Empowerment

I don’t know what I feel about disability studies. This whole notion is one that I only recently discovered while doing a study abroad trip in Ireland. To come home and discover how very little we have by way of American universities in regards to disabilities studies is unnerving, especially at a time when we are so “culturally” aware. Even more unnerving is how others have tried to create a program that was inclusive, only to fill the roles up with non-disabled persons while claiming they were doing research for disabled people. How is this even right?

Perhaps what I find even more disturbing, then the lack of funds for disability studies in universities, is the fact that so many professional disabled persons are overlooked in favor of able body persons. Linton speaks of one such event at the place she taught, where upon some faculty had created a committee in order to draw up plans to bring to the university a research facility for disability studies, but that the planning committee did not even have one disabled person on the board, or any associated with its construction or design. But I have had my own experiences with this sort of attitude.

The fact that my ideas on programs that could be created for disabled people, working alongside non-disabled people, living in a truly inclusive and modern community would be scoffed at and called “socialistic ideology”. Why? Because I challenge the idea that disabled people can contribute in a beneficial manner and help run a community? Or is it the fact that I myself, being disabled, couldn’t possibly understand what it would take in order to put such a program together? Or does it challenge the notion that our current communities are not doing everything possible to “include” disabled people and I just want to present an example of how we could?

For many years I have had people tell me to follow the path of less resistance, to normalize myself, to become mainstreamed. Now I am beginning to wonder just why it was so important for me to admit that I had “overcome” a disability when that disability was never a direct result of something I had done. Instead, I would have to defend my anger, discuss why I felt the way I did, and be happy with whatever program the government felt I qualified for to get. I am not happy with being a status, or designation, or a statistical number that some numb-nut can crunch in order to weight the cost-effectiveness of Medicare or Medicaid, or some entitlement program simply because the world around me won’t take me serious. I am not just another portfolio example that same specialist can feel good about helping because he eliminated a minimal amount of my pain or discomfort.

What I am is a human being who desires to know why the world around him views his people in such a light that we are cast off as undesirables, or patients needing to be medicated. What we are, are individuals who have dreams and desire to be a part of this democratic, but hypocritical, republic and have a role at how we come along as a nation, or a species.

We are not side-show attractions, specimens or examples of “abnormal” behavior. We are beings who share emotions and understandings at a level only other marginalized groups understand. We are not passive, silent, and isolated because we want to be. We are silenced, controlled, and monitored because they are afraid we will upset the status quo and balance. We are not angry, we just want the right to self-determination and autonomy.