A Princeton University class curriculum slated for the upcoming fall semester claims that Black people can be considered “disabled” due to the purported systemic racism they face, according to information in a course description.
Fox News reported on the class taught by a Professor Satyel Larson, who specializes in women, gender and sexuality studies. A book featured in the course is called “Permission to Maim.” The book argues that Black people, along with other groups the author – Jasbir Puar – deemed to be oppressed by systemic racism, can be considered “disabled” since the supposed structures in place limit their agency in society.
“Black Lives Matter and the struggle to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine are not only movements ‘allied’ with disability rights, nor are they only distinct disability justice issues. Rather, I am motivated to think of these fierce organizing practices collectively as a disability justice movement itself, as a movement that is demanding an end to so many conditions of precaritization that debilitate many populations,” the book stated.
“These movements may not represent the most appealing or desired versions of disability pride. But they are movements anchored, in fact, in the lived experiences of debilitation, implicitly contesting the right to maim, and imagining multiple futures where bodily capacities and debilities are embraced rather than weaponized,” it continued.
The course aims to “decolonize” students’ modalities of thinking. The description focused on concepts steeped in critical race theory and webbed in “capitalism” as on the same plane as the mistreatment, discrimination and prejudice against gay people – also called “homophobia.”
“Re-orienting healing as a decolonizing process enables students to re-politicize personal trauma as it intersects with global legacies of violence, war, racism, slavery, patriarchy, colonialism, orientalism, homophobia, ableism, capitalism, and extractivism,” the course description said.
