Weekly Reading List

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I had company yesterday, so I'm a little late with this week's list ...

Trump's not just racist and sexist. He's ableist
David Perry, L.A. Times - October 17, 2016

Since almost none of the information in David Perry's piece is new to me, what I appreciate the most about it is what he says about "ableism" itself, both the word and the phenomenon. "Ableism" doesn't have nearly the instant recognition that "racism," "sexism," or "homophobia" have in mainstream, non-activist culture. So while it's important in the long run to call ableism ableism, it's also important to explain what that is if you're writing for a mass audience. David does that here, with real-world examples, provided, unfortunately, by a real-world Presidential candidate.

Let's Talk About Trump's Ableism
Drake Baer, Science of Us - October 17, 2016

Drake Baer cite's David Perry's article, and expands on it by arguing that Trump's ableism stems from deeper roots than just juvenile taunting or opportunistic attacks on an opponent's health. He really seems to believe in innate superiority, which is a key component of ableism, even when it's not explicitly admitted.

Graduation Rate Climbs For Students With Disabilities
Michelle Diament, Disability Scoop - October 18l, 2016

I feel the same way about improving graduation rates for disabled youth as I do about reports of better employment figures for disabled adults. I'm happy to hear it. I believe it could very well be true. But, I need to see more than a few monthly reports to believe any of this represents a positive trend. It's not that I am biased towards bad news. To me the problem is that I don't really know what actions and strategies actually lead to more employment and higher graduation rates. There are some obvious, common-sense approaches. It's also possible that any changes, good or bad, are entirely due to much bigger factors like the general state of the economy and long term demographic shifts that have little or nothing to do with disability policy.

Let people with disabilities tell their own stories
Kaitlynn Milvert, Indiana Daily Student - October 16, 2016

The title of this piece is the central issue in so many critiques of disability writing from disabled people ... from outlets like "The Mighty," to TV shows and movies about disabled people, to disability-themed campaign ads. We need more disability stories in general, but most of all we need more disability stories told in the first person ... "I" and "we," rather than just "her" and "they."

You don't have to give my child free donuts
Ellen Seidman, Love That Max - October 5, 2016

For the kinds of people who give out free donuts to disabled kids, there's probably no nice way to explain why it's not always welcomed. Ellen Seidman does a really good job of it though, and her aspirations as a "special needs parent" very closely mirror what disabled kids, youth, and adults want for themselves. We want to tell our own stories for sure. But every now and then someone does tell our stories more or less right, and in a way that might even be more accessible to less informed audiences.

Disability Blogger Linkup

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If you can tear yourself away from the increasingly bizarre election news, it's time for another Disability Blogger Linkup! It's not like there's no controversy in disability culture and activism, but you probably won't feel dirty or discouraged after reading the articles collected here.

If you are new to this, click here to see previous Disability Blogger Link-Ups. The idea is to share something you have written that's about disability in some way. Please be sure to link to the specific article or post, not the main page of the website it's on.

To make the links easier for visitors to identify, in the “Your name” blank, type the title of the article you are posting. In the "Your URL" blank, paste the URL address of the item. Like this:

Name = Title of your article.
Your URL = Link to your article.

Then click the "Enter" button. That's it! If you have any difficulty making it work, or any questions, feel free to email me at: apulrang@icloud.com

This Link-Up will close at Midnight Eastern on Sunday. The next Disability Blogger Link-Up will start Friday, October 28, 2016.

Weekly Reading List

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Good disability writing to read this week …

October and Me: Disability and Embracing Who You Are
Karen Hitzelberger, Claiming Crip - October 6, 2016

I never used to like biographical essays by disabled people exploring how it feels to live disabled in the world. That’s probably because I’ve got all kinds of internal blockages and phobias about having and sharing emotions. It also has something to do with the fact that there’s a lot of really bad, syrupy, sentimental, and cliche writing about disability out there. But, reading great disability bloggers like Karen over the last few years has helped me understand and appreciate how nearly all disabled people struggle to build and maintain self-esteem. It’s also helped me do that with myself in a more conscious, deliberate way. So that’s why I’m sharing this piece.

