{"id":6249,"date":"2023-07-23T04:06:37","date_gmt":"2023-07-23T04:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/leadership\/3-things-disabled-people-need-most-to-build-disability-pride\/"},"modified":"2023-07-23T04:06:38","modified_gmt":"2023-07-23T04:06:38","slug":"3-things-disabled-people-need-most-to-build-disability-pride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=6249","title":{"rendered":"3 Things Disabled People Need Most To Build \u201cDisability Pride\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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July is Disability Pride Month. This year it marks the 33rd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the most important and well-known civil rights law covering people with disabilities in the United States.<\/p>\n

Each year\u2019s Disability Pride Month is also a time to celebrate and inform people about disability issues and culture. It\u2019s also a prompt for disabled people themselves to focus a bit more closely and deeply on their own state of disability pride.<\/p>\n

For those who might be a little confused about what \u201cdisability pride\u201d might mean, two poems are a good place to start. The first, by Emily Ladau, was written this year with Disability Pride Month in mind. The second, “You Get Proud by Practicing,” by Laura Hershey was written in 1991, just a year after passage of the ADA, and well before widespread observance of Disability Pride Month<\/p>\n

Both poems celebrate the vibrancy and resilience of disabled people and disability culture, while acknowledging the hardships of disabled life \u2013 especially the barriers imposed by an ableist society. It can be irresponsible at worst, at best out of touch, to suggest that \u201cdisability pride\u201d is something you can just decide to have, regardless of circumstances. A lot of disabled people find it hard to feel pride when their most dominant emotions and experiences are financial insecurity, fear of physical danger or abuse, and soul-crushing isolation and prejudice.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s important that these less celebratory feelings are included in Disability Pride Month observances. It\u2019s also why disabled author and activist Alice Wong has suggested a different approach to Disability Pride Month this year, calling for attention to #DisabilityPrecarity<\/a> \u2013 the ways that disabled people still struggle just to survive.<\/p>\n

Survival is the top priority for most people with disabilities, usually above pride. It’s also often a prerequisite<\/em> for pride. Despite the strong popular idea that pride and self-confidence are essential for survival and success, it’s often less true in real life than it is in hopeful imaginings and wellness ideologies. More often, disabled people find that at least some degree of accomplishment and personal and financial security are necessary first<\/em> in order to enjoy any sort of \u201cdisability pride.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet, pride is still a valid separate goal for disabled people. \u201cDisability pride\u201d isn\u2019t always a celebration of something already achieved. For many disabled people, it\u2019s more like an aspiration. So here are just a few of the things disabled people need in order to realize the goal of true disability pride:<\/p>\n

1. To feel less alone<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, and most fundamentally, physical isolation hampers disability pride. This isolation comes from disabilities themselves, but also from chronic lack of accessibility and accommodations that make it harder for disabled people to move around their communities. Disabled people also tend to endure more social isolation. This too has many practical causes. But it is made much worse by non-disabled people’s discomfort and ableism, which makes them less likely to engage with disabled people and include them in their social circles \u2014 sometimes even in their own families.<\/p>\n

Finally, many disabled people experience a demographic, cultural, and political sense of being alone. Most disabled people start out their disability experience \u2013 from birth and childhood, or from later in life injury or illness \u2013 feeling almost entirely unique, or at best part of an insignificantly tiny minority. Some disabled people are just as unaware as non-disabled people how large<\/em> a minority people with disabilities really are. Disabled people are<\/em> a minority. Most people don’t have disabilities. But they are a substantial<\/em> minority. Somewhere between 15% of Americans, (U.S. Census), and 25% according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, have some kind of physical or mental disability.<\/p>\n

Disabled people today are a good deal less isolated both personally and socially than they were 50 or more years ago. Laws like the ADA, more physical accessibility, and changing attitudes have helped. But disabled people are still on average less personally integrated and recognized than most non-disabled people. And pride is hard to maintain when you feel isolated and alone.<\/p>\n

2. To stop being embarrassed and apologetic<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most common emotions that come with disability is also one of the most difficult to describe. It\u2019s not so much the loss or absence of specific capabilities, but rather a sense of being in the way, a complication, a bother and expense to others. There are a thousand systemic barriers, ableist practices, and interpersonal habits that reinforce this. Every benefit seems to come with a stigma. Every accommodation implies an imposition. And nearly every disabled knows what it\u2019s like to be treated like an unwanted physical impediment \u2013 an out of place object to be moved or maneuvered around, not a person with thoughts, feelings, and a right to be present and participate.<\/p>\n

On top of this, many people with visible disabilities harbor a nagging awareness of looking and acting differently. For many, that includes literally feeling ugly \u2014 whether or not that\u2019s something they have actually been told. Some people\u2019s reactions to seeing visibly disabled people are not subtle. And disabled people get the message \u2013 even in the most enlightened, disability-friendly, and nominally supportive settings.<\/p>\n

These feelings can add up to disabled people feeling embarrassed at being the way they are, and always feeling a to justify themselves and their worth. It leads to feelings of guilt, perpetual debt, and a constant need to apologize for being who they are. For many disabled people it’s an emotional burden as great if not greater than their actual disabilities.<\/p>\n

Obviously, moving beyond embarrassment and this need to justify and apologize is essential to disability pride.<\/p>\n

3. To be listened to and believed<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most practically harmful and emotionally painful forms of ableism is also one of the most common. And that is not being believed. Disabled people are disproportionately thought to be lying, cheating, or bending the truth to gain some advantage. Or, they are assumed to be incapable of understanding their own situations, making them “unreliable narrators” of their own experiences.<\/p>\n

This is perhaps the most harmful and common in healthcare. Disabled people are frequently doubted, misinterpreted, overruled, and manipulated by medical professionals. Doctors, nurses, and other medical staff assume disabled people don’t fully understand their conditions. And when illness and conditions can\u2019t readily be diagnosed or fixed, they conclude that the problem must be a confused, unreliable, or dishonest patient.<\/p>\n

Similar implicit disability biases appear in education, social service programs and workplaces. They also affect everyday personal interactions. A lot of otherwise well-meaning non-disabled people question disabled people’s stories of hardship, especially when it’s about disability discrimination. Instead of listening and empathizing, they grill disabled people like prosecutors. \u201cWas it really that bad? Maybe you misunderstood. You should have said this, not that!\u201d They offer either incredibly obvious or incredibly bizarre and misplaced “solutions,\u201d like filing a complaint, (both obvious and usually not very effective), or practicing meditation. It’s demoralizing for disabled people when they feel that the people around them regard them not just as someone with an impairment, but as a kind of perpetual child, or someone who needs to be steered and managed, rather than heard and respected.<\/p>\n

So, what can non-disabled people do, during Disability Pride Month and in all other eleven months, to help disabled people foster inner disability pride and practical wellbeing?<\/p>\n