Category Archives: Disability Rights

“Not Pretty…But Harmless”

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Subtitle:  Drinking with white people, part deux.  Went to a new hairdresser today.  Turns out — I know this will come as a shock — he’s gay. [**] Within the first few minutes of our conversation, I learned that he had a husband to whom he’d gotten married in Vegas.  Awesome!  I’m a huge fan of marriage equality!  We had a grand ol time discussing the California Prop 8 case, how cool it was that he got married, what it was like to work with your husband (something we had in common), the comparative virtues of Lady Gaga’s meat outfit vs. Bjork’s swan outfit, and his penchant for (another surprise!) decorating.  Little did I know, my drinking-with-white-people experience had begun.  I learned about his fantastic historic house, in his fantastic historic neighborhood right downtown, where he and his husband could walk to many incredible restaurants.

But!  They were going to turn the historic property across the street into a 40 bed alcohol rehab facility!  Luckily he and his neighbors got together and raised hell, so they rejected it.  (Still not clear who the “theys” were.)  I weighed the pros and cons of explaining the Fair Housing Act and NIMBYism* at this point, but honestly I really liked the haircut and … well this is the sort of compromises you make when you really like the haircut but the stylist is an asshole.

Then it got worse.  Of course, he said, there are already two of them in the neighborhood.  Two facilities.  One is for, you know, mentally challenged people.

“You know, not pretty… but harmless.”

At this point, thank God, he was through cutting and was putting some sort of styling glop in my hair.  I rubbed my eyes and explained that I was a civil rights lawyer, that we did fair housing cases, and that all of these people and facilities had just as much right as he and his husband did to live there.  Of course, he sighed, you know we take them food at Christmas.

I guess I’m especially bummed because I’m guessing this guy has been on the receiving end of prejudice in his life but still could not see past his own prejudices.  This is, of course, not uncommon, but every damn time it depresses the hell out of me.

And I really did like the haircut.

Update:  I guess I should be clear on what was implicit in the last sentence.  NFW am I going back to that stylist or salon.  Oh well.

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*Not In My BackYard.

** Update:  A friend quite properly pointed out that this sentence itself — in its attempt at humor — is pretty stereotyped, like saying “I know this will come as a shock” that my banker is Jewish or an African-American is a good athlete.  All I can say is: yup.  I screwed that one up.  In the tradition of blogging (funny to have a tradition for something that has only about ten years of history), I’m not deleting it.  Rather in my own tradition, I’ll just go forward feeling stupid about it.

Drinking with White People

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I hate talking about disability with people outside our community.  Especially people I respect.  Especially for the first time.

I think this is similar to what  Ta-Nehisi Coates called “The John Mayer Rule.”  He called it that because he was posting in the wake of some profoundly vulgar remarks by that singer.

But then he went on to discuss his concern, as an African-American professional, about drinking with allegedly-enlightened white colleagues:  after a few drinks, someone would say something ignorant that would reveal them to have a layer of racism you wish you didn’t know about.

Coates gave two examples, from two perspectives.  First, he explained, he would often skip after-work gatherings at his first job for “fear of being the only black guy [and] fear that someone would get smashed, say something ignorant and I’d do something that would get me fired.”  But his second example came from the opposite perspective.

I had a dinner party when I first moved to Harlem with a bunch of friends. One of my homeboys was dating a mutual friend, who happened to be Korean. Anyway, after dinner someone pulls out blunt, rolls up and we all partake. One of my other friends, who was black, goes “Damn dude, your eyes are all chinky.” I laughed like nothing had happened. It never even occurred to me what had happened, until the young lady called both of us on it.

That was the end of the party–in more ways then one. What I was left thinking about was the power dynamic, and the trust factor. She was in an apartment surrounded by black people who she trusted were fairly enlightened. As it turned out, some us weren’t. Would she not be justified with her own John Mayer rule?

There is a disability equivalent of the “drinking with white people” problem:  listening to someone you respect — outside the community — talk about disability for the first time.

The most striking example I recall — both because of its egregiousness and because I was new to the community* — was Hillary Clinton’s speech on what must have been the third anniversary of the ADA.  There was a big event on the White House lawn and Tim and I worked at a Big Law Firm that frequently had spare tickets to random high-profile political events, which they would give away to associates.  Of course, the high-profile ADA event tickets went to the lone disabled lawyer and his fiancée.  So Tim and I were sitting there on the White House lawn surrounded by amazing people (whose amazingness I would not appreciate until years later), when the First Lady stepped up to speak.  And the theme of her address — to the collected disability rights royalty — was that if we provide sufficient funding for medical research, there won’t BE any disabled people!  (I’m doing this from memory — let’s see if the Internets have the actual address.  Nope.  Sorry.  We’re stuck with my July-in-DC-heat-addled memory.)

