Category Archives: Disability Pride

Do you live in a bubble? Yeah, me too!

You’ve probably seen some version of the NPR bubble quiz. It was published in March, 2016, but has been making the rounds on Facebook again.

It’s prefaced like this:

There exists a new upper class that’s completely disconnected from the average white American and American culture at large, argues Charles Murray, a libertarian political scientist and author.

Of course, if it’s based on Charles Murray’s work, it gets an automatic 5-star bullshit rating, but I took it for fun, and learned that I’m pretty bubblified: my father was a lawyer; I’ve never owned a pickup truck; and I can’t identify military insignia. I’m saved from total hermetically sealed oblivion by the fact that I have had friends who are evangelical Christians, have purchased Avon products,* and am pretty sure Tim would have gone fishing in the past five years if it weren’t so inaccessible.

Why is it, though, that we only think of educated middle-class liberals as living in a bubble? And those in Murray’s white suburban Christian bubble as defining “American culture”?

Want to see if you are part of “American culture” as millions of people outside the exurbs of the south and midwest experience it? Take the official ThoughtSnax Bubble Quiz!

Do you have any close friends or family members who rely on a wheelchair to get around (full time; not just at the airport)?**

Have you ever been unable to shop, dine out, or patronize an entertainment venue because of architectural barriers?

Have you ever been unable to enjoy a movie, play, concert, or sporting event because of communications barriers?

Do you consider people with significant disabilities who do ordinary things like work, shop, or dine out with friends to be “inspirational”?

Do you regularly interact professionally with professionals of other races or national origins?

Do you have any friends who are gay or lesbian? Trans? That you know of?

Do you know what “trans” means?

Have you ever been mis-gendered or dead-named? Do you know what this means?

Have you ever read a book, article, or poem by any of the following?

Ta-Nehisi Coates
Dan Savage
Laura Hershey
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Stephen Kuusisto
N.K. Jemisin
Junot Diaz
Marjane Satrapi
Philip Pullman
Jhumpa Lahiri

Have you or anyone close to you ever feared for their life, health, or safety at the hands of the police?

Have you or anyone close to you ever feared for their life, health, or safety if pending Republican “health” “care” legislation were to pass?

Do you know any Jews?

Do you know any Jews as personal friends, not just colleagues or professionals?

Do you know who any of these people are?

Fred Korematsu
Maysoon Zayid
Stella Young
Audre Lorde
Justin Dart
Sarah McBride
Bill Lann Lee
I. King Jordan
Bree Newsome

Have you ever had anyone attempt to proselytize you or convert you to their religion?

Do you have an education that you’re proud of?

Have you ever experienced discrimination on the basis of your race, sexual orientation, gender/identity/expression, disability, or national origin?

Has anyone ever assumed you were:

the nanny?
the help?
the aide?
unable to speak for yourself?
not married to your actual spouse because you’re the same gender?
not married to your actual spouse because one of you has a disability?
a different religion, nationality, or gender because you don’t look like they assume people of your religion, nationality, or gender should look?

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a “bless your heart!”

Are you sick and tired of non-disabled, straight, cis, white, Christian conservatives acting all superior because you answered “yes” to many of these questions?

UPDATE (from my astute and perceptive sister-in-law, Terri Robertson):

Have you ever been subjected to harassment because of your gender?

Have you had your reproductive or sexual health choices questioned?

Do you dress based on fear?

Can you walk by yourself in a parking garage without fear? Can you walk anywhere by yourself without fear?

UPDATE II (from my astute and perceptive step-sister-in-law*** Annie McQuilken):

Have you ever had your parenting skills questioned in public because your kid didn’t look or behave “typically”?

******

*The quiz did not require me to have used these products.

