Disability Is A Mindset Not A Diagnosis

Your friendly neighborhood super advocate is back! Since I last posted a lot of things have happened in terms of disability related issues and content. This post is the first of several posts to come. They will discuss a wide variety of topics including dating and relationships as well as finances and the low expectations society still has for people with disabilities. 

Today’s post will highlight a recent encounter that I had at Wal-Mart. The encounter reinforces the idea that there is still a narrow view of disability in society. Let me set the scene.  

As I often do, I was shopping at my local Wal-Mart a couple weeks ago. Most of the time I go in to the store with my caregiver or I pick up the groceries I have preordered. On this day, I did not go in, instead I decided since I only had a few things to pick up I would have my caregiver run in for me. As most of you know, I currently live in Florida. The weather in Florida often fluctuates between warm and extremely hot in the spring and summer. Rather than waste gas and run the car, my aide and I decided that she would leave the windows down for me. Wal-Mart must have been particularly crowded on this day because it took longer than usual.

While I was listening to music and waiting for my caregiver, an African American gentleman stopped one of the Wal Mart employees who was gathering carts in the parking lot and loudly made the following comment while pointing at my van. “Look at that autistic kid. I don’t think he knows they left him in the car. This is abuse. You should call the cops. It is too f-ing hot”. As this interaction was taking place my first thought was to react with anger. I actually said out loud I do not have fucking autism”. I then thought to myself why are you getting angry? This is typical. After a few seconds I realized if the guy came over, I could use his comment as a teaching moment. Eventually he did approach the vehicle, and proceeded to ask me in a patronizing way if I was okay. Before I responded I took a few seconds to compose myself. 

After reassuring the gentleman that I indeed was okay, I proceeded to inform him that I did not have autism and not all people with disabilities are autistic. He must have been taken aback by my response because all he said was “Oh, glad you are okay. Have a good day”. Once my caregiver got back in the car, I told her the story and we immediately started laughing about it. It was not until later when I told my girlfriend who has the same disability that I do, that she suggested I write this blog. The reason I took a couple weeks to write this blog was because I was having trouble figuring out whether there was a larger lesson that I could expand upon because of this encounter. It was not until last Sunday that the lesson became clear. 

I had not thought about the ignorant comment for a few weeks, and it did not enter my mind until a different caregiver of mine was having a conversation with his friends, and they were surprised that people with disabilities could go bowling. The two incidents made me realize that there is a larger concept that most of the able-bodied community does not yet grasp.

Even though we are in the third decade of the 21st Century and a lot of improvement has been made in the lives of people with disabilities, there is still a level of ignorance and lack of awareness when it comes to disability throughout mainstream society. People either patronize people with disabilities or assume certain things about people with disabilities instead of getting to know us as individuals. If we are ever going to change this, people with disabilities need to be more assertive and this may be controversial but stop feeding into the idea that the majority of society holds.  Most of the able-bodied community assumes that disability equals low expectations. The disabled community further perpetuates this idea when they don’t have high expectations for themselves or each other. 

The statements made in this blog reflect my own beliefs and do not reflect the beliefs of any other individual with a disability. I am not sure how the disabled community will react to this blog as a whole, but it is my hope that all who read this blog will be left with something to think about. People should be judged by what they do, and the impact they make on the world. It is up to all of us to not only be good people but not give others a reason to look down upon us regardless of whether or not we have a disability.

I know this post is longer than usual but I believe it was necessary and just the right length. 

‘Til next time, your friendly neighborhood super advocate,

Jay 

Terminology Debate

"Language... .has as much to do with the philosophical and political conditioning of society as geography or climate...people do not realize the extent to which their attitudes have been conditioned since early childhood by the power of words to enable or condemn, augment or detract, glorify or demean. Negative Language inflicts the subconscious of most people from the time they first learn to speak. Prejudice is not merely imparted or superimposed. It is metabolized in the bloodstream of society. What is needed is not so much a change in Language as an awareness of the power of words to condition attitudes." (Saturday Review 1967) When one thinks about the above quote, it doesn't sink in, so we take a closer examination of our surroundings. From early infancy, ours is conditioned by our physical surroundings and the Language we take in. For example, a child in India will learn several dialects of the Indian subcontinent. U.S. English will be utterly foreign to them. However, someone in America will quickly pick up on the U.S. idiom of chilling if they have grown up in American culture. It is a great wonder how powerful a language can be. It can be neutral, it can be positive, but it has its most significant impact when negative or assuming.  This blog came about as a result of a conversation with a friend of mine named Laura Carson. She recently asked me what the acceptable term is for someone with a disability? It got me thinking, what exactly does the term "disability" even mean? Words only have context if we give them context. I use the word "gimp" to refer to myself quite often. For me, it has no negative context because I am using it humorously. However, other individuals who are in my situation distinctly hate the word. Why is this? The answer is simple. I was not conditioned to have any negative connotation of the word "gimp." The first time I encountered the story was positive. Indeed, in a movie entitled King Gimp about an art student named Dan, who was extraordinarily disabled but used his disability to increase his quality of life greatly. I recommend that everyone, whether disabled or not, at some point in their lives to check out this excellent documentary. It will give you a different perspective on disability and life in general.  However, back to my point. Because I positively encountered the word, there's no negative connotation behind it. A language is a unique tool that humans possess. We can establish our meaning and context for a variety of words. Something insulting in one Language may be a term of endearment in another. Not to get too controversial, but even the meaning of the n-word is all based on context. Nowadays, there is no argument that the n-word has a negative connotation, but that is due to its sorted past and the way it was used. The word's original meaning meant "ignorant," but it no longer has that definition because people have given it such a negative context and definition. The same can be said for terms relating to disability. One of the most common terms to describe disability is true "disability." Isn't this a negative term, though? Disability implies that someone cannot do something, which is partly true for anyone who cannot walk or cannot speak normally. However, it is also not true because just because there is one way to do something doesn't mean there aren't other ways around it.

I have never been one to be politically correct at all. Like I said above, I make fun of myself all the time, but I do understand the need in an appropriate professional setting to be non-condescending. Therefore, I make this argument. The term "disability" should no longer be used. One might ask...what do I suggest? What should be used to replace it? In my education classes, a term that is often used is exceptionality. I think this is a neutral term—neither positive nor negative, which allows the person with the exceptionality to determine the word's context. The person sitting next to me, helping me write this, is exceptional in some regions of her life just as I am exceptional in certain areas in mine. Neutral Language, while not changing one's condition, maybe better than society immediately labeling a person. Because as much as I would like to hope that society's labels don't impact people, I would not be honest if I said this was the case. On the deepest level, the Language that we hear every day affects us. To make this point even clearer, let me cite another example that my friend mentioned in the same conversation. 

My friend described the concept of how their race labels everybody. When we are young, we do not know the difference between a Filipino American and a Japanese American. It is only through social interactions that we learn the difference, and Language is a formal creator of difference in the world. In closing, I argue that you can call me "crippled,” "disabled,” "exceptional," or whatever you like depending on the emphasis behind the word. I don't care about the actual word, but what the meaning behind the word is. 

I know many of you haven't been commenting, and I appreciate your readership, but I would also like to see where you stand on this one. How do you think Language affects society and the creation of difference? Am I on to something or totally off base? Let me know what you think in the comments below. 


Footnotes: 
1.) http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/lib/detail.html?id=813&page=all
2.) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0239528/