From Forbes:
“3 Qualities People With
Disabilities Want From Non-Disabled People”
If as we so often say, people
with disabilities don’t want pity, then what do we want? The most obvious
answer may be something like “justice” or “equality.” But those are structural
issues that are in the reams of economics, law, and politics. What do disabled
people want, personally, from other people? Compassion? Not really. Compassion
isn’t a bad thing. Compassion can be an important motivation for doing right by
disabled people. But both pity and compassion suggest a similar kind of
softness that’s nice on the surface and in the short term, but tends to be
thin, weak, and temporary.
What disabled people need from
non-disabled people is some of what everyone seems to expect from us:
understanding, patience, and resilience. These are pretty abstract values, too.
But they suggest a kind of positive toughness that can help build stronger long
term relationships between disabled and non-disabled people. One of the most
powerful but least understood components of ableism is the way disabled people
are expected to always “behave ourselves,” be “reasonable” in our demands, and
“civil” in our advocacy. It is very heavily implied that as disabled people, it
is our job to protect the feelings of people who intentionally or
unintentionally insult, fail, or oppress us. We must be understanding, patient,
and resilient. These qualities are held as disabled people’s finest qualities
when we manage to have them, and our greatest failing when we don’t. There’s
something to this. Positivity probably is more effective than negativity, maybe
especially for people with disabilities. But this informal duty to always take
the high road can also feel like a milestone around our necks. Our lives as
disabled people would be so much easier, and these values would so much easier
to uphold, if non-disabled people committed to them equally in the way they
deal with us. Understanding, patience and resilience should be mutual
obligations, not disabled people’s exclusive obligation.
1. Understanding For
starters, it helps to know something about why disabled people are sometimes
angry, why we lose our tempers for what may seem like minor disagreements, and
why some of us are tempted to give up trying to “make nice.” Whole books
have been written about the exact nature and sources of the ableism. Here is a
basic breakdown: Lack of accessibility — 30 plus years after passage of
the Americans with Disabilities Act, people with disabilities still can’t count
on being able to go anywhere without running into insurmountable barriers that
should no longer be there. Stereotypipng and discrimination — Despite
impressive progress on how disabled people are viewed in general, disabled
people individually are regularly misunderstood, stigmatized, and denied
opportunities and basic human rights. Unresponsive bureaucracies —
Systems designed to serve and empower us, like medicine and education,
frequently fail us. This is perhaps no different from any complex institution,
but it still causes enormous pain and sows corrosive distrust. Outdated and
perverse support systems — Programs many of us can’t do without, like SSI
and SSDI, also trap us in poverty and fill our lives with unnecessary stress.
And many forms of “caregiving” meant to enable and protect us, just as often
restrict and abuse us. Everyday personal ableism — Single
microaggressions, from minor instances of people “saying the wrong thing,” to
more straightforward bullying, may not always be significant on their own, but
they accumulate and eat away at us. The pain isn’t easy to just “shrug off.”
Yes, deliberately adopting a “positive attitude” can help disabled people
cope with all of these things. But attitude alone can only get us so far. Even
the most easy going and “low maintenance” among us eventually get to the point
where we can’t take it anymore. Which raises the critical question: why exactly
do we have to take it at all?
2. Patience For every time
a disabled person loses their temper or makes an advocacy issue personal, there
are probably dozens of times we let injustices and insults slide by. Even the
most “outspoken” among us are usually quite patient, when the whole span of our
lives and days are considered. Yet, from our perspective, the onus feels
like it’s always on us to be diplomatic and manage our relationships,
especially with the people and institutions we rely on. This includes doctors
and nurses, teachers and professors, family and paid caregivers, counselors,
government officials, police, bosses and supervisors, and of course politicians
and elected officials. We are supposed to be patient with all of them, all of
the time. But where is the expectation for them to be patient with us? In
business and professional interactions especially, it should be a duty for
service providers to exercise patience in dealing with disabled people. And
yes, that may sometimes mean more patience than is required for the average
customer.
3. Resilience One of the
most common ways disabled people are praised is for our “resilience,” our
ability to absorb hardship, handle it gracefully, and not allow ourselves to be
defeated by it. Disbaled resilience is real. But it’s also widely
misunderstood. People tend to assume that the most significant hardships
we endure are our actual disabilities — physical, sensory, intellectual, or
mental. Disabilities can be hard to live with in and of themselves. But it’s
the way we are treated by others — the social aspects of being disabled — that
tend to be the most consistently and deeply wearing. This fact is the basis of
the Social Model of disability, which contrasts with the Medical Model approach
that focuses on our impairments. Our resilience is by far the most
sorely tested not by being disabled, but by ableism — in the form of persistent
inaccessibility, denial of accommodations, discrimination, inequality, and for
some, abuse. The word “resilience” suggests enduring hardships that are
unavoidable and nobody’s fault. For much of what disabled people “suffer,”
that’s not the case. There are obvious advantages for disabled people if
we can “take a joke” or let various forms of everyday ableism “roll off our
shoulders.” That’s why so many of us are, in fact, quite resilient. But a bit
of extra resilience is also a good survival tool for people who encounter
disabled people when we are not at our best or most polite. We aren’t supposed
to take it personally if we are denied disability benefits or a workplace
accommodation. But those who make those decisions or deliver the news to use
might want to exercise some resilience too when we push back. Resolving not to
take disabled people’s assertive advocacy personally gives us more safe space
to advocate. We’ll try to tough it out when things don’t go well for us. But we
would appreciate it if more people could similarly tough it out when speak to
them bluntly and forcefully.
It often seems these days that
civility has gone out of style. People whose jobs involve serving the public
are increasingly victims of ever more demanding, insulting, and disruptive
customers. Medical and personal care workers in particular are especially
burned out, and sometimes cynical about those they care for, sometimes with at
least some justification. This has direct consequences for people with
disabilities and chronic illnesses. So it may seem like poor timing right now
to demand people exercise more tolerance of disabled people’s frustration and
anger.
But we have been under increasing
stress these last few years,too. And there is more than just a positive spin to
disabled people’s growing boldness and willingness to confront mistreatment and
injustice head on. Strong disability advocacy may not be much fun for those on
the receiving end, and our approaches can always use fine tuning. But strong,
emotionally honest, warts-and-all disability advocacy is a good thing. It’s an
essential part of the continuing liberation of the disabled people in the
modern world. Disabled people aren’t saying it’s especially good, in and of
itself, to be hateful, vindictive, or intentionally insult people in the name
of activism. We recognize the harm that unguided anger can do, both to those
who don’t deserve it and to those who — in theory least — do. We don’t expect a
free pass to be rude, imperious, or entitled to everyone we meet. That’s
neither assertiveness nor advocacy. That’s just mean.
What we want is something like
the same leeway to “lose it” from time to time, or to be truthfully harsh when
situations really do warrant it, without being permanently labeled as
“difficult,” “never satisfied,” or “bitter cripples.” Disabled people want at
least the same consideration and allowance from non-disabled people that they
seem to expect from us. If we are required to maintain patience and civility in
the face of ongoing inaccessibility and ableism, then we ask for the same in
return when we shed diplomacy and say what we really feel.
^ This has some very valid and
important information that the Non-Disabled should know. ^
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.