Essay: Removing Disability Vs. Removing Barriers

[Guest guest]

From the Nick's Crusade blog

http://www.nickscrusade.org/wordpress/?p=301

This is based on a never published essay I gave to NPR's Joe

Shapiro to read to high school students at the 2006 Luther

King Day event at town Day School in DC.

Essay: Removing Disability Vs. Removing Barriers

/*Should people with disabilities be focused on curing their condition,

or be proud of their differences and work for accomodations for them?*/

I’m somewhere in the middle in this age-old disability debate. I would

definitely appreciate a cure because of all the suffering and lack of

supports I’ve experienced, but I’ve mostly focused on supports and

accommodations for the past decade.

Here’s why:

Disability has always been and will always be part of the human

experience, just another mode of being. We must accept and accommodate

disability, no matter how severe. Even if all forms of MD, MS, CP, AIDS,

Downs Syndrome, autism, spina bifida and spinal cord injuries are cured,

people will still age and become disabled; new injuries, diseases and

disorders will come up every day. Everyone will live with disabilities

if they live long enough to be elderly. Disability is here to stay, and

as such we need to accept it as much as possible. There are tons of

unnecessary barriers, corruption, discrimination and wrong ideas that

block the talents of people with disabilities. It must stop.

Lack of ability should not deprive us of life, liberty and the pursuit

of happiness in a humane society. It should not segregate us anymore

than someone left-handed should be segregated. Yet millions of us

languish in isolation, in nursing homes or stuck at home with inadequate

help. America needs to decide whether or not it truly wants to be an

egalitarian society or not, that’s what the disability rights movement

and the other civil rights movements are about. A door with no ramp

blocks equal access to me as much as a “whites only” sign would block

equal access to a black man. Access is access.

Some have reacted by instilling in themselves a great deal of pride in

their differences. Though a silent, “WTF” sign may spring up in my mind

when someone says “I wouldn’t take a cure,” I would never question one

of the many people who feel this way. They are just making the best of

the hand they were dealt, being proud of who they are. I admire that

immensely.

Though often it makes as little sense to me as “left-handedness pride”

would, why not be proud of your disability if you can?

It is just hard to be proud of who you are when you’re lying in your own

waste because you don’t have enough help. Though the source of the

problem is the disability, the suffering associated with a disability is

usually caused by lack of support (a social problem). Why not focus on

something we CAN change (lack of supports) rather than something we

can’t? (disability will always exist). This is what disability rights

movement is, focusing on barriers that could be easily cleared if we had

the will to do it. In the words of Dr. Luther King, “injustice

anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Once injustice is cured, other cures don’t matter as much.

Nick