This, and a thousand other worries come to me on bad days, when the OCD I was diagnosed with a few years ago takes over. At some points in my life, all I had were bad days. Now, I have a lot of good days, and still some bad days, and the bad is manageably bad.

After much treatment, and much help, life is easier. Easier is not the same as easy. But some days, easier is everything.

My OCD rewrites the world for me. It pushes me into false certainties where only uncertainties lie. If a friend doesn’t reply to me, they must certainly hate me; yet I can only be uncertain as to the motivations of others. My mind can be unreliable, yet my work, my career, my life, rely on my mind and on my judgement. How can an unreliable mind be an academic mind? If I can’t always trust my judgement, how can anyone else?

My OCD gets me praise. If I have scrutinised every detail of a piece of work or of an event, my OCD will still have me check again, and again, and again, and again. I am early for deadlines, always there for meetings and the most reliable collaborator – until I’m not. Until the compulsion that drives me to check, and recheck, and check again, pushes my brain too far, and I have to lie in the dark to try to make it stop. How can I feel well in an Academy where other people look at pain and see productivity, see the shadow on the wall cast by a pathology and declare it a work ethic? How can I function here? How can I function anywhere?

And yet I know for certain - with actual certainty, not the false kind the OCD sends - that people with mental health and neurological problems are valuable, intelligent people. I know for certain that academics with these conditions make major contributions. I know for certain that those people who have been open about their conditions, and their problems, have helped me. Cartoonists, writers, presenters, literary studies scholars, and historians have all made important and beautiful works out of their pain. If I can unquestioningly accept the value of the intellectual work of other people - other creators and academics with problems like mine - can I accept the value of my own mind? Can I believe that other people will?

Why did I decide to write this? Is it to free myself from the prison of shame that keeping medical conditions private can create? Is it to find sympathy? To aggrandise myself or pity myself, or hurt myself? To martyr myself? Will I cause myself too much pain with the vain and self-important idea that I will help others by writing this? Will people react negatively to this? Or will they not even notice it? Have I disclosed enough to help people? Or have I exposed myself by sharing far too much? The reality I must live with is - I just don’t know.

About the Author

Clare Griffin is a historian of early modern science

Portrait photo of Clare who is 
dressed smartly and facing the camera 
in front of a plain background.

and assistant professor at Nazarbayev University, Republic of Kazakhstan. Her work focuses on global exchanges, practical knowledge, and translation, especially as this relates to the early modern Russian Empire.

Gratitude

Written by Ella Hollis 

Ella kindly gave us permission to share this post from her personal blog.

I think that going through any kind of hardship, no matter of what nature, can sometimes mask what you do have in life to be grateful for.

Ella, a young white woman with
long blonde hair, is dressed
formally in a black academic
gown. She is standing on a lawn
facing the camera and smiling.

It’s so easy for me, and only natural, to focus on what I’ve lost. Compared to only 4 or 5 years ago, I’ve had my world totally stripped of life as I knew it. My total life plan was scrapped, I have had to intermit from university, I no longer have any independence, I have to use a wheelchair and rely on carers to do the simplest of tasks I never imagined, at my age, not being able to do. My life went from having a successful academic career to spending extended periods of time in hospital, with my body failing me more and more. My daily routine was suddenly out of my control, and my life was dictated by my body.

This week in particular, I’ve been really struggling. I don’t really know why; as always, there has been a lot going on, but I just haven’t been able to see a way forwards. I can’t help but apologise for basically my existence and the smallest of tasks seems massively overwhelming. I just haven’t been able to get myself out of this frame of mind and I’ve spent so much time in tears.

Ella is in her home cuddled
up to her dog Jeffrey. They
both face the camera and Ella
is wearing a nasojejunal tube.

How did I get here? 23 years of age, I can’t even eat a meal, I’m fed through a tube in my nose, I have a stoma bag, I’m in a wheelchair, my health conditions have been taking over my life and I don’t know how much more I can take.

