Evidence-based treatments can work for a disability but often fail to take into account the whole person's identity. 

For example, If we are treating a Black Male who has cancer or a Black female who with an opioid use disorder, then we have to take into account the different needs that may arise in treatment. Scholarly research should also focus on the unique experience of groups and NOT how they deviate from the social norms of dominant groups.

Taking into account each client's different aspects of their identity can help the practitioner understand how their experiences shape their behavior. 

Santa Clara University

Intersectionality examines the experiences of people who are experiencing discrimination on the basis of two or more marginalized identities at the same time, and how this differs from experiencing discrimnination on the basis of these identities individually.  Because of this depending on context, we all have areas where we experience privilege, as well as areas of oppression

For example, the stereotypes or preconceived notions held about black women are not merely a combination of those held about black people and those held about women, but a unique intersection of racism and sexism that black women experience differently from either black men or white women.

Intersectionality

Sweeper, Darryl, Jr. & Cort, Natalie A. (2019, April 12). Understanding Intersectionality in Health Psychology. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/achieving-excellence-through-diversity-in-psychology-and-counseling/201904/understanding

Understanding Intersectionality in Health Psychology

Because of intersectionality, people can simutaneously experience privaledge and oppression depending on the social groups we identify with. 

Reality of the Human Condition

Disability studies resaerch often neglects the presence of an individual's identity which can have major influence over their subjective reality and reinforces oppressive systems. 

Critical Perspective of Disability Studies

Through centering Black Disabled people the Black Panther also showed how they had been influenced by the writings of Black feminists such as Frances M. Beal's conception of "double jeopardy" by using terms like multi-disabilities and double whammy to show the intersections of racism and ableism for Black disabled people. 

The Black Panthers Centering of Intersectionality 

Curative Violence was a term coined by Eunjung Kim to describe the physical and material violence inflicted against disabled people that is justified as a cure. Kim uses the term cure to mean any attempt to lessen or eliminate illness or disability. Curative violence is meant to give voice to the fact that society's ableist obsessions with curing disabled and chronically ill folk can result in further disability, or even death.

Curative Violence

The NBWHP's work is intersectional in nature because it is centered on the intersection of race and gender. This is evident both with how the organization grew out of white feminist health activism as a specifically Black feminist health organization, but also in publications and internal documents that overwhelmingly name racism and sexism as categories of oppression with major impacts on Black women's health.

Intersectionality and the NBWHP

Crip futures must be intersectionally approached. Floyd and Abrams acknowledge that their accounts of academic ableism are shaped by their whiteness and that their whiteness shielded them from some of the harsher consequences of academic ableism. Their whiteness also allowed Floyd to be valued as a learner in the interdependent classroom discussed. Abes also recognizes her whiteness can limit how she works towards crip futures because racism encourages white faculty, even those engaged in creating crip futures to overlook the experiences of disabled students of color.

Crip Futures and Intersectionality

For faculty and graduate students who are immigrants, there is not just anxiety about how disability disclosure would impact their job but, also whether it could impact their ability to get a visa, or even get accommodations and disability services back in their home country, depending on whether they are diagnosed. Additionally, ambient uncertainty is compounded for scholars who are Black, Indigenous, or otherwise a person of colour, and scholars of marginalized genders as ambient uncertainty compounds with other microaggressions and previous harms of the academic system. 

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