"There Are [Disabled] Black People in the Future": Afrofuturism & Disability Law

• Pages: 1223-1261
• Date: 01 May 2025
• Published date: 01 May 2025
• Author: Tinesha C. Zandamela
• Subject Matter: Derecho Civil

NOTE

“There Are [Disabled] Black People in the Future”:

1

1. This quote comes from an Afrofuturistic art piece that boldly declares “THERE ARE BLACK

PEOPLE IN THE FUTURE.” See There Are Black People in the Future, ALISHA B WORMSLEY, https://

www.alishabwormsley.com/tabpitf [https://perma.cc/KEH4-HA72] (last visited Mar. 20, 2025). Using

the word “Disabled” in brackets is meant to include and highlight disability as an identity within the

Black communities of the future by emphasizing it within this Afrofuturist quote. Often, as will be

discussed later in this Note, disabled Black people are erased in historical narratives and in disability

spaces—in an Afrofuturistic world, however, they would be included and embraced.

Afrofuturism & Disability Law

TINESHA C. ZANDAMELA*

Afrofuturism celebrates—and encourages—imagination. This Note exists

to foster imagination, focusing on Blackness and disability from an

Afrofuturist lens and discussing what a “glorious future” could look like for

Black disabled people. Part I will describe and explore Afrofuturism and its

role in our lives, the law, and social movements. In particular, it will focus

on two important themes in Afrofuturism: space and time. In an Afrofuture,

space represents an unexplored frontier where Black people could not only

be liberated but could also build from the ground up, so to speak, and carve

out a new future. Time would be recognized as malleable, ever-changing,

and nonlinear, allowing Black people to ref‌lect on the past, present, and

future without restrictions. Next, Part II will explore the complicated rela-

tionship between disability and Black identity in U.S. history, as well as the

impact and role Black people have played in disability movements. Using

history and the Afrofuturistic themes of space and time, Part III proposes

several amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Under

the ADA, (1) disabled Black people should have ample space to identify

how and when they want; (2) a mixed-motives causation standard should be

* Georgetown Law, J.D. 2024; The Georgetown Law Journal, Executive Editor, Vol. 112; Brigham

Young University, B.S. 2018. © 2025, Tinesha C. Zandamela. Opinions expressed and errors made in

this Note are my own. I would like to thank Professor Britney R. Wilson, Associate Professor of Law

and Director of the Civil Rights and Disability Justice Clinic at New York Law School, and Professor

I. Bennett Capers, Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, for their

invaluable and thoughtful feedback and suggestions to this Note. I would also like to thank The

Georgetown Law Journal team for helping to make this Note what it is today. Senior Notes Editor Karen

Enomoto, Executive Notes Editor Ian Lynch, Notes Editor Jonathan Corn, and their team provided so

much useful content-based and organizational feedback that drastically improved this Note. Managing

Editors Sara Brizio and Maria Lowe, and Executive Editors Anna Kutbay and Joshua Peck, and other

GLJ Editors and Staff provided technical and substantive corrections that made the Note so much clearer

and more understandable. A huge thank you to Editor-in-Chief Yasmeen Rose, as well as all the other

Editors and Staff who improved this Note. I am also deeply grateful to my friends and family who

supported me during this writing process. I am especially appreciative of my husband, Jordan, who

encourages me and has made so many helpful revisions and suggestions. I am deeply grateful to my

siblings, Chyeena and Creed, who have always inspired me to imagine.

1223

adopted when seeking damages to allow Black people with disabilities to

fully tell their stories; (3) family and medical leave should be considered a

reasonable accommodation to create a world where disabled Black people

have the time to live, heal, and grieve; and (4) the statute of limitations

included in the ADA would be less restrictive as to allow Black disabled

people to experience time on their own terms. In sum, these solutions allow

for space to self-identify and tell stories, and time to bring suit, grieve, heal,

and live. Afrofuturist works and the legal f‌ield do not always include dis-

abled Black people. This Note seeks ultimately to underscore that there will

be disabled Black people in the future.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1225

I. AFROFUTURISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1229

A. UNDERSTANDING AFROFUTURISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1229

B. DISABILITY IN AFROFUTURISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1233

1. Space ............................................. 1236

2. Time.............. ................................ 1238

II. BLACKNESS & DISABILITY THROUGHOUT HISTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1240

A. IMPOSING THE LABEL OF DISABILITY TO JUSTIFY SLAVERY . . . . . . . . 1241

B. SLAVERY AS A CAUSE OF DISABILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1242

C. BLACKNESS, DISABILITY, ACTIVISM, AND POLITICS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1244

III. THERE ARE DISABLED BLACK PEOPLE IN THE FUTURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1248

A. USING AFROFUTURIST UNDERSTANDINGS OF SPACE TO REIMAGINE

DISABILITY LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1250

1. Space to Self-Identify ............................... 1250

2. Space to Tell Stories ................................ 1253

B. USING AFROFUTURIST UNDERSTANDINGS OF TIME TO REIMAGINE

DISABILITY LAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1257

1. Time to Live, Grieve, and Heal ....................... 1258

2. Time to Bring Suit .................................. 1259

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1261

1224 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 113:1223

INTRODUCTION

As a young Black girl, I enjoyed imagining different worlds. Like many young

children, I had imaginary friends, and as I got older I began to adore reading and

creative writing. When my siblings were young, we engaged in a lot of imagina-

tive play. I created a f‌ictional world called Pretend Land where I could “visit.” In

Pretend Land, my siblings and I would play different characters and visit differ-

ent places. There, you could be anyone you wanted to be. The possibilities were

endless—you could wear anything and go anywhere. We swam deep underwater,

visited other planets, and ate at fancy restaurants. Even in Pretend Land, the char-

acters faced conf‌lict and struggles; but together, my siblings and I always devel-

oped creative solutions to solve diff‌icult problems.

Afrofuturist author N. K. Jemisin opines that “[o]ppression makes the strangest

things radical.”

2

Pretend Land may seem to be an innocuous activity—after all,

many children engage in imaginative play. But as a Black girl in a town where

less than 3% of the population was Black, imagination was radical. It allowed my

siblings and I to imagine a world where we could exist and thrive “for the benef‌it

of no one but [ourselves], in a glorious future!”

3

Imagination is not childish at all,

and encouraging imagination can allow Black people to create a glorious future—a

future free from oppression. This concept, known as Afrofuturism, dares us to imag-

ine a society where Black communities are liberated and are free to pursue their pas-

sions and reach their potential, unencumbered by the legacy of institutional racism

and oppressive systems. According to Professor Julian Chambliss, Afrofuturism is

not only about imagining a liberated future for Black people but also about thinking

about things Black people have lost because of an oppressive past that are worth

recovering.

4

See Ask the Expert: MSU Professor Julian Chambliss on “What Is Afrofuturism?,” COLL. OF ARTS

& LETTERS, MICH. STATE UNIV. (June 2, 2022), https://cal.msu.edu/news/ask-the-expert-msu-professor-

julian-chambliss-on-what-is-afrofuturism/ [https://perma.cc/5YDW-7JYZ].

As Chambliss says, “There are lots of groups of people, especially in

the context of the Americas, which strive to remember the past in a way that ensures

that the current generation and future generations have an identity that supports and

aff‌irms their existence.”

5

While law often encourages—and embraces—logical and clear solutions,

Afrofuturism celebrates—and encourages—imagination. Some erroneously

claim that law cannot be imaginative because it must involve logic. But imagi-

native solutions in and about the law can arguably be more logical than what we

have previously established. Alex Zamalin, an Afrofuturism scholar and profes-

sor of Africana Studies, reminds us that “Afrofuturism isn’t simply of signif‌i-

cance as a cultural relic of the past or the present, but it is a generative frame of

engagement that demands our attention in expressing strategies, standpoints,

2. N. K. Jemisin, There’s a Reason, in AFROFUTURISM: A HISTORY OF BLACK FUTURES 86, 88 (Kevin

M. Strait & Kinshasha Holman Conwill eds., 2023).

3. Id.

4.

5. Id.

2025] “THERE ARE [DISABLED] BLACK PEOPLE IN THE FUTURE” 1225