However, although I’ve found it even harder than usual to see clearly, I need to try to focus on what I do have and what I am truly grateful for. Please don’t think that this comes easily, because I can assure you it doesn’t, and whatever positive front I may seem to put on here isn’t how I feel most of the time.

Firstly, there’re things to be grateful for because of my illness. This sounds

Ella is pictured in a cafe with a
friend. Both young women are
in wheelchairs and smiling
directly at the camera.

crazy, I know, but without it I wouldn’t have met some of my closest friends who share some of the same conditions as me. I’ve lost most of my older friends because of being unwell, but the friends I’ve met through my blog or other forums understand me like no one else and the bond I have with them is something I’m so grateful for. There’re people whom I can talk about things I never imagined myself having to discuss at my age, but people who have an understanding of at least some aspects of what I’m going through.

As well as this, my illnesses have truly changed my perspective on life. It has shown me the most important things which, to me, is my family – I have the most supportive parents, sister and boyfriend, as well as Jeffrey who brings me more joy than anybody realises. Being unwell has also made me grateful for the smallest things I never realised I took for granted; getting fresh air after eight weeks in hospital, sleeping in my own bed and having a nights sleep without being sick.

Ella is looking down at her
dog Jeffrey who is sitting in
her lap. She is pictured outside
a building in her wheelchair.

When I really thought about it, I also have a lot more to be grateful for – good days where my pain and other symptoms are manageable and I’m able to get out the house and enjoy myself, even if it’s just taking Jeffrey to the woods. Getting a surprise, receiving a nice message or comment on a blog post or getting a letter from one of my pen pals; honestly the smallest things now just mean the world to me as I understand the importance of kindness more deeply.

As difficult as life is at the moment, and as much as I’m struggling both physically and mentally, all I can say is that the love and support from my family and friends, messages, visits, and any act of kindness, no matter how big or small, is appreciated more than I can put into words. No matter how challenging life gets, there is always something to be grateful for.

About the Author

Ella, who is 23, was studying Natural Sciences at Cambridge University but unfortunately had to intermit from uni for the last three years due to ill health. She suffers from EDS, PoTS, Gastroparesis and associated conditions as well as Crohn’s Disease. She writes a blog to connect with others in similar positions with the hope to support them, as well as document her journey.

The Necessary Labor of Naming and Respecting Chronic Anger

Holly Clay-Buck and Sara N. Beam 

Part 2 of 2

As we stated in Part 1 a culture of accessibility is one that is informed about anger, fear and sadness. Emotional literacy is crucial.

Below is a list of types of anger that we’ve experienced directly or heard about from our colleagues.

1. Screaming to be heard/fighting against the expectation of invisibility
The constant drone of the inconvenience and ignorance inherent to pain and disability isn’t quantifiable, so it’s not allowed to exist among the “elite.” Holly’s physical therapy ends at 10. The faculty meeting is at 12. It’s only an hour’s drive. Logically, she thinks, I can make it. Physically, I will go. Emotionally I resent it, even if it’s a necessary evil. The minutiae of disability is easily overlooked and the constant maintenance chronic illness requires is quickly forgotten when there is no crisis occurring at the present moment.
There’s been a lot of buzz recently about chronic illness, spoons, and mental fatigue (e.g. difficulty making decisions, paying attention, understanding a process, etc.). The emotional and mental labor of chronic illness and disability are heavy and almost completely invisible. And invisible disabilities come with invisible consequences. There’s something to note about women (e.g. cis women, nonbinary people, genderfluid people, trans women and transfeminine women) being invisible in the first place. In addition, even though they are invisible, their so-called absence of input, attendance, patience, etc. is hypervisible. Essentially they are perceived as a nuisance because they aren't seen to be doing the invisible labor that is expected of them. Here we must also acknowledge Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality: oppression caused by sexism and racism compounds the oppression caused by ableism. The stigma of invisible illness is therefore higher for people from multiple marginalized groups, for example womxn and nonbinary people of color.


