The BPP's work, along with the work of any other social justice organization is not without ableist missteps. We can acknowledge the good of what has been done and point out where the efforts faltered without needing a wholesale rejection or condemnation of the Black Panther party. If anything, the critique of the BPP highlights why Black studies and disability studies need to be in conversation

Why Nuance is Needed when Examining the Black Panther

Two articles on Lou Byers show the enactment of Schalk's third approach by the Black panther by  stating "the Black Panther Party's Free Legal Aid and Educational Program is looking into various resources so as to assist Lou Byers" and the final article states that Byers' mother with the aid of the Black Panther Party is seeing legal and medical help for her son. 

University of Wisconsin - Madison

- Black Panther's Application of  Schalk's first Tactic
- Black Panther's Application of Schalk's Second Tactic
- Black Panther's Application of Schalk's Third Tactic

How the Black Panther Applied Schalk's Three Tactics

The appeal noted in the article title is that the probation department is threatening to revoke his parole.

Byers Legal Troubles and Parole

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027003

Black Disability Politics

The articles highlight and situate the medical and prison industrial complexes as the problems. The articles also focus on the problem in the impossibility of noncoerced consent to medical procedures and research by inmates and mental hospital patients who are involuntary confined and the vague nature of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment by placing scare quotes around certain words, e.g. incorrigibles, psychotic, violence control, treatment and volunteer.

The Black Panther's Application of Schalk's First Tactic

The Black Panther itself as a newspaper mainly focused around the oppression of Black individuals in the United States is highlighting the intertwined nature of differing oppressions by carrying these stories but also the stories themselves highlight how the medical and prison industrial complexes have relationships to racism, classism, and the military industrial complex.

The Black Panther's Application of Schalk's Second Tactic

- Byers experience of racism in the army and links to suicidal ideation
- Byers' race being represented as a key factor in his treatment at the hospital
- Byers' mental disability being framed as produced and sustained from racist and ableist social structures.

How the Article Emphasizes Race and Racism

"V.A. Hospital Pays For Human Guinea Pigs: Performs Psychosurgery on Black Oakland Youth," was the third and final article published in the Black Panther about Lou Byers, published a week after "Mother of Psychosurgery Victim Appeal for Community Help."

"V.A. Hospital Pays For Human Guinea Pigs: Performs Psychosurgery on Black Oakland Youth"

Schalk notes that this rhetoric playing on ableist fears by activists of disablement, incapacitation, and loss of autonomy are magnified with the  use of the term vegetable to describe Byers. Schalk also notes this usage is directly in contrasts to the Black Panthers coalition work with disability organizations.

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