By August Butler
Angel uses both he/him and she/her pronouns interchangeably and has chosen to use a pseudonym to preserve anonymity.
Invisibility is a topic tackled repeatedly in disability activism, its negative impacts spanning every nook and cranny of oppression from historical erasure to political ignorance. But the social aspects of this phenomenon, both personally and within the disability community, are something rarely discussed. Compared to the huge overarching problems the disabled face politically, medically, culturally, religiously, and so on, the micro-aggressive nature of a friend or family member refusing to acknowledge disability sometimes renders these occurrences nugatory. But once it’s looked into, the link between systemic structures and individuals ignoring lived experiences of disability is obvious.
This issue is heightened by intersectionality. The article “Identity Beyond Disability” from the blog Diversity and Ability covers the complex social, political, and personal dynamics of intersectionality, which is the relationship between coexisting minority identities. The article states that “the term intersectionality first came about to describe the dialogue between feminism and women of colour, highlighting the different barriers women face dependent on the colour of their skin,” and that “since then, the term intersectionality has broadened to include all protected characteristics… these layers do not exist separately from each other but intersect to form a person’s identity.” It explains that minorities who have intersectional identities “might experience discrimination for one or many aspects of her identity either simultaneously or in isolation.” One of the most layered intersections between simultaneous minority identities is that of disability and culture.
Intersectionality deeply impacts people with disabilities. According to the World Health Organization, “an estimated 1.3 billion people experience significant disability. This represents 16% of the world’s population, or 1 in 6 of us.” People with disabilities make up such a prominent percentage of the population, so many people in the disability community are also minorities in other ways, ergo intersectionality. When considering lived experiences of disability, it’s pertinent to include intersectionality within those stories. The culture of a disabled person has undeniable impacts on their identity.
One person who knows what it’s like to have culture impact identity is Angel, a fellow student. I sat down with him to discuss this phenomenon.
“So,” I prompted, “just tell me a bit about yourself so I can include a small introduction.”
“Okay, well… I’m currently in General Studies, but I plan to major in Anthropology so I can become a librarian or archivist in the future,” Angel explained. “I enjoy reading, obviously, and I occasionally draw. I’m a big fan of cartoons… graphic novels, comics.”
“Oh, which ones?” I asked, my ears perking up at the mention of something I also adore.
“I’ve read a massively popular online comic, it was popular in 2012, that I’m still enjoying to this day, unfortunately…” he said, seeming vaguely implicit in something evil.
“I’m so scared that you’re about to say Homestuck,” I joked. In response, I got a huge sigh. “No, no!”
“Did you see my bag?” He asked, grabbing his messenger bag from the concrete beside the picnic table we were chatting at and setting it in front of me. It was covered in little patches of all sizes, some recognizable like the Led Zeppelin ‘Swan Song’ Icarus, and some completely foreign. He pointed to one, a small house, and smiled.
“Is that a Homestuck thing?”
“Yes, it’s a patch I made myself,” he said, the coolness of the self-made aspect completely overshadowing my deep seated biases against the subject matter.
“Oh, that’s awesome. I’ve never read it— I’ve had a few people tell me I’m like ‘Dave’ though, but I don’t know what that means.”
“No, I see it.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Yeah, he’s a fun character.”
“I’ll take it.”
Angel had come to me before our interview with a desire to share her experiences. In the email she sent, she’d written “I am very interested in the topic of immigrant parents relating to mental illness. A phenomenon I’ve experienced myself— many other children of immigrants have as well— is that immigrant parents often do not believe mental illness (disability in general, really) is real. Usually this is due to the culture they’re born in.” We decided to work together on delving deeper into the subject matter.
“So, you already know our subject. What are your experiences with this topic?” I asked.
“Well, basically, from what I’ve seen, most immigrant parents just don’t think it’s a real thing to have any sort of mental illness or disability, like autism… just any sort of difference with [their kid].”
“Do you think that’s an impact of culture or individual perception of their child?”
“It’s probably a strong mix of both. A lot of minorities have a big thing about honor and reputation, so if you have a child that’s disabled or different in some way, it’s viewed as shameful. Like, the parents themselves may accept them or even try to help them get accommodated but the rest of the extended family probably won’t… I’ve seen some cases where the parents help their child but the extended family doesn’t think it’s a real thing. They think it’s shameful to ask for help, so they reject them.”
“I’ve seen that too… I think that’s the case for a lot of conditional minority experiences. Like, with being queer too.”
“Yeah, definitely,” she agreed.
