Purdue’s Black Cultural Center and Purdue’s Disabled Student Union present a roundtable discussion on the intersections of Race and Disability on Wednesday March 22nd from 6:00-7:30pm in MP2 at the BCC and online.

RSVP at https://tinyurl.com/bccdsuevent

Students from the DSU will open with a primer on Disability Justice, a movement led by disabled and queer people of color. DSU representatives will also discuss the scholarship of Black disability scholar-activists Chris Bell (Rest in Power), Sami Schalk, and Imani Barbarin. Then, DSU Faculty Advisor, PI of the Coliberation Lab, and SSRC Just Tech Fellow Dr. Rua M. Williams will facilitate a roundtable discussion with special guests Samar Jade and D’Arcee Chairington Neal on their experiences of disability, race, and liberation. It is our hope that this event deepens the coalition between disabled and black activism on campus.

Meet our guests:
Samar Jade: I am a classically trained singer turned scholar rebirthed as a writer who loves to nurture those around me to live the most authentically. I am actively working to heal childhood and adult trauma. I love to celebrate Blackness, queerness, and witnessing humans living their truths. I recently discovered and connected with my ancestral spirituality in an effort to become more aware of the many things that guided those before me and to offer respect and gratitude.

I am in my last year of coursework in a PhD in Ethnomusicology. Current projects in the works outside of my school obligations are compiling a book of poetry that explores my personal journey to reclamation of self and identity.

I am a teacher. I love, love LOVE teaching. One of the things I admired about the teachers that impacted me most was the very evident desire to create a safe space for creativity and learning. I believe that knowledge belongs to all and that which has been gate kept from others needs to be made accessible.

I have a long list of special interests including:
opossums
astrology
pumpkin spice
Dmitri Shostakovich
bird medicine
Jersey Shore
cicadas

I am weird, and I love that about me.

D’Arcee Chairington Neal: D'Arcee Charington Neal is a fourth year doctoral candidate at The Ohio State University in English and Disability Studies, where he is coining the theory of Afrophantasm or the rhetorical applications of invisibility through Afrofuturism and black disability culture. With a double master's in Creative Writing and Rhetorical Composition, he is writing and composing an audio novel and digital dissertation where his research is focused on recognizing historical and future black disabled people, as unseen agents of stigma he calls spectres. Believing that this association between race and disability can be weaponized through posthumanist applications of embodied culture, he believes that Afrophantasm can change how people both understand and experience disability culture. Further, he believes that the resulting black future can and should be both accessible and in Wakanda, forever.

#DisabilityJustice #Intersectionality #RaceAndDisability #DisabilityTooWhite #ColiberationLab #Solidarity #DisabledStudentUnion #BlackCulturalCenter #Purdue