Blogging Against Disablism Day

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 by ekie

 

 (n.b.  I don’t know how to blog against something.  I can push against something or protest against something, but I only know how to blog normally.  but here goes anyway.)

 

            When I was maybe eight or nine, a new store opened in a mall near my house, and on my first visit there, I happened to see one of their employees.  She had dwarfism.  I had never seen a person with dwarfism before, except in the movies, and I was absolutely, positively terrified of her.  For months to come, I would make a family member go into the store before I did, to make sure that that super-scary person was not there.

            At that age, I had no idea of my own disability, and had very few experiences with people with any type of disability.  I did not, in fact, associate the employee with dwarfism with disability at all.  I associated her, odd as it may seem, with magic. 

            Magic? Yes.  I was a lonely kid, and I spent many hours alone in my room, reading book after book about elves and wizards and talking animals and, well, dwarfs.  They featured prominently in one of my very favorite series, the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis.  Unlike most children, my magical thinking persisted well into elementary school.  (I believed in Santa Claus until I was ten.)  In a lot of children’s books, kids from today are transported back in time by some magical being, and I was absolutely, positively, not going to let that happen to me. 

            Thus I became an ablist.  It was my first experience of intentionally discriminating against someone based on their disability, but it would not be the last.

 

            Everyone has prejudices.  We cannot help it.  We are shaped by the beliefs of those who raise us and the culture we grow up in.  Children are not born hating others, they are not born crossing to the other side of the street when an Other is coming towards them.  They learn and absorb the lessons that their elders teach them, intentional or otherwise.

            Luckily for me, after eighteen years of seeing people with disabilities as Other, I had the opportunity to go to a wonderful university where I took courses on race, class, gender, and disability, and I became acutely aware of my own prejudices and my own background.  I was exposed to people of all races and cultures and abilities, and grew to be at ease among those who are different than me, those who are Other.  I realized my own racism, I realized my own ablism, and I worked to not be racist or ablist or classist.  Today, with disability a part of my everyday life, I am more aware than ever of ablist attitudes, and I constantly re-examine myself, even though I do not know if the worrying does any good. 

            The problem, I think, is that people, myself included, tend to define ablism as it relates to visible disabilities, and not as it relates to invisible disabilities,  even though both sides experience it.  There are some disabilities which are always seen as valid, and there are others which are not.  At disability events, I walk around at ease and am seen as someone without a disability, or as a PCA.  I sometimes choose to identify myself as a PWD, but sometimes I do not, because I never know what reception I’ll receive from anyone.  Even among ‘my people’, when I say I have a learning disability, people expect me to have trouble reading.  When I say I have an autism spectrum disorder, they expect me to be over there in that corner, flapping.  I have nothing against people in either category, I just do not belong there. 

            Why should anyone deny another person’s validity?  Why should I deny my own?  I do not know, even as I continue to do it.

            People with disabilities, however, are unusual in that they very often have the ability to see beyond their own prejudices, and to stop, think, and question their own assumptions.  As I become braver and speak out about my own disability more, I find that many people would like to understand, and are willing to try.  Somewhat ironically, my social skills tend to be better in disability settings, because I do not feel the same constant pressure to be perfect that I do in other circles. 

            I have come to the conclusion that ablism, or racism, or any other ‘ism’, is not necessarily cured by freeing oneself of all pre-conceived notions, or by treating everyone exactly the same.  Indeed, I am unsure if it is ever possible to free oneself of all inherent cultural baggage.  What can be done is that people question themselves.  They acknowledge their own backgrounds and upbringings and the biases they bring to the table, and they re-examine their beliefs to see if they are really true.  Then, if part of oneself or society does not seem to be ideal, people work to change it.

            The basic fact is is that everyone is valid.  All cultures are valid.  All disabilities are valid.  We are all truly equal.  It’s not really that radical of an idea – to sit around a table and be seen not as paras or CP’s or Blacks or Amish or anything, but as just People.  To empty our cultural baggage and to say, ‘This is the beginning.’  

 

            Of course, if all people, especially lawmakers, truly thought all people everywhere were equal to themselves, then they would have to acknowledge that all people deserve basic things like food, water, education, shelter – all people, all over the world.  And then we would not only have a new foreign-policy doctrine and the defeat of ablism, racism and prejudice of all types– we would have world peace.

 

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