“Do you have any personal experiences of this that you’d feel comfortable sharing?”
“Personally, many of my family members think me and my dad are autistic,” Angel explained. “Based on a lot of things, it makes a lot of sense… from what people have told me, I just walk around and people think I am, so it’s safe to say maybe, possibly,” he joked. “My dad has a lot of those same behaviors. But the thing is, minorities, especially immigrants, we tend to come from much poorer backgrounds, so even if they do believe in it we don’t have the money to get diagnosed or any accommodation in general like, we just can’t afford that.”
Within our project lab (the incubator of DAMN), Angel had been working with his group to provide disability resources for immigrant families in Clarkston, Georgia, which has a substantial refugee population. “While working with your group, have you found that the process of actually getting services itself is confusing or convoluted for immigrants?”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of calling and emailing and then waiting…”
“It’s a lot of direct communication,” I finished.
“Yeah, and a lot of [disabilities] are genetic, so the parents have them. So they think it’s like ‘normal’ because they have it too. So, for example, my dad, we have a lot of the same traits and we both struggle with human communication. So if he were to seek out a service to help him with that sort of thing, he’d have a lot of difficulty.”
“Yeah, that makes a lot of sense,” I said. The process of both diagnosis and getting services are infamously difficult for the neurologically disabled, as the system to provide accommodations isn’t set up to actually accommodate them. The whole process is frustrating and deeply flawed, usually leaving many people feeling isolated or shameful about their inability to hack it. “How do you think this experience has impacted your perception of disability in relation to other aspects of yourself?”
“Well, it’s like a diaspora, kind of,” he explained. “They make you separate your ethnicity from your disability, and they can never intertwine. If you’re a minority, you’re already stigmatized, so if you’re a disabled minority, it’s worse. They tend to try to keep it apart as much as possible,” he said, ‘they’ referencing an enigmatic amalgamation of every messed up structure working against minorities, but also the immigrant parents and caretakers of disabled kids.
“Do you think there’s an element of fear there surrounding intersectional identity and stigma?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. You’re already discriminated against. Disabled plus minority, much worse.”
“So it could be a combination of pride and a fear of people seeing their child as different or strange.”
“Very much,” he confirmed.
“I mean, that’s been a huge thing with American culture since the assimilation of immigrants back in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. I mean, I don’t mean to pull out a whole history lesson on you,” I began, trying to pull the reins on my impending rant, “but the American dream was always about achieving the ideal average. So redefining the average in that sense, considering intersectionality, that’s difficult… and a common internal conflict, like trying to define yourself in relation to the average. I mean, have you interacted with other people that have this shared experience?”
“Well, it’s mainly my other relatives. Many of them have similar [traits] to me, or like different things in the same ballpark. With immigrants, like my parents, they came here, they worked hard to get where they are, so it’s a very ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ mentality. They worked hard to get here, so if they can do that, you can get over a disability.”
A white man named John Winthrop who is the worst
The American Dream mentality has influenced both the American and international perceptions of the nation since its European foundations. The idea of demonstrating intense patriotism through superior work can generally be cited as beginning with the Puritan (or pilgrim) preacher John Winthrop and his sermon “A Modell of Christian Charity,” delivered to his Puritan constituents as they first traveled to the New World aboard the boat Arabella in 1630. The speech is the origin of the “city upon a hill” metaphor, originally credited to Winthrop when he declared that “we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us,” representing how the Puritans believed they were fulfilling their Godly duty to create an idolized society and be an example for other civilizations.
A white man named John F. Kennedy who is also kind of the worst
The quote is most famously used in John F. Kennedy’s “Address to a Joint Convention of the General Court of Massachusetts” in 1961, in which he compared our current political structure to the Puritans, stating that the American government and body “must be as a city upon a hill–constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities.” Of course, we now know what happened with the Puritans, namely their violence and slaughter of Indigenous people and complete lack of any “Christian Charity” at all. Kennedy’s comparison is both deeply troubling and representative of the foundation of American beliefs. Americans are meant to be “aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities,” so it makes sense that Americans, especially American immigrants who are perceived by many as inherently un-American, would feel the need to adhere strictly to that expectation. In being a city upon a hill, America is an exemplary community full of charitable and hard working citizens, and to achieve the American Dream, one must understand and uphold the duties of “their great responsibilities.” Not that that’s true. But America has never been in the business of meaning what we say.
“Is there guilt there?” I asked Angel, considering how taxing carrying the weight of a four-hundred year old burden must be.