Anyway, this is why I never, ever, even for a nanosecond thought of voting for Hillary Clinton.  I’m confident with the right advisors, she eventually said more enlightened things about disability.  But deep down inside, to her, it’s a problem to be cured, not a natural part of the human spectrum to be embraced.  And she wasn’t even drunk.

On a more personal, no-drinking-with-white-people level, I have often had the experience of listening to a friend — or someone I know less well but (want to) respect — start talking about disability, only to hear something so ignorant I want to hit the rewind button.  And then the delete key.

Like the time a woman we had recently met asked to bring her son to meet Tim.  Career advice?  Male bonding?  No, the son had gotten a traffic ticket and she wanted to show her son “what could happen if he continues to drive recklessly.”  I was actually confused for a second, then realized that she was planning to simply exhibit Tim to her son as example of the horrible fate he would face if he continued his careless ways.

(Of course, I only sputtered, rather than saying, “you’d like to show your son a Stanford law school grad who co-founded a successful civil rights practice as an example of a horrible fate?  What would be the positive role model, Larry the Cable Guy?”)

Then there was the presentation I gave to a roomful of trial lawyers — supposed to be the good guys, right? — who were shocked and then angry to learn that they, too, had a legal obligation to make their offices accessible and hire sign language interpreters for deaf clients.

Another time a friend explained in some detail what a pain in the ass it was to make facilities accessible.

And then there are just the garden variety off-hand comments or usages:

“I sprained my ankle once — now I really appreciate what it’s like to be disabled.”

“That’s so retarded.”

“It’s so amazing that she’s out and about” or its close relative “she’s so inspirational.”  It sounds like praise, but it contains an assumption of incompetence as the default setting and no matter how well-intentioned, automatically distances the person from “the mainstream,” whatever the hell that is.

I don’t, per Coates, actually avoid drinking with people outside the community — and the experiences above show that people don’t need alcohol to say dumb things about disability — but I do have fairly sensitive antennae and have learned when to start steering the conversation quickly in another direction.

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* I was almost completely ignorant of disability rights issues until I started dating Tim.  And God knows, I’m fully capable — in fact, expert — at saying stupid things.  I also have to acknowledge my own weird position here — I’m not disabled.  Hence the use of the vague word “community.”

More on offensive words

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A well-meaning neanderthal liberal dropped me a note asking whether “idiot,” “moron” or “imbecile” were as offensive as “retard.”

Good question — so I thought I’d see if anyone else wanted to weigh in on it.  My gut* says “idiot” and “moron” are OK; “imbecile” is not so OK, but I don’t have any idea why.  My best guess is that “idiot” and “moron” are much farther from their (unfortunate) clinical roots than “retard” is.  But I’m very much open to being called on that.  Honestly, I seem to recall hearing that “hysterical” has its roots in an internal organ that women have but men do not, and should thus be avoided.  In light of the crap I have to read every day, though, I don’t plan to stop saying things are hysterical.  Or maybe I’m just reclaiming words of female disempowerment . . .  bitches!

Ultimately, there is some keeping track to do — I have learned only relatively recently that “gyp” and “welsh” are inappropriate as epithets and have stopped using them.  But it seems to me it’s no more arduous than all the keeping track we have to do if we generally want to be thoughtful people:  who is “Dr.” and who is “Mr.” or “Ms.;” who might have had personal experiences that make certain topics of conversation painful or awkward; whether and which cuss words are appropriate for the context (e.g., court hearing; lunch with in-laws; drinks with co-counsel, in order of increasing profanity).

What do other folks think?

* Update:  A cro-magnon colleague of the aforesaid neanderthal wrote to point out my gut’s total historical ignorance.  None of these three words —  “idiot,” “moron” or “imbecile” — is ok, he writes, because  “back in the day, mental retardation was defined based upon severity as idiot, imbecile and moron.  Those words all define levels of retardation and were even politically incorrect about 40 years ago.”  So was I supposed to do research & shit before blogging?  I skipped that page of the instruction manual!

Seems to me, though, that in current usage, “retard” is meant to compare the target of the epithet to a person with cognitive disabilities, whereas “idiot” and “moron,” at least,  have taken on a more general meaning of “stupid.”

One of these things is not like the other

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Opposing counsel in one of our wheelchair access cases complains that our refusal to recite their position in our brief deprives the defendant — a multinational chain of fast food* restaurants — of its “right to due process.”