2. Loss of usefulness (strip mining) when usefulness = humanity


You see it in every teacher movie: the truly committed, hopeful, usually white teacher is willing to sacrifice their time, their happiness, the family, and their health to dedicate every last ounce of their energy to their classes. We read “feel good” news stories about people working three jobs to get by, who spend 80 hours a week building businesses, and work never-ending overtime for their companies. The result is that people are expected to sacrifice their physical and mental health to the workplace.
If admins and colleagues were trained to have realistic expectations about your boundaries and to take you at your word without judgment, then perhaps things would improve. Academia likes to think it’s better than other jobs, but it still relies on “human resources” (a term that makes our skin crawl). It’s still part of an extraction economy, as Instagram philosophers like Queer Appalachia point out to readers, as they connect the dots between strip mining for coal and strip mining bodies for labor until they wear out, sick with illness caused by the nature of the work. You’re never supposed to be angry. When an institution relies on exploitative labor practices, it’s just a matter of time until the system collapses. When you’re expected to happily be exploited, anything that gets in the way of not just doing your basic job but of being “strip mined” ruins everything. It’s very angering that everyone working these jobs and administering programs reliant on adjuncts can see how unsustainable it is, and yet we can’t do anything about it. Workers feel futile and impotent, like failures.


3. Frustration of not being taken seriously or being minimized


Frustration and irritability is caused by repeatedly having to “come out” as having an invisible illness. In one incident, one of Holly’s colleagues, who is familiar with her condition, cuffed her hard on the back of the neck during a flare. She was in terrible pain because of it, and reacted with a gasp, turning in physically, and shutting down emotionally. Her colleague did not notice for over an hour, then asked her husband if she was okay. So even when you take the risk of disclosing your condition, you are often still not seen.
Disclosure is in fact a risk. In at-will states, it may be illegal to fire you for being disabled but it is not illegal to fire you for too many absences, not performing the emotional labor of social niceties well enough, having the wrong color hair, or any other excuse they can think of to remove the inconvenience of accommodating you. Therefore, every disclosure is an enormous act of trust, and when you are misunderstood it’s not just annoying, it’s hurtful and frightening. As Holly asks, if my colleague doesn’t even understand how to not physically hurt me, how are they able to protect my job? Just like a careless pat on the back can destroy my night out, a careless word—or the accretion of a hundred separate careless words—has the potential to destroy my career.


4. Annoyance at microaggressions suggesting your body is an inconvenience


Room temperature, fluorescent lighting, stadium or lecture hall seating—these are all environmental factors that can affect accessibility. To be sighed at, consistently overlooked, or for someone to even “jokingly” suggest that you’re a “princess” —these microaggressions suggest that our bodies are inconvenient, our needs are mere preferences, and our difficulties are faked.


5. Rage at consistent lack of control or ability to resolve problems


Case in point: two local colleges that rely on adjunct labor for a large majority of the teaching at the institution both had major problems recruiting adjuncts this semester, Spring 2019. They didn’t have enough teachers. They couldn’t get them. They assigned many more classes than typically allowed to several adjuncts, some of whom were verging on full-time status but did not see the benefits. People have figured out that being an adjunct isn’t an “in” at an institution. It’s jumping on a treadmill because they don’t want to “lose an adjunct.” And in no universe is it acceptable to be that dependent on adjuncts.
When you think about it in this context, these hiring practices and treatment of persons with disabilities of work are obviously unsustainable because strip-mining eventually taps all of the resource. It’s very angering that everyone working these jobs and everyone administering programs reliant on adjuncts can see how unsustainable it is, and that we can’t do anything about it. Workers feel futile and impotent, like failures. A culture of accessibility is one that is informed about anger, fear and sadness. Emotional literacy is crucial.
6. Disgust at ignorance and cruelty