“Like, for me?”
“Yeah.”
“Um… yeah. Like, I try to do my best to be what they want, y’know, the whole American Dream thing. I try to do that to the best of my ability, and I can’t. My brain is weird and different, so I can’t do that,” she replied.
“Yeah, the American Dream is all about fitting into the masses and working for the self. There’s a rejection of help and assistance inherent in that.”
A white man named Ralph Waldo Emerson who is less so the worst but still decently the worst
That aspect of individuality and self-reliance can be traced back to America’s early literary heroes, such as Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In fact, one of Emerson’s most famous essays is literally titled “Self-Reliance” and avidly defends individualism, focusing on the concept of understanding, believing, and of course, relying on the self. Franklin’s beliefs centered more heavily around self-reliance as serving your community and hard work as a means of personal growth, rather than the rather extreme independence and introspection Emerson vouched for. Franklin was a self described “leather apron man,” or a laborer who, as Angel said it, pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
Franklin presented himself as a role model for the self-made man, proposing his steps to becoming successful in the new country as “The Thirteen Necessary Virtues,” each one more annoying than the last. Some personal favorites are “Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation,” “Industry. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions,” and “Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.” Or, to paraphrase, “stop talking so much about things nobody cares about,” “stop with the stupid hobbies and focus on your work,” and “stop being so messy and scatterbrained, you need to be more organized.” I’d bet that sounds familiar to neurodivergent people— I’ve received all of that advice, always after letting my traits slip past a carefully curated, very American mask. Screw you, Benjamin Franklin.
At this point, I saw Angel holding a sheet of notebook paper, covered on both sides with scrawled out pencil. “What do you have written? I’m so curious,” I prompted.
“It’s just bullet points, mostly stuff I’ve already said,” she replied. “Including a fun quote that I’ve heard, not from my parents, but from my grandparents and the friends of my parents- direct quote, ‘autism is a white people thing.’”
“Oh, shit,” I said. Not the most intelligent response, but I stand by it.
“Yeah. They think it’s a white American thing, that we don’t get that. Like, nature versus nurture, they think it’s a nurture thing. Your child isn’t naturally born with it, you as a parent must have messed up somehow.”
There’s an uncountable amount of logical fallacies in that statement, but it does make sense based on the pride, honor, and fear combination Angel had described previously. If the parent’s role is to ensure their child’s safety and normalcy, rejecting any identity that they deem deviant from their idealized norm would make that task a lot easier. Then it’s not a disability— it’s just a fold to be ironed out. As terrible as that is on its own, the entirety of American identity and its foundations makes it even worse. The self-made man, the virtues, the “city upon a hill,” every aspect of our national consciousness completely writes off the disabled as virtually subhuman— a consciousness that was crafted by white people. Self-reliance and rejection of help is also a white people thing. We created that mentality, we made this American guilt of rejecting help that’s so deeply, painfully ingrained into our national identity, and we stake claim over the community that defies it.
“God… ‘autism is a white people thing.’ That’s such a good quote. I mean, it’s terrible,” I said, laughing.
“In retrospect, looking back at it, it’s really funny,” Angel replied, laughing a bit too.
“It is really funny,” I agreed, “but oh no. I mean, I can understand that there would be a sense of discomfort for a minority to enter that neurodivergent space because it’s dominated by white people. We’ve kind of made it a ‘white person thing,’ even if it was unintentional. Especially in online spaces- I think a lot of white queer people in particular, like that’s ‘The Autistic.’”
“Yeah, the majority of spaces for disabled people are mainly white people.”
“Well, that’s this system of advocacy and services and community, that’s how it was designed, even if it wasn’t on purpose,” I noted. “I mean, in a utopia, what would you like to see change about like, rhetoric and perception and this system being very white dominated and very exclusionary?”
“In a utopia, it’s not viewed as horrifically shameful to ask for the slightest bit of help,” Angel said. Benjamin fucking Franklin. “Or maybe there would be some specific groups for minorities who are disabled. If we’re talking about a utopia, there would be some good mixed groups there, but also some specific spaces because there are differences.”
“I know there are already spaces particularly for people of color who are disabled, but they’re very not common,” I noted.
“Yeah, they’re few and far between.”
“They’re also considered a very liberal thing, it’s not likely you’d find something like that in conservative spaces,” I said. That’s probably due to the established un-American quality of needing support and the right-wing patriotism that defies anything deemed deviant or less than American standards. At the risk of sounding redundant, Benjamin fucking Franklin.