Baby Voice, Disability, and Campus Life
Steve Kuusisto, Planet Of The Blind - October 10, 2016

It’s surprising how rarely disabled bloggers specifically cite “baby voice” among the day to day annoyances of moving around the world as a visibly disabled person. Maybe it’s less common than it was a decade or two ago. I think maybe it is. It still happens though, and while I’m not sure it always cuts that deeply, it does leave a mark. Plus, it’s more than a little ridiculous. My first reaction when someone uses “baby voice” with me is be astonished and amused that people still do it and are apparently totally unaware of it.

Sharp Drop Seen In Disability Unemployment Rate
Shaun Heasley, Disability Scoop - October 7, 2016

The thing to keep in mind with these monthly disability employment reports is, as the article suggests, that it’s still too early to understand what these statistics and their monthly changes mean. For one thing, these stats don’t account for disabled people who aren’t looking for work. For another, the Dept. of Labor has only been collecting statistics for a few years, and they are probably still working on how to get more accurate data. Still, these monthly reports are absolutely worth tracking and discussing for anyone who has any interest in disability in the United States. I’m glad Disability Scoop does a story about this pretty much every month.

Speechless Gets Real About Families Affected by Disability
Daniel D’Addario, Time Magazine - October 6, 2016

10 Things I’d Like to See Maya DiMeo Take On
Parenting Isn’t Pretty - October 7, 2016

“Speechless” is probably the most important TV show currently depicting disability. I like it so far. My main worry is that it will run out of stories, goodwill, and curiosity too soon, because it is so focused on disability. That’s why I like the idea of brainstorming story ideas … here for “the mother,” Maya DiMeo. What I’d like to do is come up with some ideas or predictions for future stories about JJ, the actual disabled character. I want to see HIM develop too, not be some kind of cheeky but unchanging hub around which everyone else grows and learns. I think the effort to make him “positive” might tempt the writers into making him perfect … or perfectly imperfect … and forgetting to let him grow and change. Like I said, so far so good, but since I like the show and think it’s important, I worry about these things!

Disability Debate Questions

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A bipartisan group of organizations has set up a website called Open Debate, where you can submit questions for the next Presidential candidates debate, and vote for questions others have submitted. The debate organizers will consider the top 30 questions as of Sunday.

As organizers of #CripTheVote, Alice Wong, Gregg Beratan, and I have submitted this question:

Obviously, we'd like everyone to vote for it, to give it a fighting chance of being asked at the next debate. A high vote total would also be helpful in demonstrating the importance of this issue, even if it doesn't make it into the debate. Please do follow the link and vote for our question if you haven't already.

You should also type "disabled" into the search feature of the Open Debate site and see the other disability-related questions that others have suggested. You can vote for as many as you want.

For what it's worth, here are the other issues I voted for:

This question roughly matches up with the top issue in the #CripTheVote Disability Issues Survey. Check out the results here.

Employment is obviously a huge issue, especially for disabled people.

At the moment, this question is within striking distance of actually making the top 30, and it would be interesting to see how Clinton and Trump would answer it.

This is not a familiar issue outside the disability community, but in many ways it's a perfect example of bad disability policy that absolutely doesn't have to be bad, and could easily be changed.

This question refers to another fairly specific issue, a bill in Congress aimed at improving home care and helping people get out of nursing homes nation-wide. It's an important initiative that I suspect will be the next big push forward for disability issues in Congress.

So, vote for the issues you care about, and if you want to pose a totally new question of your own, go ahead! On Sunday night we will see how our questions shape the next debate.

 

Weekly Reading List

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Worth reading …

Campaign Events, Accessibility & Disabled People: Interview With Sarah Blahovec and Laura Halvorson
Alice Wong, Disability Visibility Project - October 2, 2016

If you read this interview, and obviously I hope you do, try not to focus too much on the fact that it’s about a Presidential candidate’s rally. To me, the takeaway is that bad accessibility planning leads to awful experiences for disabled people, even in generally friendly settings all the time. In fact, it’s one of the core realities of the disability experience … that good intentions often lead to bad outcomes, and that there’s actually fairly little correlation between the quality of accessibility and the decency of the people involved. Accessibility requires intention and commitment, but to work it also requires specific knowledge and technical thoroughness. Of course, Sarah and Laura’s experience also underscores how easily otherwise intelligent, thoughtful people can become thoughtless, stampeding cattle under the right, or rather wrong, circumstances.