Most people we work with on a daily basis aren’t outright cruel, but following every semester student evaluations arrive and we have no recourse or ability to defend ourselves against the inevitable, anonymous non-academic complaints from students. For example, a professor we know shared a not uncommon anecdote about a student evaluation comment regarding her pregnancy. Every female professor has a story about a student commenting on her appearance. Professors with disabilities inevitably receive comments calling them absent, lazy, disengaged, etc., no matter what arrangements they make to avoid disrupting the flow of the class. Countless studies have shown that student evaluations are notoriously biased and prejudiced, yet administrators insist we keep them because appeasing students as ‘customers’ takes precedence over faculty mental health.
7. Fight, flight, or freeze: physical responses to anger — biology is undeniable


Even if you are uncomfortable or unsure in naming emotions, you can at the very least pay attention to what is happening inside your body, physically, in difficult situations. Let’s say your requests for accommodations have been repeatedly ignored or denied, and it’s happened again. Which of the following do you turn to?
• Fight: use valuable spoons to tell off the ignorer/denier, to argue once more in your defense, to research research ADA law AGAIN to make a case AGAIN. Protest from within and without the institution. Build that network, gird your loins, once more into the fray.
• Flight: leave the room, leave the building, leave the conversation, leave the profession. Anything is better than doing this again. Escape the moment.
• Freeze: shield up, mask on, don’t move, play dead, shoot out your intestines like a sea cucumber so the predator will be satiated and move on. Brainlock.

You will probably recognize your own patterns in these descriptions. For me (Sara), option C, freeze, has often been my go-to in times of conflict. I feel anger, and I feel my negative reaction to being angry, and I don’t move. From the outside, a viewer might assume I’m peaceful. In fact I’m frequently praised by coworkers, family, and friends for being “even-tempered” and preternaturally calm. In truth, I’m sometimes dissociating from the moment because I’m stuck in a loop in my head and must write down what is happening to stay in the present (“The Devil’s Race Track,” as Samuel Clemens called it). In a culture that demands women be accommodating, I have developed a defense mechanism of shutting down: it goes something like this—this can’t be happening, this is happening, I hate this, I have no voice, I have no choice, there’s nowhere to run, think of something clever, this can’t be happening, this is happening. In response to this habit, I have learned to turn to my love of and habit of writing, and, when I can’t respond, I record. This strategy helps me comprehend what I’m hearing and feeling, creates a record of the interaction, and gives others in the room a sense of accountability because their words and actions are being documented. Writing gives me power.

While this list of seven kinds of anger makes no pretense of being all-inclusive, we do hope that it can provide at least a form of vocabulary for beginning the process of naming—and therefore normalizing—the anger we feel (and battle, and ignore, and beat ourselves up over). Heavy should be the head that wears the crown. Crowns imply power and therefore responsibility to others. By naming our unpleasant and inconvenient needs, we can shift at least some of the burden to those who can shoulder it.

About the Author

A portrait photo of Holly
Clay-Buck

Holly Clay-Buck Grew up in small town Oklahoma. She graduated from Northeastern State University with a BA in English and the University of Tulsa with an MA in English. She is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Developmental Studies at Rogers State University. Her academic interests include intersectional disability advocacy, pedagogy, queer issues, and development of popular language. She is the author of How We Write: An Essentials-Only Guide to Composition and multiple articles and presentations focused on disability, collaboration, and developmental studies. Holly is involved in the LGBTQIA+ community, participates in local activism, and takes care of her friends and family.

A portrait photo of Sara N. Beam

Sara N. Beam’s formative years were split between several small towns, first in southeastern Oklahoma and then in Fort Smith, Arkansas. She graduated from Hendrix College in 2002 with a B.A. degree in English. After moving to Tulsa, she completed the University of Tulsa (TU) English Master’s and Doctoral Degree programs in 2010. She is Applied Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Writing Program at TU. Her academic interests include teaching, written composition, disability studies, women’s and gender studies, visual rhetoric, and childhood studies. Her scholarly work includes co-editing and writing sections of the 2015 book Children’s and Young Adult Books in the College Classroom: Essays on Instructional Methods and the 2019 anthology of Oklahoma women’s personal stories, Voices from the Heartland, Volume II. In the Tulsa community, Sara is a volunteer with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and is a board member on the Little Blue House at TU, an interfaith voice for peace and social justice.