“And that’s a problem too, minorities tend to be really religious,” Angel explained. “So any time they see anything viewed as liberal or political, really, it’s an affront to God. So they don’t deal with anything like that. Disability is viewed as very political.”
Disability is political, though it shouldn’t be. The article “Disability History” by Susan Birch and Kim E. Neilsen explains that “disability history is inextricably entangled with all other topics of history,” because “definitions of disability and related terms are variable, culturally shaped, influenced by other power structures, and built in interaction with major historical forces such as (but not limited to) religion, politics, and economic systems.” The combination of the many perceptions of disability throughout history, the political focus of many disabled rights movements which sought to change oppressive laws, and the correlation between disability and overarching systems which benefit dominant groups, such as racism and sexism, makes it permanently and intrinsically linked to politics.
“Yeah, it’s completely impersonal,” I agreed. “Like you said, it’s a diaspora— it’s removing ethnicity from disability and making them two separate things— but it’s also kind of removing the person from disability. And historically, through the lens of religion, disability was seen as a curse, back in the olden days or whatever,” I said.
“Disability History” also notes that “according to many cultures, the evil eye, jinn possession, or God’s punishment produced ‘the falling sickness,’” known today as epilepsy. Disability was historically viewed as mythological and mystifying in both positive and negative lights. Either way, the perception is still extremely impersonal to a dehumanizing degree.
“It feels like that perspective has kind of stuck around a bit,” I added. “Not fully, but… I don’t know, do you know what I’m saying?
“Yeah, yeah, I do. Honestly, the whole ‘curse from God’ thing has stuck around. People will have a child that’s disabled, and they’ll think it’s a punishment or a test, so in order to overcome that challenge of your child being disabled you just gotta hard-work it.”
“Ooh,” I groaned, laughing exasperatedly. “Oh, gross!”
“Yeah, you just gotta hard-work it by making them normal again,” Angel said, a mock determination in her tone.
“That’s the whole Autism Speaks thing. Like, ‘I am a brave mother of an autistic child,’” I said, putting on a nasally, condescending accent. “It’s like, what the fuck are you talking about? I think you’re right, autism is both like, normalized and ignored and also somehow supposed to be cured in families,” I said. “And I actually have a similar experience of having your family misunderstand you because of your traits, but they also have some traits too from the genetics of disability. I have family that isn’t diagnosed with very similar traits to me. I’m diagnosed as autistic, by the way, so I get that feeling of being perceived by everyone as different, and then looking at your parent and being like ‘wait a second…’” I explained with a laugh. “Like, you’re trying to fix me, but what about them? I just think the genetic aspects of autism are so hilarious and weird and interesting. And that communication aspect of the genetics as well, it makes communicating between the disabled and non-disabled within a familial dynamic hard. Like, have you noticed any strife or any barriers in communication between you and your family?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. With me and my dad, we can communicate perfectly fine. Nonverbally, like we give each other a look, we’re good. My mom always gets mad at me and my dad for not being able to communicate with the rest of my family like she can because we’re not very talkative. Very specifically, Mexicans, we talk a lot. We never shut up. I have my moments when I never shut up, and she knows this. But when it comes to small talk, I can’t do it, my dad can’t do it. We don’t fit in with that part of the stereotype.”
“Yeah, but there’s an understanding, like a mutual link between neurodivergent people that’s kind of incredible.”
“Yeah, I dunno. Me and my dad, we just get each other. He has most of the same things as me,” Angel said, seeming content.
“Have you noticed any of those things, those behaviors, being directly criticized by other family members?”
“Oh, all the time,” Angel laughed. “All the time. My grandma, my dad’s mom, is always on him about talking more to people or being more emotional. Like, I can see, in his eyes, he will be feeling something. But he won’t show it in his face, like me. But nobody else can see it somehow, so they’re always on him about not showing his real feelings, or something.”
“Yeah, it can be confusing for both sides to have that barrier,” I agreed. I’d noticed the same thing in my family too— but on a broader social scale, that tends to be the lived experience for autistic people. I confuse others, and they confuse me. Then I meet someone like Angel, and everything they say makes sense. “Just because I’m curious, when were you introduced to the idea that you might be on the spectrum?” I asked.
“It wasn’t that long ago. Most of my life, I thought the same thing, that it was a white people thing. I didn’t even know I could even be [autistic], until… well, I’m nineteen now, so I was probably seventeen.”
“Do you reflect back on anything from when you were younger like, ‘oh, that might have been a sign’?” I asked, reminiscing about my own realizations post-diagnosis, which funnily enough, also happened when I was seventeen.
