🎶♬🎶...There's a house in my head
Under permanent construction...
As third in this series on allies: professional relationships
As a wise woman once said: “Political correctness changed the words, but did not change the conversation!” Full credit Andrea Layzell [@AndreaStEdmunds]
Professional wisdom is a beautiful thing, especially when applied to working practice and workplace relationships. As research suggest, the difference between political correctness and respectful language is not whether a word is right or wrong but why the meaning strengthens or counters a narrative that exists in an organisation's storytelling.
I have met a number of kind, considerate, and compassionate people at work, many have become good friends, but friendships and allied relationships are not the same thing. It was on the Inclusion Press website that I came across the phrase: "we don’t have to like each other". The phrase is key in this context, because my inclusion should not be dependent on likability. My belonging, while subjective, needs to be seen as a human right, an entitlement. Therefore, if your allyship is conditional we have a problem.
Given the last two posts you’d be forgiven for thinking that I believe that being an ally demands friendship - it doesn’t. I’d say friendship sometimes helps, and maybe follows, but it’s not the deciding factor in being able to interrupt the oppression disabled individuals face daily. In some circumstances being friendly, or over familiar, may only serve those already in a paid role to hold on to power they’re not prepared to share.
Speaking against ableism, on the other hand, is needed! But to do so, you first need to have a word for the characteristic discrimination and inequality disabled people face, Otherwise you can’t:
a/ give it an articulation, or
b/ interrupt it in conversation.
Likewise, as an ally myself, to those facing racial discrimination, I need an understanding of the character of stereotypes specific to racism to interrupt the organisational or systematic discrimination some of my colleagues face. Without a working definition therefore, however sketchy, I cannot counter the language and culture that reproduces racism or attempt to mitigate its impact on those around me. From an allied position, it’s far more important for me to do my homework than ask those in the room affected by racism to deal with it. The knowledge I gain through reading and speaking to people who know about racism, helps me change the way I speak about it. I do this to represent a marginalised group, and the individuals otherwise affected by my racism, as a world majority.
Plenty of my friends are not allies by any stretch of a working definition that includes ableism in its articulation. Because few have been in jobs where disability equality is offered as part of orientation or ongoing training. Yet without this explicit reference, theory or tools, how could they talk about the specific characteristics of disability discrimination and the exact nature of the characteristics of societal inequality imposed on the disabled population. As I will explain you need to look, sometimes quite hard, to find out what you do not know. As with feminism, gender equality doesn’t equate to being nice to women, a shared meaning for structural and cultural inequality is necessary to articulate sexism and patriarchy.
I’ve been facilitating disability equality training for 30+ years, and invariably the feedback I hear most often is "I never knew what I needed to know". In other words, most people assume they either know what ‘disability’ means, or they assume the problem is someone else’s. If health cured people and social care looked after them... Sadly, these beliefs often sit deeper than in a worded thought, they aren’t even ideas we challenge for ourselves, they are often deep within our hearts – not in our minds. (To use Sergiovanni's metaphor)
As research suggests, being able to ignore a worldwide crisis is less about denial and more about lack of awareness. Despite 50 years of activism, a large number of disabled campaigners are still largely fighting the same battles. On the whole because while individual experience is sometimes heard, the ideas or interests of scholars and specialists are often dismissed and/or not applied to work practice [and the disciplines that feed professionalism]. This leaves us all with an idea of disability an individualised and medicalised problem. Because that is how it is expressed regularly in institutional terminology and professional culture. As we speak, for example, we often dismiss or ignore the size and scale of prejudice and discrimination, particularly when we cannot relate its shape or character our own experience. In having no currency, ableism has nowhere to sit in terms of personal understanding.
I typically start a disabilty equality training session with a language exercise which helps people appreciated how deeply stereotypes are woven into our everyday language. I ask people to name misrepresentation, it takes a few minutes, because they often don’t appear obvious. But given a few examples people can generally fill a flip-chart sheet in minutes, and beg for more. It’s not that they don’t recognise words that harm, it’s that they have no idea why some words do or others don’t. They have relied on individuals preference to make choices that require more understanding than mere likability. For example, ‘my mate Joe likes difabled’, or another ‘they say brainstorm is wrong’. In Joe’s case there’s no way of telling if Tom, Dick or Frances likes what Joe likes! As for finding the ‘they’ - if indeed they exist – it’s usually hearsay or urban legend not an explicit directive base on individual or group.
Unfortunately, we tend to link stereotype to personal deficit, organisational reaction and society rejection or blame. For example, stupid, becomes hard to educate, becomes special educational needs, becomes segregated... once we’ve established the pattern is easy to see how culture leads can abuse. [it’s not the personal difference that leads to bad experience, more the lack of typical protection offers by not being treated unfairly]. Unless we understand the cycle blame can be laid on the individual.
Allies are those who can name the stereotypes, the patterns and the cycles of disability misrepresentation in language and culture. My safety in a room often rests on the quick response of others to negative assumptions. As anti-ableists, it’s life-affirming for me to see colleagues point out the words, phrases or idioms that harm. These are those which carry assumptions about the ‘normality’ of perfect bodies, the language that creates the ideas that those without difference are normal (sic, sic, sic). It’s not the words themselves that are good or bad, it their meaning in a particular context. It is the idea that some are able, implying others are not, that needs challenging, not the ignorance of those speaking.