The Necessary Labor of Naming and Respecting Chronic Anger

Written by Holly Clay-Buck and Sara N. Beam

Part 1 of 2

[Trigger warning: one non-specific reference to self-harm in paragraph two]

YouTuber and maker Simone Giertz does a STEM-focused series called “Shitty Robots” about building, well, shitty robots, and in a January 18, 2019, episode called “My brain tumor is back” she discusses the return of her brain tumor and what this news means for her working life. She describes feeling bummed about the uncertainty of her future and about her intellectual and physical limitations, demonstrating a degree of emotional literacy and openness that we admire. In a Reddit thread about the video, a commenter points out that “The healthy wear a crown only the sick can see.” This metaphor provides a smart reversal of the concept of invisible disabilities—the able-bodied can't see their privilege—but we recognize that it's our job to make them see it. Unfortunately, the aggravating burden of making the invisible visible falls on the people who are emotionally exhausted, sensitive, and low on spoons. This blog post seeks to do that work for our already-overburdened readers by exploring the chronic anger that comes with chronic health problems. It can be shared as needed.

I (Holly) have a degenerative spinal deformity. While surgery has corrected the worst of the symptoms (for now), I still struggle daily with chronic pain. When I was at the height of my nerve pain, I started hurting myself just for a sense of control and to distract from that particular kind of pain I was feeling all the time. What’s weird is that I didn’t feel sadness or desperation while I was doing it but rage. I was so, so, so angry about everything I couldn’t do or control, but mostly about how I wasn’t allowed to talk about how hard things were. I had to be a ‘good cripple’ with a brave face and strength and it turned into this screaming inside. Since then, I’ve felt chronic anger as a twin to my chronic pain. It’s the background noise of my life. I don’t feel it or notice it most of the time because it’s always there. However, it tints everything else around it, just like the pain does. An exciting romantic tryst is colored by my constant attention to where my neck is. A faculty meeting is an exercise in not screaming “I don’t care about your goddamned textbooks, my everything hurts!”

Academia is especially unforgiving to anger. We are people of cool logic, proof, and reason. There is no place for your tears unless it’s over a moving sonnet, and there’s even less room for your anger unless it’s directed at a major social issue. A huge problem reveals itself; lacking emotional literacy, energy, and an emotionally literate audience, how can we name and express that level of anger? Work culture defines professionalism as neutral, objective, and emotionally-beige. On the other hand, anger is coded as unprofessional, subjective, and emotionally-loud, not to mention tacky, indulgent, distracting, and inconvenient. It’s worth noting that out of fear, sadness, and anger (i.e. the ‘negative’ or undesirable emotions), anger is the one with the worst reputation. Expressing anger makes you the ‘Other’, the subaltern, the “unprofessional” side of the professional/unprofessional binary. This is the very definition of marginalization.

In a January 2019 interview, Lisa Feldman Barrett spoke of emotional literacy and the power of naming emotions. She was discussing “granular emotions.” Rather than just naming the emotion as mad, sad, scared, happy, or jealous, she encouraged listeners to dig deeper and investigate the emotion even further, down to a granular level. What kind of anger is this? What is its specific cause? How could you group or break down different kinds of anger? Part of what we are doing in this article is providing a model for naming emotions at a granular level. Our experiences and those of others illuminate for us that anger, invisibility, and disability are inextricable from each other. In order to take some kind of action rooted in compassion, we offer a strategy to name these types of anger. Part 2 of the series presents the seven types and offers a conclusion.

