Disability and COVID-19: Intersection of Disability and Race

Photo of smiling person, looking at camera, wearing a white button-down shirt with a leopard print. Plain blue background.

By: Zuleny Gonazalez, MAC’s 2019-2020 Young Adult Leader Fellow

I will be writing a series of blog posts about my experiences during this pandemic. I am a person with disabilities. My disabilities are autism and intellectual disability. We’ve been in quarantine for a while now because of COVID-19. People are trying to get used to this way of life. Some people are okay being quarantined, some people are not. For me, it has been difficult for many reasons. This blog post is about disability and race during COVID-19.

This past month while dealing with COVID-19, I've also had to live through my community being hurt even more. Black people and people of color are dying from police brutality. There have been many people murdered, from George Floyd to Breonna Taylor to Elijah McClain. Many Black trans women have also been murdered; some of their names are Tiffany Harris, Bree Black, and Merci Mack.

Black Lives Matter protests were happening during Pride month. Pride month is about celebrating pride within the LGBTQ+ community. I identify as Black, Latinx, and genderfluid/non-binary. Pride month and Black Lives Matter are related because of how they both started. Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ+ protest movement both started with police hurting Black and Brown people. Lately, there have been a lot of protests for Black Lives Matter. I went to a few and showed my support for Black lives while protesting the police. They were very peaceful protests. It was emotional for me because it’s sad that people have to fight back for being different. It was also hard because of accessibility reasons and having to wear a mask.

It’s hard for me to wear a mask because of sensory issues. Race and disability are hard to talk about because some people get uncomfortable. I think people get uncomfortable with talking about race because they aren’t going through racism and can’t feel our pain when it comes to Black people. Getting uncomfortable and talking about race is important. It’s important because people need to talk about their differences and understand each other. This blog was very important to me to write and I hope during these hard times you see that it’s important to talk about race, too.