These days, with the increasing use of the word ‘ableism’, it’s far easier to introduce people to the notion of a shared oppression, akin to classism, racism and sexism, that is imposed by culture. Viewed that way, identity and activism still hugely important, do not stand in the way of anyone addressing injustice. Outward looking stance against ableism frees us up to stand beside, not above or in front, of those in receipt of contempt. For example, I stand against homophobia, not because of my experience, but because it adds insult to inequality and gives credence to hate speech.
Ableism is so deeply woven into society’s storytelling, it is everywhere, but yet also unremarkable, and thus can be ignored easily. Much like ideas of classism and racism, you may not have the words for it even if you are subject to it. Like many women it took me many years to become a feminist, because it took time to find the ideas that gave me a working definition (Am I Disabled ?). Once I realised I had a choice, all my activity became anti-sexist. Slowly, it became easier to understand that while my experience was the prejudice I received, books on feminism gave me the language to articulate institutional sexism, misogyny and patriarchy. Together, these ideas gave depth and nuance to complexities of structure in our culture, which beyond each individual, weighed more heavier on women as a population.
Resources for allies: Padlet on Disability
Recommended reading:
Barnes, C. (1992). Disabling Imagery And The Media. An Exploration of the Principles for Media Represenations of Disabled People. Halifax: The British Council of Organisations of Disabled People and Ryburn Publishing Limited.
Beresford, P. (2016). All our welfare: Towards participatory social policy [Kindle Edition]. Bristol: Policy Press.
Briant, E., Watson, N., & Philo, G. (2013). Reporting disability in the age of austerity: the changing face of media representation of disability and disabled people in the United Kingdom and the creation of new ‘folk devils’ .Disability & Society, 28(6), 874-889.
Broach, S. (2018, 2 11). Mendip House – not ‘safeguarding’ failures but rights violations. Retrieved 5 30, 2018, from Rights in Reality: https://rightsinreality.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/mendip-house-not-safeguarding-failures-but-rights-violations/
Campbell, J., & Gillespie-Sells, K. (1991). Disability equality training : trainers guide. London: CCETSW.
Chapman, L. (2011). A Different Perspective on Disability Equality, a practical handbook. Huddersfield: EQT Publishing.
Crow, L. (2014, 8 28). Scroungers and Superhumans: Images of Disability from the Summer of 2012: A Visual Inquiry. Journal of visual culture, 13(2), pp. 168-181.
Disability Rights UK. (2018, 11 16). Ministers and councils urged to dump ‘disability tax’. Retrieved 11 18, 2018, from Disability Rights UK: https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2018/november/ministers-and-councils-urged-dump-‘disability-tax’
Disability Rights UK. (2018, 10 18). United Response says disability hate crimes in England and Wales up by a third. Retrieved 11 12, 2019, from Disability Rights UK: https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2018/october/united-response-says-disability-hate-crimes-england-and-wales-third
Dolmage, J. T. (2017). Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education. San Francisco: University of Michigan Press.
Ellis, K., & Kent, M. (2016). Disability and Social Media: Global Perspectives [Kindle Edition]. abingdon: Routledge.
Equality and Human Rights Commission. (2018). Progress on disability rights in the United Kingdom. Equality and Human Rights Commission, Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, Scottish Human Rights Commission. Equality and Human Rights Commission,.
Equality and Human Rights Commission. (April 2017). Being disabled in Britain - A journey less equal. Equality and Human Rights Commission. London: Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Finklestein, V. (1999). Professions Allied to the Community (PACs) . Therapy Weekly, 1-9.
Frame Works. (2016). How to Talk About Disability and Human Rights. Frame Works. Washington: Frame Works.
French, S., & Swain, J. (1997, Jan). Changing Disability Research: Participating and Emancipatory Research with Disabled People. Physiotherapy, 83(1), 26-32.
Goodley, D. (2014). Dis/ability Studies: Theorising disablism and ableism. London: Routlege.
Inclusion London. (2020). Disability hate crime . Retrieved 4 4, 2020, from https://www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/campaigns-and-policy/facts-and-information/hate-crime/
Leonard Cheshire. (2019, 5 11). Online disability hate crimes soar 33%. Retrieved 11 12, 2019, from Leonard Cheshire: https://www.leonardcheshire.org/about-us/press-and-media/press-releases/online-disability-hate-crimes-soar-33
Meekosha, H., & Soldatic, K. (2011). Human Rights and the Global South: the case of disability. Third World Quarterly, 1383-1397.
Michalko, R. (2002). The Difference That Disability Makes [Kindle Edition]. Philadephia: Temple University Press.
Norah Fry Centre for Disability Studies. (2017). The Learning Disabilities Mortality Review (LeDeR) Programme.University of Bristol, University of Bristol Norah Fry Centre for Disability Studies. Norah Fry Centre for Disability Studies, 8 Priory Road, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 1TZ.
Quarmby, K. (2011). Scapegoat [Kindle Edition]. London: Portobello Books Ltd.
Ryan, F. (2019). Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People . London: Verso Books.
Scope. (2017). Disability facts and figures . Retrieved 4 11, 2018, from Scope - about disability : https://www.scope.org.uk/media/disability-facts-figures#LFi851bsAdF0fD0t.99
Sergiovanni, T. (1985). Landscapes, mindscapes, and reflective practice in supervision. Journal of curculum and seprevision, No 1.5-17 5.
Shakespeare, T. (2006). Disability Rights and Wrongs. Abingdon: Routledge.
TUC. (2018). Disability Employment Pay Gap. TUC, https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/Disabilityemploymentandpaygaps.pdf. TUC.
