We sit down with Vilissa Thompson, an activist and disability rights advocate who is also the creator of Ramp Your Voice!, a disability rights consultation and advocacy organization that promotes self-advocacy & empowerment for PwDs. She created the viral hashtag #DisabilityTooWhite, spurring people to share instances of erasure of people of color with disabilities from media to medicine. 




Connect with Vilissa on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vilissakthompsonlmsw/




Learn more about Ramp Your Voice!:

http://rampyourvoice.com/




The RYV Syllabus:

http://rampyourvoice.com/2016/05/05/black-disabled-woman-syllabus-compilation/




TRANSCRIPT

Zach: What's up, y'all? Now, listen, before we get into the "It's Zach and it's Ade," I just want to go ahead and say Ade, welcome back. I missed you, dawg.




Ade: What's good, what's good?




Zach: What's good? So listen--and, you know, our topic actually is very serious this episode, but I want to just go ahead and get the jokes out first, because once we get this interview done, I want to go ahead and wrap it right there, right? So, you know, what I love about Living Corporate is we dismantle--we seek, rather, 'cause I'm--let me not say that we dismantle anything, but we seek to at least address openly different stereotypes, challenges, and biases, you know, for people of color and how they really impact folks, especially in the workplace. And I want to talk about colorism really quick. Now, you're gonna be like, where am I going with this? Y'all probably listening to this like, "What are you talking about?" That's cool. So educational point for my non-melanated brothers and sisters out there. My non-Wakandans. My Buckys. My Winter Soldiers, if you will.




Ade: Winter Soldiers... okay.




Zach: In the black community we talk about colorism, and we attribute certain behaviors to certain black folks of specific hues.




Ade: Here we go. Oh, here we go.




Zach: A popular myth is that lighter-skinned black people do not answer their text messages. They leave--




Ade: Actually, that's very true.




Zach: They leave text messages on Read. Their text messages are on swole, as it were.




Ade: I can't stand you.




Zach: And I want to really recognize Ade.




Ade: I only have 250 unread messages. You really can't play me like this.




Zach: Ade is--and I'm not gonna--I hate it when people use food to describe women, but Ade is pretty chocolate, okay? She's pretty dark.




Ade: You have to fight me after this.




Zach: And yet she does not read her text messages.




Ade: You're gonna have to run me the fade.




Zach: She actually--in fact, just the other day I texted Ade, and she said, "Oh, hey," and I said, "Oh."




Ade: It's on sight, I promise.




Zach: You want to hit me with the "Oh?" Like, "Funny to see you here." That's what she hit me with, y'all. Like, "Oh."




Ade: [sighs] Are you done?




Zach: Hey, [in accent] are you done?




Ade: [in accent] Are you done?




Zach: [in accent] Are you done?




Ade: See, you can't even--you can't pull a me on me.




Zach: Man, I was so disappointed. I was like--man, I mean, if anything, based on these stereotypes, I should be the one ignoring your text messages. But you know what? For me to ignore Ade's text messages, y'all, guess what? She'd have to text me in the first doggone place.




Ade: Wow.




Zach: Wow. Whoa.




Ade: This is a kind of rude I really did not intend on dealing with on tonight--




Zach: So I want to say thank you, because last week we had--well, the last week before last, excuse me, we had Marty Rodgers. You know, it was a big deal. The dude is, like--he's like black consulting royalty in the DMV. You would think Ade would want to be on that podcast episode, you know what I mean?




Ade: You're gonna have to fight me. I've decided. I've decided it's a fight to a death.




Zach: [laughs] Oh, man. So I'm just thankful. I'm just so--this is me, like, publicly thanking Ade for being here and for texting me back. I don't know--




Ade: I just want to say that I'm a good person and I don't deserve this.




Zach: [laughs] You know what I think it was? I think it was the fact that we all got back on BlackPlanet for a couple days to check out that Solange content.




Ade: Hm.




Zach: I think that reset our chakras.




Ade: Who is we?




Zach: Or our ankhs. I don't know. We don't have--we don't have chakras.




Ade: Who are we? I don't--




Zach: Us as a diaspora. I feel as if that's--are you not a Solange fan? You didn't enjoy the Solange album?




Ade: It has to grow on me, and I understand that that is sacrilegious, but I will say this--




Zach: And you're supposed to be from the DMV too? Everybody from the DMV likes Solange.




