My Own Ableism
As the whole world wrestles with the questions like, "Was that racist? Am *I* racist? Has my privilege made racism less visible to me?", so too have I recently begun to ponder ableism within the blindness community and the broader disability movement.
What is able-ist? Has my “plain vanilla” blindness enabled me to devalue people with “Neapolitan” blindness or blind people with additional needs? I’m not sure where to begin unravelling this important and heavy topic, but let’s take it all the way back to "Source of All Knowledge", Google. According to the internets, ableism is discrimination in favour of able-bodied people. This discrimination can come in many forms, from assumptions about human needs built into architectural design, into educational materials, and into the casual comments friends make about classmates based on assumptions about disability-related limitations.
At the other end of the able-ist spectrum, there is something I think of and may have been impacted by, called “disableism” – a prejudice in which disabled people are seen as superheroes or “inspirations” for completing ordinary daily tasks such as crossing a street. I have wondered lately, is it possible that I have internalized some aspects from both extremes of the able-ist spectrum? Internalized ableism is when a disabled individual (or in my case a blind individual) holds negative thoughts or feelings about their own disability or about others around them, regardless of their outward appearance.
I always thought negative feelings or sadness about one’s disability were normal while I was growing up. In fact, I didn’t even know that ableism was a word until I joined Blind Beginnings and started University. I accepted that both my internal negative emotions and the external treatment I received from the public were “normal” and something that was just always going to be there, lurking in the back of my mind. If I reflect on when this first started for me, I think it was in middle school when another blind student came to my school. Until he showed up, I was the one and only blind student in the school, and most people’s only notion of what blind people were like. As with any two humans, the needs and talents of the new student and myself were different in many ways, but that didn’t stop people from comparing us. At first, we were lumped together, taught together, and the school perceived us as “from the same bolt of cloth” – and I really hated that. I hated the way our separate and individual quirks and personalities were each attributed to our common disability.
As we progressed through high school, the educational system, classmates, and teachers began to differentiate us. I usually benefitted from that comparison, but I have now see just how able-ist that was. I remember being frequently told by staff how lucky I was, how I was to be the "successful blind person", the one with an academic profile, who wouldn’t sit at home after graduation for the rest of her life, and of course, something about this made me feel special. High expectations lifted me up to do better, work harder. But high expectations also make me an over-achiever. I became the one who attends TWO universities, volunteers extensively, but never gives herself a break. I’m the one who tries to take SIX university classes in a semester because gosh forbid I take only two and succumb to the standard of what most students who are disabled do.
It is ironic that being recognized as a distinct person from my fellow blind classmate has left me with the horrible feeling that being one of “those” 2-class blind people was bad, something to look down on, and an example of what not to be. I can now understand that from these conversations, I internalized the notion that I have to do everything in my power not to become one of “them,”: a blind person with no purpose who would amount to nothing. I remember students mocked the way my friend walked, so I avoided showing anyone my orthotics because I wasn’t supposed to be like him. Even now I worry about intertwining my sighted and blind friend groups together.
When I was the only blind child in school, and had no one to compare myself with and the full one-on-one attention of my educational team, I saw myself as both successful and appreciated. When the new blind student came, I still felt relatively successful compared to him, but also resentful that the limelight of my success had to be shared with someone who was not seen as successful. Then I joined Blind Beginnings, and the tables turned on me. Suddenly, I was thrown into a world of much more successful blind individuals, and I was the less capable one. This was quite evident, and impacted the way I saw myself. I could tell that even in my own peer group we still judge each other based on “skills” and “productivity.” My views are still tainted with the able-ist assumptions of the “plain vanilla” blind.In a class I have this semester, I am the only blind student, but there is another student who has a cognitive disability. Classmates come up to me and gossip about this other student’s behaviour, and I find myself laughing along, even as I subtly try to steer them away from this topic of conversation. I am finally making friends, and isn’t this what people are supposed to do in university?
But it’s wrong. This realization hit me when these newly friendly students stated that they would rather work with me than have this other disabled student in their writing group, because I didn’t exhibit certain tendencies. I should have felt somewhat pleased. But I worried if I were to do something that displayed my blindness too overtly, would I be talked about in such a way? After some discussion with my real friends who were firmly of the opinion that participating in this conversation about the student was able-ist, I have made it a point to get to know this other student, even if it means sacrificing the playground satisfaction of being “chosen.”
Recently, I began volunteering with a TVI, and what I expected was to go to work with a student who was destined to be the success people used to see in me. However, I am working with students who still struggle to read braille in high school, or who are non-verbal, wheelchair-users, deaf and blind. I asked the TVI, “How am I supposed to change these students lives and set them on the path to success?” But maybe that in itself is an able-ist question. Maybe its not about my notions of success. Maybe I was forgetting that every kid, with a disability or without, is one of a kind. Each of them have their own notions of success and ideas about what they need to achieve. Why was I, as a blind person looking down on or shocked by, people with more needs than I have? After all, isn’t this exactly what we’re trying to tell society not to do to us? If we ourselves haven’t broken free of this kind of societal thinking, how can we expect it of anyone else?
These are questions I have been wrestling with lately.
by Harjinder “Jinnie” Saran