13 Microaggressions People With Disabilities Face On A Daily Basis
Wendy Lu, Bustle - September 26, 2016

We can always use another listing of specific types of ableism, aimed at non-disabled people who have a vague idea about it, but don’t quite get what actually bothers us most in everyday life. All of the items on this list are recognizable, and go beyond just the basics … though not too far, which is also good.

Supreme Court To Weigh FAPE Mandate
Michelle Diament, Disability Scoop - September 29, 2016

I include this item on the list simply because the duty of public schools to provide Free Appropriate Public Education to students with disabilities is an absolutely key concept in disability rights, and not just in education. If the Supreme Court rules that schools have only an obligation to provide “minimal benefit” to disabled students, it will be bad for disabled students all over the United States. It will also undermine the right of disabled people of all ages to receive “more than minimal benefit” from all sorts of services. We could face a situation in the very near future where the new standard for “equal service” is merely to provide crappy, sub-standard service. It seems to me the law is clear here, and I doubt the court will rule this way, but if they do, it will be a VERY BAD THING.

Ranking Names States With Best Disability Services
Shaun Heasley, Disability Scoop - October 3, 2016

The Case For Inclusion 2016 - United Cerebral Palsy

This report from United Cerebral Palsy is a valuable service … an attempt to assess how each U.S. state handles developmental disability services, based on specific objective criteria. The criteria are decent: community living, living an active life, health and well-being, being able to stay with family if that’s what you want. If it was up to me I would add some more specific measures, like the number of people living in real homes and apartments vs. in institutions and group homes. But I think this survey more or less captures the fact that mere quantity of services and size of budgets don’t necessarily determine quality. It’s interesting, too, that the “good” states are diverse, lending credence to the idea that quality in disability services is a political, institutional choice, not just a benefit of geography, culture, or relative prosperity. I have included a link to the Disability Scoop article and the report itself.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is out this weekend, and I have questions
Alissa Wilkinson, Vox.com - September 30, 2016

When I first saw the trailer for “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” my first thought was that this could be one of those films that the disability community might embrace in a unique, personal way, even though it isn’t really about disability. The Vox writer seems to have similar thoughts, though again, not quite as specific as that. I don’t think it’s too controversial in the disability community to say that disabled people … disabled kids and youth especially … feel like “misfits.” And movies and books that elevate misfits are, well, elevating … or they can be. But I, too, have often wondered, as Wilkinson does, how often this idea actually falls short for disabled people who just can’t buy the whole idea that their differences make them remarkable in a good way. It’s something we shoot for, and a key idea of disability pride and culture, but for every disabled person who comes out of movies like this feeling awesome, I’ll bet there’s at least one who comes out feeling alienated and let down when faced with their actual lives. These things have to be done carefully.

Disability Blogger Link-Up

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How about another Disability Blogger Link-Up?

If you are new to this, click here to see previous Disability Blogger Link-Ups.

The idea is to share writing about disability life, ideas, and issues, in a simple format and central location.

As always, to make the links easier for visitors to browse, in the “Your name” blank, type the title of the article you are posting. In the "Your URL" blank, paste the URL address of the item. Like this:

Name = Title of your article.
Your URL = Link to your article.
Then click the "Enter" button. That's it!

This Link-Up will close at Midnight Eastern on Sunday. The next Disability Blogger Link-Up will start Friday, October 14, 2016.

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What's The Problem?

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Last week, the President of RespectAbility, a disability rights organization currently focused on disability issues in the U.S. elections, posted this on her Facebook page:

It’s cliche I know, but my first response, literally, was to say “What the fuck?!” … under my breath because I was sitting in a public place when I read it. The second thing I said was, “Oh, no, no, no!” because this wasn’t the first time she had said or done something racist, while trying to make a point about something else.