I’m thinking of putting them in touch with a client of ours with a due process claim:  an inmate with mental illness who has been in solitary confinement for 10 years based on a system of secret demerits that he has no effective way to challenge.

This has been another episode of Stupid Opposing Counsel Tricks.

*  Sorry, “quick serve.”  Commercial correctness, I guess!

In which I start my new blog by offending everyone

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Next time you are tempted to call someone a retard, or a [clever neologism]tard, or even accuse them of riding the short bus, stop and substitute one of the following offensive first-letter-only words: the N one; the S one; or the K, C, or J ones.

I’m actually going to make the argument that calling someone a r****d is worse than calling an African-American a n****r or a Chinese person a c***k.  Because it is not generally people with cognitive disabilities who are being called r****ds.  It’s not just a word of derision for the minority in question.  It is more commonly used to disparage people who are not cognitively disabled.  It’s saying “you are bad because you are like a person with a cognitive disability.”  Like calling white people n*****rs or c****ks:  “you are bad because you are like a black person . . . or a Chinese person.”

And liberals, I’m looking at you.  Mostly I’m looking at you because you’re all I read these days.  I know I know … echo chamber blah blah blah.  But when I want to read illogical ad hominem bullshit, I’ll stick with opposing counsel’s filings — which I have to read anyway.

I’m also looking at you liberals because you’re supposed to know better.  Remember?  We’re the ones who respect everyone.  Everyone.  Not “I’ve learned the words I’m supposed to use for black people and brown people and girl people but it’s just such a drag to have to learn the ones for disabled people.”  Everyone.

So, anecdotes, anyone?  How about the otherwise hilarious Wonkette, which insists on adding the suffix “tard” to turn random words into insults:

This is seriously like deciding that it’s hilarious to insult people by adding “igger” to the end of other words.  Pauliggers.  Libiggers.  Conserviggers.  Palestiniggers.  That last one is just awful on so many levels, eh?  Now, do you get how truly awful Palestinetards is?

I’m predicting a common response.  Maybe I underestimate you, but what I predict is the response above:  it’s just such a drag to keep track of all this!  I just learned to say Negro, when I was told to say Black, then it was Africa-American.  Oriental? Asian?  Ooooo noooooo!  It’s just so confusing!

A while back I had an email exchange with a fairly prominent liberal blogger who had used the word “retarded” as an epithet.  I called him on it — saying it was equivalent to offensive expressions such as “jew him down.”  Here is the rest of the colloquy – quoted at some length because I think it typifies the common reaction, and sets out my views succinctly:

Prominent Liberal Blogger:  “Unfortunately, it’s hard to keep track of all the words that offend some subsection of the population these days.  I’ll watch myself in the future, although I have to admit that I have a hard time equating this to such a plainly offensive expression as ‘jew him down.’”

Me: I hear you, and I confess that I predicted this response.  The “keep track of” argument segregates groups whose rights and feelings are worth worrying about (Blacks; Jews) from those who aren’t really on the radar screen (people with cognitive disabilities).  The term you used is plainly offensive to a large subsection of the population; just one that you don’t really think about.

PLB: I really don’t think you can dismiss the issue like that.  It really is hard, and there really are lots of groups who get offended over things.  It’s just impossible for any single person to track it all.  It’s not as if there’s some clear rule for figuring out whether a term is legitimately offensive, after all.
Here in [his location], for example, it’s considered offensive to display the flag of Vietnam.  Big Vietnamese population, you see, and they insist that only the old South Vietnamese flag should ever be displayed publicly.  Is that legitimate? Or is the flag of Vietnam the flag of Vietnam, whether you like it or not?

Me: I would argue that there is a difference between using a term in a disparaging or pejorative manner and a political dispute.  I am firmly of the view, for example, that if you think affirmative action is wrong, or that gays should not be allowed to marry (both positions with which I disagree) or that one political system is or is not legitimate in Vietnam (a position on which I am sadly ignorant) there is nothing offensive about asserting and defending your political views.  I’ll argue anything on the merits.

Politely.[*]

On the other hand, you used a slang term that refers to a type of person and you used it in a pejorative sense.  You were not (I hope) expressing a negative political or other substantive view about people with cognitive disabilities.  I think common courtesy, rather than political correctness, would suggest that the word not be used that way.

Hell, even in the political context, a bit of forethought and courtesy would not be a bad thing.  If I were going to be a guest in the home of a Vietnamese person, I might look into the matter and not wear, say, a tee shirt with the wrong flag.  I really do think people with different views can speak to one another politely and respectfully.

* [Full disclosure:  Politely, but with occasional, okay fairly common, use of cuss words.]