**You knew that would be first, right?

*** My parents did not supply me with any sisters, but luckily we have an extensive blended family that provided a few.

Micro Aggressor Dramatic Overreaction Syndrome

You’ll Never Be as Radical as This 18th-Century Quaker Dwarf – NYTimes.com

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Slowly, over a quarter-century, his relentless agitation changed hearts and minds. … He died a year later, an outsider to the Quaker community he loved, but a moral giant of a man.

Source: You’ll Never Be as Radical as This 18th-Century Quaker Dwarf – NYTimes.com

Seriously? Seriously??? You write about a radical Little Person who presciently opposed slavery, point out that part of why history has ignored him is his disability, and conclude with words equating moral superiority with physical size or typicality.

And we wonder why no one ever gets disability rights.

Prejudice leaks

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I wonder about the term “micro-aggressions,” because they’re neither. They seem to me to be prejudice leaks, neither aggressive nor — because they reveal an entire worldview — micro.*

We all have internal worldviews that are full of prejudices and assumptions. Some true, some false; some examined, some unexamined; some praiseworthy, some benign, some offensive. Then we encase the whole mess in the persona we are presenting to the world. A thick exoskeleton of personality that is all most people ever see.

Many people choose to encase themselves in an open-minded persona. Maybe it helps them fit in to a liberal social circle or workplace. Or maybe they genuinely believe they are open-minded. It’s important to their self-image. Or maybe it’s important to you to believe they’re open-minded. They’re your friend, teacher, colleague, doctor, pastor. You want to believe they see you as you are.

Then they say:

“I’m so sorry your husband uses a wheelchair” ::furrowed eyebrows concerned face:: or

“are you the nanny?” or

“where are you really from?” or

“you must be the first person in your family to go to college.” or

“you’re so articulate!” or

“is the father still in the picture?” or

“I know your kid has two moms, but who’s the real father?”

and a little fissure forms in the exoskeleton and the prejudice leaks out.**

Suddenly you can see, in that small leak, the entire worldview that sits inside the protective exoskeleton. That they view disability through a lens of pity. That they have seen your skin color or facial features and constructed an entire narrative that has nothing to do with you. That their views of LGBTQ families are stuck somewhere around 1950.

In many cases, it’s not aggressive,*** but it’s not micro. It’s an inadvertent glimpse of an entire worldview you didn’t know existed, or didn’t want to know existed, or hoped against hope and experience did not exist, or perhaps they didn’t know existed or had been suppressing or had never stopped to think about or didn’t even have the framework to understand.

Prejudice leaks.

It doesn’t sound as cool as micro-aggression. It sounds like something that requires padded undergarments. But I honestly think it’s a more accurate description.

******************

*I realize I’m wading into an arena that has been the subject of a good deal of academic thought, research, and writing, and that I have 0.00 qualifications to take on that analysis. This is a strictly non-academic view, from someone who has witnessed many real-life prejudice leaks that seemed neither micro nor aggressive.

**Not bad for someone who can’t draw, eh?

***There are plenty of cases where comments like these are aggressive, but in that case I wouldn’t call them “micro-aggressions,” I’d call them “prejudice” and perhaps also “being an asshole.”

Nevertheless she persisted, disability rights division (a start) (updated)

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As most of the world knows by now, the white Republican men of the Senate voted to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren when she attempted to read a letter from Coretta Scott King. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stated, “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”

Nevertheless, she persisted.

It’s now a badge of honor, not to mention accurate description of the persistence of the women who have broken barriers in a wide variety of fields. Herewith, my small contribution: Nevertheless, she persisted, disability rights division, with an emphasis on ass-kicking disability rights sheroes I know and love, and a few I love but don’t know, but wish I did.

Update: more #persistent women added below; will try to keep adding, but there are so many of you!!!

