Embracing the “And” in Disability Advocacy
When neurotypical/able-bodied people do the work of centering and supporting individuals with disabilities (which we love to see!), there are a few common approaches to this work that sometimes aren’t as effective as they could be. First, let’s discuss what disability advocacy on the part of non-disabled people looks like. This could mean: an organization or institution featuring a disabled member of their community by writing an article, making a video, or otherwise talking about that person publicly in order to farther their mission of promoting diversity or bringing awareness to the diverse range of identities that members of that community hold. As we know, when someone outside of a group (in this case, disabled people) tries to publicly discuss that group identity, there are not only ethical questions to be addressed regarding who gets to tell another person’s story and have control over the representation of an identity, but also considerations to be made regarding how to go about promoting positive representation in the most inclusive and unbiased way. These issues are inherent in the work of storytelling in whatever sense of “story” the work takes, and it’s important to recognize that advocacy is a kind of storytelling. There are also questions about perspective that are closely tied to other necessary considerations about ownership of individual and community narratives. For example, if someone without a learning disability is publicly talking about a person with a learning disability who is a talented artist, musician, athlete, etc. and they “compliment” the quality of their work by saying, “I never even knew this person had a disability because they’re so good at X,” this statement is based in the assumption that individuals with learning disabilities will always present as less “skilled” than neurotypicals and that any contradictions to this belief are fascinating exceptions. This is the first common theme in disability representation: the “you can’t even tell!” approach.
Sometimes this narrative is explicit in the verbal and written statements and other times it’s more subtle. For example, imagine that an institution or organization chooses to feature a person with a disability who has a specific skill or talent that is being highlighted. That organization could: 1. tell their live, virtual, or community audience in advance that this person is part of an effort to celebrate and spotlight disabled members of their community and ask that individual (with permission) to talk about their experiences as a disabled person. 2. choose to simply feature that person for their skills without discussing their disability. or 3. Wait until after this individual has showcased their skill or talent before having another member of the organization address the audience (in whatever form that might take) and dramatically announce that, unbeknownst to anyone in the room, the skilled and successful person who they just witnessed has *gasp…* a disability. Depending on the intentions of the institution or organization in question, I believe that either of the first two approaches would be fine. If the intention is not to specifically highlight disabled people, mentioning that person’s disability is probably irrelevant. Let’s assume, however, that this person has agreed to be featured for the specific purpose of celebrating neurodiversity within that community. In that case, it’s important to recognize the difference between putting the focus on that person’s experience vs. presenting that person’s work in a way that plays into presumed audience assumptions about people with disabilities. The problem with the the third approach is that it contributes to perpetuating two common false beliefs and attitudes. The first false belief is that people with disabilities either can’t be skilled and successful and the second is that disabled people are only worth advocating for when they have some kind of exceptional ability or area of expertise, almost as if to “make up for” having a disability. In these cases the message is clear: “We want to say we’re supporting people with disabilities, but we only really care about the ones who can outwardly present in ways that are convenient to us.”
The next common theme in disability advocacy is the “despite” narrative. This sometimes shows similarities to “you can’t even tell!” but rather than rewarding an individual for hiding their disability, the “despite” narrative considers a person’s accomplishments exclusively in the context of the limiting nature of their disability as if the “disabled” part of the person’s mind the “skilled” part of their mind had been in a heated conflict and the “skilled” side won. While disabilities do present very real challenges and it’s important for neurotypical people to try to understand this, it is also important to be able to see a person’s disability and their skills as co-existing qualities rather than as being inherently contradictory. This point also relates to the final narrative: qualified praise. This is when a disabled person is celebrated or acknowledged but their disability is used to qualify their skills and accomplishments. Though it’s less common that this narrative is found explicitly in public disability advocacy efforts, qualifiers are frequently used to describe the positive qualities of disabled individuals through statements like, “considering she has a learning disability, she’s pretty smart.”
The problem is that these narratives separate the person from the disability and consider what that person could be without the disability that they have likely lived with their entire life. Contrary to neurotypical beliefs, a disabled mind is not inherently flawed, but rather, the inequalities our of economic, educational, and social structures shape societal values that contribute to the creation of a world in which people with cognitive disabilities are neither understood nor accommodated. Far too often, the narratives present in disability awareness efforts at the institutional level unintentionally establish a set of criteria for inclusion in spaces designed for disability advocacy based on over-valuation of an individual’s ability to suppress the very identities that the organization or institution in question claims to be highlighting. True equity for people with learning disabilities cannot be reached without dismantling societal constructions of intelligence because at the root of societally-defined “intelligence” is the harmful and destructive value of intellectual conformity. As long as there are fixed sets of criteria used to categorize people within an intelligent/unintelligent binary, ableism is still present, even when this binary is disguised to create the illusion of greater nuance.
This brings me to my final point: as a culture, we have to begin doing the work of embracing the word “and” in our language as well as in our mindsets. By embracing the “and” I mean doing the work to fully internalize the belief that disabilities and abilities co-exist and are not oppositional dualities. Embracing the “and” means recognizing a disabled person because they are intelligent, skilled, talented, AND disabled. It means celebrating the accomplishments of the disabled community because we have inherent value as individuals and live in a world that does not always treat us as such. It means recognizing the very real challenges that we face and appreciating us both for who we are and what we do. At the same time, however, it also means learning to celebrate all people (disabled or not) for qualities other than measurable, outwardly-displayed “success.” It’s important to understand that truly committing to this work means that we all have to collectively change the very expectations that we were taught our entire lives and actively de-construct societally-established hierarchies of ability and intelligence. I hope that one day it is work we will all be ready to do.