Later that day, she deleted the post, but if you don’t think better of an offensive Facebook post within a half an hour or so, deleting it tends to do more harm than good. Instead of saying, “Wow, did that come out wrong, sorry about that!” she went into defense mode. It was definitely going to be a thing, and it deserved to be.

The next day, she was quoted in a CNN article about Hillary Clinton’s recent speech on disability policy, and basically reiterated what she’d said in her Facebook post, that white people who care about disabled people are going to be key to Clinton’s election. I don’t know whether she said this to the reporter before or after her Facebook post, but the effect was a kind of “sorry / not sorry.” She deleted the post, then said basically the same thing in a news article.

On Sunday morning, I was one of a long list of people who received an emailed apology from Ms. Mizrahi. As it turned out, on Friday she had issued the following public apology on the RespectAbility website:

 

This was, at that point, “the least she could do.” ***

So, what, exactly, is the problem?

I’m not highly qualified to say. I am a white man. I am disabled, and have been all of my life, but I am also privileged … socially, educationally, and, most of the time, economically. On top of that, despite over 20 years in the disability rights movement, and a lifetime being a left-leaning liberal, my understanding of how race and disability relate to each other is pretty thin. That right there is, I think, a clue about the nature of the problem.

Still, you don’t need a doctorate in sociology to spot the most obvious offense in the post … the implication that white people’s votes matter more than other peoples’ votes. And when challenged on this, Mizrahi doubled down by repeating the other side of that coin … that Black people and other people of color can be counted on to vote Democratic, and what’s really important is that white Trump supporters who have disabled family or friends might cross over and vote for Hillary Clinton because of Trump’s disrespect of disabled people.

Whether or not these are sound predictions and valid strategies, (more on that later), can we at least agree that it’s gross and unhelpful to underscore and celebrate taking minority voters for granted, while pining for and prizing the votes of white racists?

But this is only the most overt problem. It also reveals and reinforces deeper issues that transcend one person or incident.

There is a history of racism in the disability rights movement. On one level, this is not surprising or even especially scandalous, since the disability rights movement in the United States is rooted in American culture, which includes both intentional and habitual racism. We like to think that disability rights is a special and virtuous movement, and it is, but it’s not so special that it is immune from all prejudices.

In fact, there is a unique and insidious kind of racism in the disability community, even to this day. Specifically:

1. Until very, very recently, the projected, carefully crafted face of the movement has been overwhelmingly white. The word “erasure” can sound like jargon to the average observer, but it really means something. When you don’t see people like you in popular culture, in school, in workplaces, or in a movement you care about and want to be a part of, it can be a barrier as solid as stairs to a wheelchair user. And when someone in the movement says something that seems to validate your lesser status and invisibility, it really is like a slap in the face. You don’t have to be “over sensitive” or “PC” to feel the pain.

2. This “whiteness” of the disability rights movement also relates to one of the more questionable aspirations of the movement ... a quest to make disability rights some kind of crossover social justice movement, easy to support and palatable even to conservatives, bigots, and people who disapprove of protest and diversity. It’s tempting to make disability somehow “post racial,” and a stand-alone issue, but since disability and other minority communities overlap, this doesn’t even make any sense. Nevertheless, I think that in a lot of ways we keep trying to pull this off, sometimes deliberately, often without realizing that’s what we are doing.

3. For what it’s worth, in addition to being an odious goal, I don’t think there’s much to it. There is little evidence that apolitical people, conservatives, or racists suddenly learn to love and understand social justice because they or a member of their families have a disability. They might engage in necessary self-advocacy, and that’s not nothing, but when it’s time for systemic activism, solidarity, and yes … voting … people who aren’t into those things to begin with usually find other things they need to be doing, regardless of their personal experiences of disability. And political ideology usually wins out over practical experience in the voting booth, too, even among disabled voters. That may change someday. It may be starting to change this year. But it’s definitely too early to cut allies lose because we think we’ve assembled a new voting bloc.

