Lizzo, Beyoncé called out for lyrics, but White band wasn’t

A couple of things are happening in the recent controversies about the use of ableist lyrics in popular music: One is the inherent and systemic ableism in our culture that normalizes the use of language that stigmatizes people with disabilities. Another is the way that the response to these recent uses of ableist language are seen through the lens of race.

Over the past couple of months, Lizzo and Beyoncé were both called out for their use of a word that is considered a slur in the disability community that refers to people with spastic paralysis or cerebral palsy. Both artists quickly took the correction and removed the offending word from their songs and replaced it. More recently, the band Big Time Rush was trending on Twitter as fans were excited about a previously unreleased song that was leaked to an online platform, titled “Paralyzed.” Black disabled activists pointed out the stark contrast in the response from White disabled activists who criticized two Black women artists, compared to what they saw as a lack of outrage for a group of White men who were engaging in the same kind of offense.

“With Big Time Rush, I’m not glad that this has happened in this moment, but I’m glad that people are having to face the double standard. We’ve been saying that it’s been a double standard for the past two months now, but now we’re seeing it in real time with White people misusing disability language and being unapologetic about it,” said Vilissa Thompson, a licensed master social worker with a degree in psychology, and the creator of Ramp Your Voice, a blog and organization that centers the experiences of disabled people, especially Black women, girls and femmes.

“We see the coddling, the apologetics, the dismissiveness of it. These are two different reactions between Lizzo and Beyoncé, and this group, and the main difference is that two of these individuals are Black and the rest of the people are White. When White folks get disability wrong, they are given passes, they are not expected to make corrections, there is not as strong a call and a demand for that as when Black people do it.”

Thompson is also a disability rights speaker, facilitator and consultant who has osteogenesis imperfecta (commonly known as brittle bone disease) and is also a little woman who uses a wheelchair, and is hard of hearing. Moya Bailey is an associate professor in the department of communication at Northwestern University and has written about ableism and ableism in pop culture, including contributions to “Blackness and Disability” and her chapter in “Everyday Women’s and Gender Studies,” titled “The Illest: Disability as Metaphor in Hip Hop Music.” They each took some time to talk about ableism in popular culture, its impact on the lived experiences of disabled people, and the racialized responses to missteps in interactions with the disability community. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version of this discussion, visit sandiegouniontribune.com/ sdut-lisa-deaderick-staff.html.)

Q:

Over the weekend, another conversation about ableist music was in progress around the differences in the response to Lizzo and Beyoncé, criticized for using the word “spaz,” versus the response to Big Time Rush single and their single, “Paralyzed,” in which they are so stunned by the beauty of a girl they’ve seen, they’re rendered “paralyzed” and go so far as to stutter some of the lyrics. To start, can you help people understand what ableist language is?

Bailey: Ableist language is the use of words and phrases that show a bias toward people who have disabilities and ableist language is apparent in the use of certain slurs. There’s a way that “spaz” is understood as a slur, a negative way of talking about disabled people. This language is problematic because it ends up shaping, subtly and not so subtly, how we imagine disabled people. When we use this language in jest, or when we use it as a way to talk about somebody or something that is a problem, then we are suggesting that people who have these characteristics or traits have something wrong with them. [We are suggesting] that they are, themselves, somehow deficient in some way in relationship to “the rest of us.” That is really part of the issue, that ableist language really ends up impacting disabled people because it shapes able-bodied perceptions of these groups and can lead to the sort of whittling away of their autonomy and their agency because it reinforces ideas that people already have, that disabled people are somehow second-class citizens.

Q:

In this latest occurrence with Big Time Rush, some Black disability activists have said they see a double standard in the response from White disability activists who they say were swift and insistent in their correction of Lizzo and Beyoncé, two Black women, but the ableism perpetuated by a group of White men hasn’t received the same level of dismay. What do you make of this argument?

Thompson: I’m not shocked at all at the hypocrisy that is layered with the double standard. We see this all the time with Black folks, whether they’re disabled or not, whether they have connection to the disabled community or not, when they stumble with disability, there’s always this level of outrage. This is always the case when Black people get something wrong with disability — they’re not given the chance to correct. I think that’s a very disheartening reality because Black people have a higher prevalence of disability in this country than many groups, so when we look at disability as a whole and who’s disabled, it is typically us. That lack of community engagement and connection really impacts Black femme people in a very strong way because we always have to say, myself included, that we don’t have a home to really feel safe in. In the Black community, we do deal with the ableism that exists. In the disabled community, we deal with the racism, the anti-blackness and misogynoir, so there is no safe place to be as a Black disabled person.

In our disabled community, we are not doing a great job of creating bridges between groups and that has led to issues such as what language to use, to not be at the forefront of many people’s consciousness. It has been the burden of disabled people of color, like myself, to educate both the broader society and our intracommunity when it comes to the Black community. In my capacity as a trainer and consultant with a lot of big-name organizations, when I give my trainings about ableist language, many people have no clue about what words are outdated. It’s not because they want to be offensive, they just don’t know. When I look at these moments, I’m looking at them through my social worker lens and a principle in social work is to meet people where they are. If we do that, we have to realize that their lack of knowledge when it comes to ableist language isn’t intentional, so how do we do a better job, as activists, of bringing people in who want to do better?

lisa.deaderick@sduniontribune.com