Who is your favorite Power Ranger? Mine is the Black Power Ranger. Some of you might be thinking of the original Black Ranger Zack Taylor, played by Walter Jones, from the television show. I love that Ranger, and that probably would have been my answer until March 2017. That’s when the Power Rangers movie reboot was released and Billy Cranston, the Blue Ranger portrayed by RJ Cyler, identified as Black and Autistic.

That 2017 Power Rangers movie is not very memorable and did not get the best reviews. But I love the movie simply because there’s a Black, Autistic character (though the actor, RJ Cyler, is not openly Autistic). The first time I got called a racial slur for being Black, I was about 3 years old. I was so young at the time that I hadn’t yet developed an actual understanding of what it meant to be a Black person in the United States. My racial identity was weaponized against me before I even had an opportunity to own it and embrace it. Conversely, I didn’t know I was Autistic until I was diagnosed in my early twenties, and I didn’t identify as Disabled until a few years after that. As an adult with a nonapparent disability, I was able to process my relationship to Disability in a way that I was never afforded as a Black person. I wonder how different my experiences with race and disability would have been if I grew up with access to Black, Disabled representation.  Would my relationship to these identities be different, would they have been impacted by the representations I had access to?

I wasn’t alive during the Blaxploitation era, but my childhood happened during the prime years of Black Entertainment Television (BET) and rise of Black culture beginning to dominate the mainstream. I had access to some Black representation media, even if there wasn’t as much as there is today. But I don’t remember any prominent and explicit Black and Disabled or Black and Neurodivergent or Black and Autistic characters. I’m not saying these characters never existed, just that I do not remember them. These types of characters felt exceedingly rare and never with prominent storylines or character arcs.

Today, there is more disabled storytelling of racialized characters that avoids reducing Disabled characters to just their disability or negative stereotypes about disability. But despite those improvements, there has been a shift toward other superficial representations, such as the inspiration exploitation of Disabled characters and also real life Disabled people. Inspiration exploitation, also referred to as inspiration porn, still dominates a lot of the stories about disability in mainstream media. These stories show a Disabled person “overcoming” their disability or disabilities in order to do everyday tasks. This paternalistic view of Disabled people and their lives is extremely harmful because it perpetuates the idea that Disabled folks are incapable of doing mundane things and should be celebrated for doing things that non-Disabled individuals do regularly. There are also several examples of non-Disabled actors portraying Disabled characters in categorically ableist ways that promote the competing stereotypes of Disabled people being either helpless or superhuman to the point of parity. Examples of this include the familiar trope of using disability as part of a character arc to show someone’s humanity like in the 2018 film, The Upside and the super genius autistic without empathy represented in the show, The Good Doctor. Children’s books and media can help pushback against these harmful narratives and stereotypes. Including Disabled characters in stories that children consume can help normalize disability in a way that happens far too infrequently today, even in adult media.

I wish I could have been exposed to Black Disability long before I first read books like Black Disability Politics by Sami Schalk, Autistic and Black by Kala Allen Omeiza, and Blackness and Disability edited by Christopher M. Bell;. Today, my work is influenced by Disability Justice, DisCrit, Disability Theory and Crip Legal Theory. Black and Disabled youth deserve to be exposed to these academic concepts and ideas, but they shouldn’t have to be to access representations of their experiences. For example, a Black, Disabled kid does not need to know about or understand the concept of neuroexpansiveness and how it was developed by Kassiane Asasumasu specifically for Black people as a rejection of neurodivergence in order to enjoy stories about Black folks who do not have neurotypical experiences.

The relationship between Blackness and Disability is complex and the history of disability within the Black community is complicated. One of the books that does a great job illustrating this complicated history is The Unteachables by Keith A. Mayes. The book describes how special education for students with disabilities was used as way to segregate and harm Black children, regardless of whether or not they identified as disabled or had a disability. The stigma of disability has been used to harm Black people all along the dis/ability continuum, which makes it hard for many in the Black community to embrace Disability Pride. Instead, the Black community has found its own ways to shield and protect disabled people within the community from outside harm, including ignoring or denying or avoiding the label of disability.

There are several social and cultural dynamics that interact with one another to create ablenoir (ableism experienced by those racialized as Black) and disabiliphobia, both inside and outside the Black community. There is also racism within the Disabled community, not to mention Disability Hierarchies (the idea that some disabilities are “better” or “worse” than other disabilities or that some disabilities are “realer” and deserve more attention and support than others) and the insidious notion of being “disabled enough.” All of this, and more, happens at the intersection of being Black and Disabled. Black, Disabled people can have many more identities that impact our lives as they move through the world – after all, we are multidimensional beings with multidimensional experiences – and we deserve to see and hear and read our stories. More than that, we deserve access to this representation.

Conversations about disability almost always include discussions about accommodations and accessibility. Accommodations are individualized, often legally required, adjustments or changes that a disabled person can request to make an environment more accessible for that individual. The concept of accessibility is different because it focuses on making an environment as accessible as possible for as many people as possible without putting the onus on an individual to request a specific accommodation. Generally accessible spaces allow all folks, not just Disabled folks, to self-accommodate if possible. Sometimes disabled people will still require formal accommodations even if a space applies the principles of universal design with general accessibility in mind.

This difference in approaches to disability inclusion is made stark in the realm of education. The contrast is most stark in primary education where laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) require IEPs and 504 Plans, respectively, for students with disabilities depending on the circumstances. These plans, and the accommodations they provide, have improved the educational experiences for millions of Disabled students, but often at the cost of segregating Disabled students out from mainline classes with nondisabled students. Parents, teachers, administrators, and school districts usually focus on legal compliance with laws to the detriment of expanding access for Disabled students in mainline classes. This lack of inclusion of Disabled students with their nondisabled peers hurts both groups – Disabled students are ostracized and treated differently, and nondisabled students are deprived from regular interactions with disabled people. This teaches stigma and othering while also depriving all students of the opportunity to practice inclusive accessibility.

The experience in higher education is slightly different where accommodations are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Disabled students in higher education, while not separated out from classes with their fellow students, still faces the stigma of being Disabled and/or receiving accommodations. They also still lack access to disabled representation in the classroom just like their disabled counterparts in primary and secondary education. There are few openly Disabled teachers and professors and Disabled representation in course material is not exactly ubiquitous outside of disability studies classes. Disabled histories and the stories of Disabled icons like Judy Heumann are not commonly known and the disabilities of more well-known historical figures like Harriet Tubman and Frida Kahlo are often erased from their stories. There has been some improvement over the last few years, but there is still a lack of access to Disabled representation – especially for multiply marginalized individuals. The struggle to make sure Disabled histories are told by Disabled professors in higher education shows why it is so important to fight to include these stories in primary education as well as children’s books and other media. No one should have to wait until college to be exposed to these important stories.

Access is more than just physical access to a space. It is emotional access and relational access and financial access to space. This concept, which some people call radical accessibility, should include having access to representative stories in media and other mainstream places. For far too long, Black, Disabled folks have not had enough access to our stories. Now thanks to Vilissa Thompson, Imani Barbarin, Keith Jones, and so many others – Black, Disabled stories are finally getting platformed and elevated. We need more of this. Young Black, Disabled kids deserve to have access to representative stories that are as complicated as the lives they are living and not merely inspiration exploitation or negative stereotypes about being Disabled and Black.

AJ Link is a policy analyst with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.