For the abled and unaware who wear that “crown only the sick can see,” it feels unnatural to critique the environment, the game. Abled and unaware people instead want to critique you (the unable) for not fitting the mold—you should try harder, you should not have been born this way, you are causing trouble, etc. But ACTUALLY it’s the environment that’s constructed incorrectly/unfairly AND ACTUALLY, if they (the people critiquing you) are succeeding, it’s because they are cheating— they in fact have an unrecognized advantage, even though they may be oblivious to it. Come to think of it, it’s their advantage that needs correcting. We used to think in strictly physical terms when we thought about the disabling features of an ableist society, but now we also think about them in intellectual and emotional terms. A more skillful, more feminist, more aware way of thinking and being is one which always takes accessibility into account. In a world that is not designed with you in mind—a hegemonic, binaristic culture that insists that your choices are between right/winning/male/able/neurotypical/cis/hetero and wrong/losing/female/not-able/neurodiverse/trans/not-hetero—if you are unable, you are losing and you are wrong and you are the problem. In a world that wants to be designed with people in mind—in an egalitarian, inclusive culture that encourages thought and experience beyond two limited, opposing options—if you are unable, the problem is not you. In this type of world, accessibility would be an assumed necessity and the landscape/institutions would likely evolve over time as we become more and more aware of the varieties of human experience, bodies, and perception.

A culture of accessibility is one that is informed about anger, fear and sadness. Emotional literacy is crucial.

So, what is anger, how does it affect labor, how is that effect compounded by accessibility issues, and how can we prepare ourselves and our coworkers to deal with it carefully and most productively? We offer Part 2 of this series as a resource which explores some of these issues and does some of the labor that usually falls to people with disabilities. It is a means to support self-accommodation; something that can be put in the hands of a supervisor or peer, or anyone who wears that invisible crown of health.

About the Authors

A portrait photo of Holly
Clay-Buck.

Holly Clay-Buck Grew up in small town Oklahoma. She graduated from Northeastern State University with a BA in English and the University of Tulsa with an MA in English. She is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Developmental Studies at Rogers State University. Her academic interests include intersectional disability advocacy, pedagogy, queer issues, and development of popular language. She is the author of How We Write: An Essentials-Only Guide to Composition and multiple articles and presentations focused on disability, collaboration, and developmental studies. Holly is involved in the LGBTQIA+ community, participates in local activism, and takes care of her friends and family.

A portrait photo of Sara N. Beam.

Sara N. Beam’s formative years were split between several small towns, first in southeastern Oklahoma and then in Fort Smith, Arkansas. She graduated from Hendrix College in 2002 with a B.A. degree in English. After moving to Tulsa, she completed the University of Tulsa (TU) English Master’s and Doctoral Degree programs in 2010. She is Applied Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Writing Program at TU. Her academic interests include teaching, written composition, disability studies, women’s and gender studies, visual rhetoric, and childhood studies. Her scholarly work includes co-editing and writing sections of the 2015 book Children’s and Young Adult Books in the College Classroom: Essays on Instructional Methods and the 2019 anthology of Oklahoma women’s personal stories, Voices from the Heartland, Volume II. In the Tulsa community, Sara is a volunteer with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and is a board member on the Little Blue House at TU, an interfaith voice for peace and social justice.

Why I can’t write a good personal essay

Written by Sarcozona

We have kindly been given permission to reproduce this from Tenure, She Wrote where you can find the original post.

I haven’t gotten a paycheck since my fellowship ran out in 2017. Funding is scarce for students in the end of their PhDs and scarcer still for international students with disabilities, so it’s not too surprising that I’ve been turned down for everything I’ve applied for.

Almost 5 years ago, I wrote with regard to applications for funding and otherwise:

"Use your story and the survival skills you’ve gained to succeed. I use my escape from rural poverty in personal statements to show that I have incredible drive, creativity, and independence."

But I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t make my life a funny, moving, educational story for someone else to judge.

I used to follow my own advice. I turned the ways in which I don’t fit neatly into the world into pat inspiration porn. I talked about disability, adverse childhood experiences, being queer in a culture of religious fundamentalism, childhood poverty, and sexism as obstacles for me to overcome in a story to inspire funders. And I received fellowships that helped me make it through several years of my PhD, a year and a half of unpaid medical leave and many uncovered medical expenses.