So, in addition to Mizrahi’s wording and phrasing being offensive on its face, it revives this old, offensive, and highly questionable strategy, which has had a long and, frankly, embarrassing history in the disability community.

Finally, this seems to relate also to a wider strategy in some liberal and Democratic Party circles … the never-ending effort to “win back” the white racists and social conservatives who left the party when it committed to civil rights in the 1960s and ‘70s. It’s not that anyone literally says it, but prioritizing and messaging speak loudly. People of color are in the bag for “us” and our Holy Grail is to find just the right “wedge issues” to persuade white racists, who fundamentally despise us and everything we stand for. As the saying goes, good luck with that.

It’s one thing to understand your enemy, find a little common ground, and chip away at their periphery. It’s quite another to treat your friends like ho-hum garbage and beg your enemies for approval that never comes. It’s offensive and pathetic … and it doesn’t work.

*** Note: Ms. Mizrahi posted a longer apology after most of this commentary was already written. While there is more there than her one-line apology from last Friday, it doesn’t alter any of the points I have made here. I hope it’s clear that the problem I’m addressing isn’t, in fact, only about one person or a single “mistake,” but rather a case of backsliding into an old, divisive formulation that threatens the small but precious progress we have made to make our movement truly inclusive.

3 Debate Questions

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Mr. Trump, would you discipline one of your executives if they were regularly telling mean jokes about another employee's disabled child? Or, would that be too much "political correctness?" How do you, as a manager, draw the line between freedom of speech and fostering a safe, productive organization?

Secretary Clinton, in addition to Anastasia Somoza, who you have introduced us all to, tell us about 3 other disabled people in politics you admire and would turn to for guidance on disability matters. Which positions in your cabinet and administration would benefit from high-level appointments of people with disabilities?

For both candidates: What do you think is the most urgent disability issue right now, that you would focus on first and most intensively as President?

Define Me

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What do people mean when they praise certain disabled people for "not letting their disabilities define them?" I think it usually means one or more of several things:

- They don't contemplate the "meaning" of their disabilities, either negatively or positively.

- They don't brood much over their disabilities and disability-related problems.

- They don't often talk about their disabilities, or explain their effects in detail.

- They do things that non-disabled people often don't associate with a conventional idea of "being disabled," like working, driving, or doing sports.

- They don't spend much time on disability activism, other than strictly necessary and prudent self-advocacy.

- They don't complain.

- They don't make a fuss.

- They can laugh at themselves and don't take themselves too seriously, especially in regard to their disabilities.

- They try their best not to bore or depress people with their problems.

- They try their best not to let other people feel bad about anything but the most hostile acts of disrespect or discrimination.

So, it seems to me that it isn't just ... or even primarily ... about how we actually think of ourselves. Underneath the expression, not allowing ourselves to be "defined by our disabilities" really means that we take care not to remind other people of our disabilities.

It's about not being a bother and not making people sad.

Now that I've said the biting, assertive thing, there's something else.

In my everyday life, I usually try to do all of these things, at least a little bit. I do not wish to go around confronting people about disability issues all the time. I don't want to be a bore, and I totally understand that to most non-disabled people disability issues are boring. I like being as self-sufficient as I can be. I take at least a little more than the usual pride in doing ordinary things like working, driving, and basically living as an adult.

But ...

Those are my choices. It's the way I want to be at this point in my life. And while I am sure I'm still influenced by social pressure and internalized ableism, I'm comfortable with a degree of conformity in how I deal with the world.

The key is that it’s my decision, and my self-worth doesn’t hinge on any of this. "Not letting your disability define you" becomes a problem when this respectable, "do-bee" formula for acceptance is the only recognized way of being an “admirable” disabled person. That's the hidden tyranny of being expected to not "let our disabilities define us,” because while a bit of normalcy is nice, assertiveness, political consciousness, and a sense of belonging to a community are also enormous mental assets.

So yes, I try not to allow my disabilities to define me in a bad way. I don’t want my disabilities to confine me or my conception of myself. But I gain strength out of realizing that my disabilities obviously do define me in part, no matter what I do. So I might as well embrace it.