“Honestly? Most of my life, really. It just explains a lot.”
“Yeah, exactly. I found that getting diagnosed helped with a lot of shame I had about my behaviors and like, not fitting in. It helped to figure out that there’s an explanation for it. I mean, not only an explanation, there’s an identity and community formed around these deviances from the norm. And as for community, I agree about making minority specific groups. I know that there are queer and disabled spaces— I know that for a fact because I’m in them— but making more room for people of color, and also for religious minorities too.”
“Yeah. As for myself, I’m not religious anymore, I don’t do that anymore,” Angel said, smiling slightly. “But yeah, religions usually think it’s like a punishment, so [the identities] separate. If a religious person is disabled they can’t really intertwine either.”
“That makes a lot of sense. Being raised in a culture or religion that thinks of disability like that, it’s probably tough. Like, a lot of masking,” I said. “Sorry— do you know what masking is?”
“Yes.”
“Do you mask in front of your family? Your parents too, but more your extended family.”
“Oh, yes. Yeah, yes,” she replied, before I even finished the question.
“What does masking look like for you?”
“At home I tend to be more unfiltered. I say whatever I think, because I don’t usually have much of a filter, but at home it’s much worse,” she said, which got a laugh from me, just out of how relatable that is. “I go on long rants about whatever’s interesting to me in that particular second, whatever I’m thinking I just dump it out,” she explained, a common trait known colloquially to autists as info-dumping. “When I go to my [extended] family’s house, I go completely silent. I will not speak unless spoken to. Because I tend to just point obvious things out, many of the things I say are taken as a joke, like dry humor. So I usually use that to my advantage to make them think I’m funny. I trick them into thinking I’m funny by pointing out obvious things,” she said, over the sound of me cracking up. “So they think I’m fitting in by making a joke. Then I get home, and I sit in my room for like two hours to recharge.”
“Oh yeah, masking is the worst social battery drain ever. I mean, do you stim at all to like, get some of that out or recharge? I’m trying to get a feel for some of your traits and how they might be viewed,” I clarified. Stimming short for “self-stimulation,” defined by Oxford English Dictionary as “the repetitive performance of certain physical movements or vocalizations, as a behaviour seen in persons with neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism.” It’s a commonly done to express or release emotions. (My personal favorites are head bopping and stomping.)
“I dunno. I mean, from what I’ve been told I do some repetitive behaviors… apparently I do a lot of eye blinking. I do little dances, I do classic rocking back and forth.”
“Oh, you said ‘classic rocking’ and I thought you meant the music genre,” I laughed.
“Oh, I do also listen to a lot of music to [stim]. I love listening to music, all the time, twenty-four seven. I need something in my head.”
“Same, it calms me down to listen to super, super loud music. That kind of stuff is misunderstood a lot,” I said, thinking of the annoyed looks at my repetitive throat clearing and head bobbing, or horrified ones at the blood dripping from my knuckles after I absentmindedly picked the skin raw. “And I’m seen as ‘in the norm’ for autistic people because of my race, so I can only imagine like, how much more extreme the perception of racial minorities is. Like, what would you want, not to pander, but for any non-minority, not intersectional disabled people who are reading this to know about your experience?”
“A lot of white disabled people don’t really consider race… my culture is very important to me, and they don’t really think about that at all. They just consider white American values, but I have my own specific culture. For example, I’m gay, so when I’m in queer spaces, white people usually tend to focus on that one single [minority] aspect of themselves, and that’s it.”
“Do you mean that in forming the identity and connection with you, they only focus on the fact that you’re gay because that’s the only aspect of your identity they understand?”
“Yeah, yes. They will only focus on the fact that I’m also gay, but won’t regard any other part of me.”
“There’s definitely an inability to accept every piece of intersectionality,” I agreed. “Have you noticed a hierarchy within queer spaces of whose voices matter more based on those factors?
“Yeah. It’s usually white gay people, usually dudes.”
“Totally. I hate that so much,” I agreed, because I’d seen the same thing.
“Then also, white gay women… no offense,” she added preemptively, which made me laugh, “you guys are kind of scary, you love the white women tears.”
“The white women tears?” I laughed. Though I’m definitely not a woman, I do look rather feminine as a non-binary person, so I accepted the stereotype with open arms. “Oh, go on.”
“You know, the classic Karen stereotype, they scream and cry to get what they want. It’s like that, but it’s to get visibility only for them.”