But now I’m too tired, too sad, too angry to twist my life into those kinds of narratives. Those things are structural problems reflecting deep prejudices, oppression, & exploitation. I can’t wrap up the things that hurt me the most in a cute package to make someone feel good about giving me money. Funders seem to want a story where cleverness and elbow grease make light work of disability and other “obstacles.” Ultimately, telling those stories was personally destructive because I kind of came to believe those stories over time. And they aren’t true.

A little smarts and hard work and luck can’t make my chronically ill body “productive.” Even if they did, it would only make it alright for me – and that’s not good or fair. Telling those stories for so long made dealing with the reality of living-with-chronic-illness-under-capitalism/being disabled and past traumas really difficult.

As soon as I decided the problem wasn’t me, but the response of people and systems to me, I stopped getting funding. As Dr. Sara Ahmed says, “when you expose a problem, you pose a problem.”

Chronic migraine isn’t an obstacle for me to overcome. It is an illness that I live with. It hurts, it’s unpredictable, and the symptoms are strange and varied. But most of my difficulties would not exist in a less ableist, racist, sexist, and capitalist society – the poor care, the financial anxiety, the relationship power dynamics.

• Migraine would have proper research and maybe even treatment – it wouldn’t be ignored, dismissed, and underfunded in large part because it predominantly affects women (and especially poor women).
• My disease wouldn’t be stigmatized and belittled in popular culture, despite severe migraine being categorized by the WHO in its most severe disability class along with such diseases and conditions as active psychosis, severe depression, quadriplegia, and terminal stage cancer.
• My disease would be less common – I might not even have developed it – if we had the political will to eliminate poverty and abuse and other such negative “social determinants of health”.
• Properly funded health care would ensure I received proper disease and pain management, saving me time, money, and suffering. I wouldn’t waste hours every week on insurance paperwork and scheduling with doctors, commuting and waiting at appointments, coordinating my medical care and researching treatments. I would have access to specialists for my disease. My medications would be covered along with physiotherapy and massage. I’d have funded access to therapy to deal with pain that cannot be treated.
• My PhD wouldn’t have such a short time limit on medical leaves. I wouldn’t lose my income when I am too sick to work. The number of hours I’m able to work wouldn’t determine whether or not I’m allowed to participate in science and research.
• My ability to financially support myself wouldn’t be tied to the number of hours I’m able to work or widgets I’m able to produce.
My immigration status wouldn’t be dependent on my relationship status.
• I wouldn’t be financially dependent on my partner because I could receive disability benefits while in a relationship with someone who had income. Or I would just get paid for working on my PhD.
• Disability support would be enough to live on instead of less than the median rent and I’d be eligible for it regardless of my work history and immigration status.
• I wouldn’t have to rely on friends and family when I’m too sick to care for myself, making it impossible or difficult for me to move or travel – I’d receive funding to employ people (or there would be government aid workers) to help me cook and clean and go about my daily activities.

When I stopped writing narratives that recapitulated ideas about “hard work” and gumption and began talking about structural challenges, about integrating dismantling those structures into my work (or at least getting support to deal with them), I stopped getting funding.

And it didn’t just hurt my funding – my relationship with colleagues has suffered as my attitude has shifted. They like to say things like “you’re so brave” or “it’s so great you always have such a positive attitude” – but when it gets inconvenient or slows me down, if I ask for help advocating for accommodations, or get frustrated with the endless structural barriers my university throws up, they disappear or make excuses or defend those barriers. If I let my good-disabled-person facade drop and express anything but unrelenting cheerfulness, they start pushing me towards the door. It’s not everyone of course, but it’s enough, and it’s people with power, so it matters.

Being “successful” in academia when I’ve faced discrimination and structural barriers has meant parroting oppressive beliefs and mythologies, and I can’t do it anymore.

About the Author

Sarcozona is a graduate student doing research somewhere between ecology and evolution. Their blog chronicles their experiences being sick and queer in academia with lots of asides about the plants, shoes, and books they love. you might also want to follow them on twitter or read their posts on Tenure, She Wrote.