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From: Steve Brown
Date: 13 Oct 2000
Time: 14:22:47
Remote Name: spider-wg072.proxy.aol.com
I've been going through some previous entries and wanted to say the following:
Unfortunately, I think we all tend to be judged (and to judge) when we interact with others. We've all been taught to do that to discriminate in how we choose who we want to be around. I have a T-shirt that says "Understanding makes tolerance unnecessary." What that means to me is that we all have certain qualities that are the same: we all love, hurt, want some things; wish we had other things and want to connect with other human beings on some level. But most of us have too much stuff that gets in the way. Disability is just another way that someone can be judged (and judge) and decide not to interact with others.
Lillian (my wife) has an exercise called Forced Choices. It makes people choose some simple things, like whether they’d have brown hair or red hair and some more difficult things: like would you rather have a physical disability or a mental disability. In almost every case, people chose the disability they knew. If they had a physical disability that’s what they chose; if they had a mental disability that’s what they chose. Or, as I heard a long time ago, the worst disability is the one you don’t have—meaning we all fear what we don’t know.
One of the pioneers of the modern disability rights movement, Ed Roberts, used to say (he died about five years ago) that anger was great. Not to have and to hold, but to get motivated to make changes.
I hate that word “normal!” What does it mean. No one knows, because none of is “normal.” What it’s usually meant to mean is like me. Just like special when applied to disability doesn’t usually mean “special” it means segregated.
Once upon a time I thought integration meant to be like my nondisabled peers. Now what it means to me is that people without disabilities need to accept me as I am; with my power wheelchair, my big van, my wife with a disability, my pain and fatigue and whatever else comes with my package of disability.
I agree that art is how we get people to see our issues. In the past year I’ve had an opportunity to teach writing in middle and elementary schools and I always include disability as a part of what we do because at least that way I know that once they got it from someone who understands disability rights and culture.
Why do we always have to accommodate others? Good question. There’s a difference between being nice and having someone insist on helping you across the street—when you’re waiting for a friend to meet you at the corner where you’ve stopped.