Carrie Ann Lucas. [Image: Carrie, a large white appearing woman in a colorful dress, in a power wheelchair using a vent; her daughter Heather, a smaller white appearing woman in a plaid shirt and jeans, in a wheelchair; behind Heather, Carrie’s daughter Aszia, a tall dark skinned woman in a t-shirt and jeans; Carrie’s son Antonio, a white appearing teenage boy in a brown shirt; Carrie’s daughter Cinthia, a light skinned teenage girl in a pink tank top in wheelchair; and Carrie’s daughter Adrie, a dark skinned teenage girl with a blue shirt and blue hair tie, in a power wheelchair.]

Robin Stephens and Laura Hershey. [Image: two light skinned women who use wheelchairs. Robin in a flowered jacket and black shirt with short salt & pepper hair; Laura in a maroon jacket with brown hair using a vent. With them, is a light skinned woman in a blue shirt.]

Julie Reiskin. [Image: light skinned woman with glasses perched on top of her head, in wheelchair, hugging a golden retriever dog.] I suppose I should have chosen a more professional photo of Julie, but Julie and Chinook were besties.

Haben Girma. [Image: dark-skinned woman with long hair, holding a keyboard and reaching out to a German Shepherd dog with a harness.]

Corbett O’Toole. [Image: light skinned woman with salt & pepper hair, in wheelchair, speaking into a microphone.]

Harriet McBryde Johnson. [Image: light skinned woman with two long dark braids, leaning forward in her wheelchair over a desk crowded with papers and books.]

Marilyn Golden. [Image: light skinned woman with curly brown hair and glasses.]

Stella Young. [Image: small red-haired woman with a black dress and red polka-dot shoes, sits sideways in her wheelchair to smile a the camera.]

Tatyana McFadden. [Image: light skinned woman in striped tank top, sits in manual wheelchair in front of a set of steps that are painted with her image and the quote, “Anything that a person with disabilities wants to do, they have the right to do, and that can change the world.”]

Ingrid Tischer and Alice Wong. [Image: Asian woman with glasses wearing a red shirt with white appearing woman with brown hair in blue flowered shirt.]

ingrid-alice

Vilissa Thompson. [Image: dark skinned woman wearing black shirt in a wheelchair next to President Obama.]

me-with-sen-obama-2008

Lydia X. Y. Brown. [Image: Asian person in checked shirt with short black hair and glasses speaking into a microphone.]

lydia

Stephanie Thomas. [Image: close head shot of dark skinned woman with braids.]

stephanie-thomas1

Becky Ogle. [Image: white appearing woman with short light hair, in a wheelchair, carrying what appears to be Justin Dart’s hat, surrounded by other people standing and using wheelchairs, and on the right, a uniformed officer speaking into a megaphone.]

ogle

With deepest appreciation for these and many other #persistent women with disabilities.

This cute puppy has a deadly secret!

‘Imbeciles’ and ‘Illiberal Reformers’ – An NYT Book Review Mini-Rant

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‘Imbeciles’ and ‘Illiberal Reformers’ – The New York Times Book Review

Trigger warning: The review contains a discussion of “eu”genics. May lead to depression at the unlikely prospect that the American elite will ever be anything but entitled assholes. May also cause excessive swearing and the urge to vomit.

The book under review examines the people and law behind the notorious Buck v. Bell decision, in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for an 8-1 majority, endorsed the practice of sterilizing people perceived to be of lower intelligence — called, in the law and in his decision, “imbeciles.”

The tone of this review is that not only is forced sterilization wrong but that it is somehow shocking to find support for it amongst the progressive elite of the turn of the 20th Century.

“Imbeciles” examines one of the darkest chapters of progressive reform, and “Illiberal Reformers” looks at the perils of intellectual arrogance in dealing with explosive social issues.

The review concludes in the future warning tense:

Buck v. Bell “has never been overturned.” In a world where the Human Genome Project is currently mapping heredity at breakneck speed, that fact alone should send shivers down the spine.

No, dear readers, the intellectual arrogance that puts people’s life at risk based on their cognitive and physical abilities does not live in a dystopian future of genomic discrimination. It has tenure and a chair with a name at Princeton — endorsing the murder of infants with disabilities — and is currently at work in many state legislatures around the country, trying to pave an easy path to physician-assisted suicide for people with disabilities.