“Shit, the white women tears. That’s so good,” I laughed. Angel wasn’t wrong. I’d certainly seen that, especially growing up in the environment of a private, middle-upper class, all-girls school. I lived in that small biota of glossed lips and khaki skirts for junior high, around the time I realized that I’m queer. A good few of the girls there were gay, but they came from backgrounds of extreme privilege. There was certainly a hierarchy of straight and gay students, the heterosexuals sitting firmly at the top of the heap, completely isolated in their ivory tower of normalcy. But there was also a hierarchy within the queer kids, white lesbians and bisexual girls calling most of the shots socially. The people of color, the not wealthy, the ‘special-ed’ kids, and the transgender students sat at the bottom. When I kicked up a fuss about how I was treated, I was given attention. When queer students of color did, they were written off as sensitive and irrationally reactive. I received help— they received pats on the back for putting up with that bullshit. That’s the difference between the intersectional experiences of dominant and minority ethnicities. Nobody tends to give a damn when a person of color is being harassed.
Obviously this example of race in intersectionality acting as a barrier is on a much smaller scale, but the principle remains true— nobody cares about representing you if there are multiple things about you that need representation. “It’s true, white people have so much more visibility in their other minority identities,” I agreed. “A lot of people acknowledge only the queerness, instead of all the other ways that you might be prejudiced against. But they also only focus on the ways that they themselves are a minority and not the ways that they— well, I should say ‘we,’ because I’ve done this in the past too before I realized why I was wrong— but not the ways that we’re privileged. There’s a bit of victimization there,” I said.
“Yeah, there’s… a lot,” Angel corrected, laughing.
“I think that’s what the white women tears thing is, it’s like ‘but I’m gay, so I can say what I want!’ Like, no you can’t, though.”
“And it’s the same thing as like ‘being disabled is a white people thing,’ I’ve seen that a lot with being queer as also a white people thing. And then with me, being these three things at once… I’m just not real, I don’t exist,” Angel joked in a sarcastically wistful tone.
That’s the whole issue with intersectional identity surrounding disability. For people like Angel, there’s erasure and a refusal to acknowledge the complex layers of identity coming from all sides. In immigrant families, there’s a cultural need to uphold the pride and honor of hard work within the American identity. On a wider social structure scale, there’s pressure to push aside the aspects of yourself that aren’t easily digestible to the masses to receive any sort of visibility at all.
Disability is not a white person thing. Almost everyone is disabled at some point— whether it’s a broken limb, the loss of a sense, an illness that impacts bodily or mental functions, an undiagnosed neurological condition, or simply old age, disability is everywhere. Anyone can be disabled, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or culture. It’s high time that we make visibility, accessibility, acceptance, and inclusion not a white person thing, but an everyone thing. Disability is global with many faces and names in various cultures. Perception varies, traits vary, awareness varies. But one uniting quality of disability which will never disappear is the fact that it’s universal.
References
Ability, Diversity &. “Identity Beyond Disability – DnA’s Blog – Medium.” Medium, 9 Dec. 2021, medium.com/dna-s-blog/identity-beyond-disability-3d59d19b1dad.
Address of President-Elect John F. Kennedy Delivered to a Joint Convention of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, January 9, 1961 | JFK Library. www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/massachusetts-general-court-19610109.
Burch, Susan, and Kim E. Nielsen. “Disability History.” Beginning With Disability, 2018, pp. 79–80.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “SELF-RELIANCE.” Vcu.edu, 1841, archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/selfreliance.html.
“stimming, n. meanings, etymology and more.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2018, https://www.oed.com/dictionary/stimming_n?tab=meaning_and_use. Accessed 19 November 2023.
Street, Farnam. “Ben Franklin: The Thirteen Necessary Virtues.” Farnam Street, 4 May 2021, fs.blog/the-thirteen-virtues.
TeachingAmericanHistory.org. “A Model of Christian Charity | Teaching American History.” Teaching American History, 8 July 2022, teachingamericanhistory.org/document/a-model-of-christian-charity-2.
Cover and image art by August Butler
Image Sources-
Duplessis, Joseph. “Benjamin Franklin.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
“John Winthrop.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Winthrop.
Hawes, Josiah Johnson. “Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson.
White House Collection. “John F. Kennedy.” Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-F-Kennedy#/media/1/314791/126870
The author would like to disclose that the art depicting white men as hellish creatures is a joke. I’m joking, I swear. I actually really like Emerson’s writing. (Please don’t report me to GSU.)
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