Blogging Against Disablism 2010: Assumption as Discrimination
For the record, this is mostly sarcasm and snark. I don’t believe any of these assertions, but some of the able do.
Are you tired of it? I know I’m tired of it.
The temporarily able-bodied and their uninformed attitudes and decisions regarding us.
There are so many.
We never travel of course, so small and large businesses carp and complain when they have to make buildings accessible “Well I never see any disabled people in here, so why should I have to pay to alter my space?
We never need to live with our caregivers, so the one person limit on accessible apartments makes perfect sense, institutionalizing a unique kind of housing discrimination under US law.
We can never hear (or comprehend in some other way) what the able people in the same room with us say or decide about what we need to live with as few barriers as possible. Don’t worry. We’ll never express an opinion, either, that’s impossible too.
We never have the intellect to question discriminatory practices in medicine, building, hiring or leisure time choices.
People literally don’t see us sometimes, and prattle on while the failure to see us, the social discrimination is sometimes the most painful of all.
Or, the converse…they feel entitled to get all up in our business, where they would *never* be so discourteous with an able-bodied person.
We never have spouses, or partners or children. We’re undesirable. We never deserve intimacy, and us raising children? well that is unconscionable and needs to be stopped right away.
If we have creative talent it is often infantilized rather than taken seriously. Discrimination by disrespecting or stifling artistic expression.
And the most sinister kind of discrimination. Attempts by ignorant and dangerous people to control us because they can, to think nothing of depriving us of liberty, the pursuit of happiness and even sometimes life itself. Abuse by authority. Captivity. Physical, mental or emotional harm. By impersonal strangers. By so called friends. By family. Inappropriate institutionalization. Subtle pressure to embrace soi-disant euthanasia. ( Unfortunately, in the midst of a broader strange societal push toward rewarding willful ignorance about everything imaginable by a certain segment of those in power here in the US, it has made this worst kind of discrimination more frequent and easier to get away with. )
There’s hope against this though. Embrace real able bodied allies. Praise and celebrate them in a very public way, as an object lesson, a kind of “No, actually *this* is how to support us.”
And anybody with disabilities in the public eye either physically or virtually, via blogs, and the newest internet addictions, Facebook or Twitter…has often been another type of honest public face about what we need and deserve…
On a personal note, to illustrate this, my household has been going through a crisis of late and we’ve called on real able bodied allies to help in various ways…and they’ve come through in amazing ways. So thanks to them all.
Here’s hoping a more informed able population keeps pushing towards less and less discrimination by assumption.
Published a bit early to make the May1 UK deadline at Goldfish’s place
Anyone, Disability, Impatient Cops, and the Arizona law.
There are so many situations here…over and above the racial profiling aspect which is the largest disturbing piece of it.
There is no “look” to an undocumented person. Come on. It’s not their shoes…
I have a feeling that between now and August there’s going to be an exodus of undocumented persons (as well as US citizens who just fear being targeted) out of Arizona.
Which, of course is what the crafters of this “legislation,” hoped for.
..but wait, there’s more…
Imagine you’re one of those people that the local cops know too well..you’ve got a dui in your past, maybe a drunk and disorderly thing going… and you don’t have *several* pieces of documentation in your car right at the moment…but individually and collectively they’d prove you are a US citizen…and the cops stop you, recognize you, ask for id, because they know you well enough that you don’t have it…and slam, there you go…
That’s called targeting those with existing records…
Second scenario…
You are visually, hearing, mentally or physically impaired…you are a driver or passenger in a car that gets stopped…
If you’re blind, but have the right documents, it may not matter because the cop could always lie (just for a goof, you know) and tell you you don’t have the correct identification, when, in fact, you’ve just presented it.
If you’re Deaf…it may be some while before you understand the question if the cop doesn’t know ASL or is difficult to lip read…he gets frustrated, assumes you’re drunk instead, and there you go.
Don’t even start me about the nightmarish things that could happen to someone with cognitive or mental impairment in regards to this new law…If they aren’t presently rational, or would normally have the cognitive ability to answer simple questions, but get scared…or they, like the first guy in this post, forgot their paperwork…
Someone with physical mobility might be charged with resisting if they had trouble exiting the car on request…or assumed to be drunk with an uneven gait, even if they had paperwork…
The list goes on…
Pie Fight or: Fox news might start a war on dessert
Apparently per Axelrod’s interview w Leno, our President likes pie.
Step into the Fox newsrooms with me and see what they’re responses will be:
Glenn Beck: “I’m not SAYING it’s just another aspect of his socialist white people hating agenda…but you know…Pies come from tarts, and tarts taste a little bit like Baklava, a Middle Eastern Dessert! And then there are PITAS!!! Another Mediteranian delicacy! Barack Hussein Obama doesn’t really like American Pies! He’s just masking a taste for Middle. Eastern. FOOD!”
“Billo: “I heard the President likes Middle Eastern Food… I like pita’s and felafel as much as the next guy, but this seems dangerous to me.”
Hannity (getting Beck’s message all garbled): “He’ll be sending Palestinian terrorists a buncha pie soon! Those Middle Easterners, they like our pie!”
H/t to Kos for link.
Bill Maher has Jack Kevorkian on his show…
“And now ladies and gentlemen, the poster boy for the Duty to Die crowd and Futile Care Laws…Jack Kevorkian!!!!!” Done with you Bill Maher (I’m sorry to say) Done and done, for having this dangerous person on your show.
Midlife And Treachery 