Cartoon credit: Amy Hasbrouk, Toujours Vivant/Not Dead Yet.

Why is it so easy to see now that Buck v. Bell was wrong and evil, but not to come to the same conclusion about Peter Singer and the urge to make suicide easier for people with disabilities?

The Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame announces the Inductee Class of 2016: Laura Hershey

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Our dear — sadly late — friend Laura Hershey is being inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.

Laura Ann Hershey – Internationally recognized writer, activist and advocate for the disabled community who challenged and changed the public’s perception of disability – Littleton, CO. Consultant to Denver metro cities and entities assisting with ADA implementation. President’s Award recipient in 1988 for her efforts nationally, including pressuring the Social Security Administration to allow disabled people to work, and lobbying to increase visibility of LGBT people with disabilities, to improve Medicaid services and to promote the rights of home care workers.

This fills my heart with joy at the choice, and sadness that she left us way too soon, both because I loved hanging out with her and because she wrote things like this:

Telling

What you risk telling your story:

You will bore them.
Your voice will break, your ink
spill and stain your coat.
No one will understand, their eyes
become fences.
You will park yourself forever
on the outside, your differentness once
and for all revealed, dangerous.
The names you give to yourself
will become epithets.

Your happiness will be called
bravery, denial.
Your sadness will justify their pity.
Your fear will magnify their fears.
Everything you say will prove something about
their god, or their economic system.
Your feelings, that change day
to day, kaleidoscopic,
will freeze in place,
brand you forever,
justify anything they decide to do
with you.

Those with power can afford
to tell their story
or not.

Those without power
risk everything to tell their story
and must.

Someone, somewhere
will hear your story and decide to fight,
to live and refuse compromise.
Someone else will tell
her own story,
risking everything.

Interesting note: I went to look for this on the internet and discovered that it was made part of “Rise Up O Flame: A Ferguson Worship Toolkit for UUs.”

Miss you, Laura, and so glad you are being recognized for your contributions to our wonderful state.

Client-Centered Practice

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A few years back, when I started to co-counsel with the University of Denver Civil Rights Clinic, I started hearing about “client-centered lawyering.” “Yeah yeah yeah” I thought, “I listen to my clients, too.” But as I worked more closely with the professors and students at the clinic, I came to appreciate the extra layer of thought and respect that this brought to the representation. Often I would find myself proposing a perfectly rational, highly effective, kick-ass course of action, only to hear a student or professor say, “I wonder how our client would feel about that.” Or I would prepare to tell the client why our proposed course of action was right, just, logical, and effective, and a student or professor would suggest that perhaps we first talk with the client about his goals.

It has been a good learning process for an experienced lawyer, especially one who cut her teeth as the nth chair associate in a giant firm — representing large corporate clients, where the client’s moral, ethical, and personal goals for the litigation were as distant as the moon — and then moved into a plaintiffs’ class action practice, where the “client” is simultaneously the individual and the class.

Client-centered lawyering has been at the top of my head for a variety of reasons, and so it was this morning as I read this account of parents — a blind mother and sighted father — meeting with the education bureaucrats who were making decisions for their blind daughter.* The question was, what sort of cane should the daughter be provided and taught to use? First, for me, a lesson in the fact that there are multiple types of white canes:

The discussion surrounds the selection of which cane Marley is to use, we want the longer, lighter white cane, while she feels that a much shorter, 3x heavier with a que ball end cane is the “best choice”.