Ade: Let me tell you something. I listened--I waited until midnight. There is a screenshot on my phone of me starting to listen to this album at, like, 12:10, and I think at around 12:20 I was like, "You know what? Some things aren't for everybody." Everything, in fact, is not for everybody.




Zach: That's real though.




Ade: And I paused and went to sleep.




Zach: Really? Wow. You know, I really enjoyed it, but I had to enjoy it 'cause she shouted out Houston a lot on the album. Like, a lot, so I enjoyed it off of that alone. And I'm also just a huge Solange fan, but, you know, I get it. It's one step at a time.




Ade: Look, I too--I too am a huge Solange fan. A Seat at the Table is an everlasting bop of an album.




Zach: Oh, it is. That's a classic. It's a very good album. It's, like, perfect.




Ade: Yeah. This one--this one's just gonna have to pass me by and/or grow on me in 2 to 4 years. I don't know.




Zach: You know, it's interesting because--it's interesting because I was used to--based on A Seat at the Table. This is not a music podcast, y'all. We're just getting our fun stuff out the way first. So it's interesting, because as a person who really enjoys Solange's words--like, A Seat at the Table, she had a lot of words. Didn't get a lot of words on this album.




Ade: I'm told that it's--the experience is better if you watch the--I don't know what to call it. The visual--




Zach: The visual album?




Ade: Yeah, the visual album, in conjunction with it.




Zach: Yeah, I'm actually gonna peep it. Fun fact. A couple weeks ago I told y'all about me playing Smash Bros., the video game, and I'm in a GroupMe, and one of the guys who I play Smash Bros. with was actually in the visual album.




Ade: Oh, really?




Zach: That's right, 'cause I got--those are the kind of circles I roll in.




Ade: You know famous video players. Video game players.




Zach: Yeah. Video game players, yeah. And as a side-note, he is very good at Super Smash Bros., so there. Maybe he'll be on an episode--on the podcast one day. Who knows? We'll see. Okay, so with that, let's do a very hard pivot.




Ade: Sharp left turn.




Zach: Sharp left, into our topic for the day. So we're talking about being disabled while other at work, and it's interesting because similar to how we brought up the Solange album out of nowhere, I was not really thinking about the fact that we don't really consider the experiences of just disabled people period, let alone disabled people of color at work.




Ade: Right.




Zach: I'm trying to think. Like, how many times have you worked with someone who was a person of color and disabled at work?




Ade: So the thing to also think through here is the fact that there are lots of hidden disabilities.




Zach: That's fair. That's a good call-out.




Ade: Yeah, so there's a wide, wide range of conditions. Physical disabilities can also be invisible, but there are chronic illnesses, there are mental illnesses, cognitive disabilities, visual impairments, hearing impairments. According to the Census Bureau--apparently the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, applies to or covers approximately 54 million Americans. Of those I'm sure many, many millions are people of color or black people in particular, and so yeah, I don't know how many people--how many people of color I've ever worked with who are disabled or who are living with a disability, but I certainly think that it's important that, as a whole, we think about how to create a more inclusive work culture that empowers people with disabilities that's not patronizing or demeaning or just outright hostile.




Zach: No, I super agree with that, and just such a fair call-out to say that there's so many folks that--who do not have visible disabilities but are--who are living with a disability, and it's important that we think about that and we think--we're thoughtful about that too, so again, just my own ignorance, and it was interesting because in preparing and researching for this particular episode, it was hard to find comprehensive data, especially content that was specific to black and brown disabled experiences. I think for me--kind of taking a step back and going back to answer my own question, any [inaudible] I've worked with who have a visible disability--I have not worked with anybody in my career who has had a visible disability, visible to me anyway. And, you know, I think it's interesting. I was reading a piece. It was called "Black and Disabled: When Will Our Lives Matter?" And it was written by Eddie Ndopu. And this was back in 2017. He's the head of Amnesty International's youth engagement work for Africa, and his overall premise was historically black resistance and civil rights and things of that nature has always presented the black body as the point of resistance, right? And ultimately the image of the black form is one of strength and solidarity and able-bodiedness, right? And it's presenting this strong quote-unquote normal body as the ideal to then push up against oppression, systemic racism, and--I'm gonna present this, and I want--I'ma dare you to try to break this form, this body. And in that there's a certain level of bias