The writer/dad discusses the practical pros and cons of the two types of cane, along with this essential history:

Most importantly, the difference SYMBOLICALLY from the short, red ended heavy cane vs the long white cane. The standard cane originates in the UK circa 1921, by James Biggs, who found himself newly blind and painted his walking stick to become more visible. (White cane, Wikipedia.org). The long cane was developed in 1958 by the Iowa chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, designed to “enable us to walk faster without diminishing either safety or grace”(The Nature of Independence by Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, NFB.org) One was created from a “discomfort from the amount of traffic around his home”, and designed for the purpose of “being more visible”. Of its entire development from England in the 20’s, to France in the 30’s and the lions club in America in the 50’s, the main theme from its inception, to its development and adoption into law, is the concept of “visibility”, alerting others of a blind person. In contrast, the long white cane was created from a dissatisfaction for “the short, heavy… type, and we youngsters associated carrying a cane with begging, shuffling along, and being helpless”, and designed for the purpose of “advancing on the road to freedom and independence”(Jernigan). And THOSE are facts…
~In short, one symbolizes “look out, I am a handicapped person, and I can’t get around that good”, while the other symbolizes “look out, I’m a handicapable person, and I’m coming through!”

And here was the response of the “Orientation and Mobility Professional” in a meeting with the writer, his wife, and the daughter’s educational team:

Every time we speak about what the white cane means, or mention the philosophy of advocacy and higher expectations/ standards we live by and expect for ourselves, including Marley, a look of sheer disgust smears across this teachers face, followed by a heavy roll of the eyes and pulling of her brows as high as she can, finishing off with a sarcastic smile to the others (Marley’s principle, kindergarten teacher, low vision teacher and special services coordinator) CLEARLY saying without using words, “who the fuck do you think you are to make decisions for your daughter, & I can’t believe we’re wasting our time listening to his shit folks”.

The words she IS using is, “what training and credentials do you have in orientation & mobility (O&M)” (to have a say in the course of your daughters independence development). She says, “I have a masters in O&M, and YEARS of experience”, she says, “Marley’s white cane with metal tip is a danger to others”.

The writer sums it up succinctly in what seems to me to be the absolute 180-degree opposite of a client-centered approach: “I look at these divine and almighty credentials of hers as a hindrance, she has had 6 years of formal training on how a sighted person tells a blind person what’s best for them.” It made me stop and think: when is my law degree a hindrance to helping people achieve their real goals. True, when they have selected law to achieve those goals, I have 30 years (starting from first year law school) of experience in how to use the tools of the legal system to achieve those goals. But I can’t tell them what their goals are or should be. And it is incumbent on me to provide [legal, ethical] options, and not only the options that I think achieve the goals I think they ought to have.

But client-centeredness needs to escape legal clinics and law journal articles and inform medical, social service, education, and other practices were the folks with the fancy degrees and certificates think it’s a license to tell their clients what’s best for them. In addition, while I’m sure it’s a problem everywhere people with training and degrees use those skills to help people who lack same, but are ass-deep in their own lives, I’d venture it’s a larger problem in the world of disability. People with disabilities know their own bodies, skills, and strategies often far better than the credentialed doctors, teachers, and social workers tasked with evaluating their lives and doling out treatment and resources. These practices need a giant dose of client-centeredness to avoid the absurd and appalling circumstances of a sighted professional telling a blind father what was best for his blind daughter to navigate the world.

Also this particular “O&M Professional” should please go fuck herself.

**********

* This FB post also appears in the blog Blind Mom in the Burbs.

“Assisted” Suicide, Prologue

Thought Snax

Food for thought . . . in small tasty bites.

Category Archives: Disability Pride

Do you live in a bubble? Yeah, me too!

Micro Aggressor Dramatic Overreaction Syndrome

You’ll Never Be as Radical as This 18th-Century Quaker Dwarf – NYTimes.com

Prejudice leaks

Nevertheless she persisted, disability rights division (a start) (updated)

This cute puppy has a deadly secret!

‘Imbeciles’ and ‘Illiberal Reformers’ – An NYT Book Review Mini-Rant

The Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame announces the Inductee Class of 2016: Laura Hershey

Client-Centered Practice

“Assisted” Suicide, Prologue

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