Ableism

One of the most unadressed problems in modern history is ableism. While many talk about how much empathy they have with the disabled, that is as far as it usually gets. If a disabled person applies for a job, they usually wouldnt be taken for employment. Disabled people are still often treated as citizens second class. How should we address this problem and why do people just like to talk but act the opposite of what they proclaim?

As not only a longtime Gateway member but also a disabled person and a disabled activist and policy advocate, I'm thrilled that you're opening up this discussion here.

I have a serious problem with framing the common sentiment of "empathy for the disabled" (usually it's "sympathy," actually) as somehow a positive, because what it usually means is "pity." As in, when people feel bad for me or those I work with because we are disabled -- they assume our lives and experiences are sad and tragic, that we are automatically "suffering" because of how our brains or bodies work. These assumptions don't come out of nowhere, though.

Everywhere in society -- literally, everywhere, from how scientific research is framed to how public policy is created and how people are expected to interact with one another in everyday life -- we learn implicit lessons about whose bodies and brains are valuable and whose bodies and brains are not. Whose bodies and brains are desirable and whose are not. Whose bodies and brains are healthy or normal and whose are not.

When people talk about doing stuff for disabled people, if they mean coming from a place of presumed superiority or morality, that's a problem. I mean, when people treat spending time around us as community service, or as a notch on their personal totem pole of how much of a good person they are. I mean, when people talk about how much they can "help" us, without realizing that many times, we as disabled people work to help and support each other -- we call that interdependence.

So back to your original question about employment, for example, it of course goes back to the underlying values in an ableist society. If disabled people are treated as not valuable and not worthy because we can't produce or work according to capitalist standards, then of course we won't be employed. Potential employers will assume we are less capable at best or totally incapable at worst. A bigger problem? Retention after recruitment. It's fashionable nowadays for big companies to proclaim disability inclusive hiring practices -- that's why there's a national U.S. Business Leadership Network for example in the United States, and it's also why President Obama issued an executive order requiring all federal agencies to prioritize hiring people with disabilities at all levels. But once we're in the door, how are we being kept?

If the organization/agency/company doesn't work to fight ableist hostility or structural barriers (like physical inaccessibility) or unexamined assumptions (such as about body language or eye contact) or other things that might come up that directly implicate someone's disability, then their hiring rate of disabled people isn't actually meaningful, because we're already discovering that we're not that welcome after all.

Dismantling ableism requires ongoing work -- not any quick-fix -- and means changing both public policy AND social/cultural norms (ways of doing things and ways of thinking).

Isn't ordering managers of businesses to hire a specific number of disabled people a form of ableism itself?
The way I see it; by ordering these managers to hire these people, the person making the order is telling the disabled, or 'differently-abled' person if you want political correctness, that you can't get this job on your own so "I'm helping you?"

Forcing or ordering people to do things they don't want to do is only making that person bitter and angry, and having other people suffer that bitterness and anger including the 'differently-abled' person and any 'normal' person who has to work with both the manager and the 'differently-abled" person.

The presumption behind the order is already ableism. "you can't do it yourself, so I'll help." Wouldn't a presumption like that already tell the person you're supposedly trying to help that they aren't able, that they're broken, damaged, no good?

FyreT1ger, however many disabled people cannot get a job without assistance. It is sort of a good thing to have a sort of quota for disabled people due to the fact that disabled people who are capable of working are 85% unemployed in the US and here in Germany it even stands at 90%. Expecting companies and people to solve it naturally is usually the solution conservative have. But disability is not a new thing. The system had at least a century to give the disabled an equal opportunity and failed.

(Just a side-note: Fuck political correctness. We're not "differently abled." I hate that euphemism and it makes me cringe whenever people use it. I am disabled and I'm disabled by society being awful and ableist about the way my brain works.)

Support is not ableist necessarily. The "helper attitude" can be. The difference is that a "helper" believes they are saving or rescuing the disabled person and often expects a huge pat on the back and feels entitled to gratitude, whereas someone being supportive -- or incentivized (such as through tax cuts or preferential treatment in contracts bidding, for example, which are both policy tools used for this purpose) to prioritize recruiting and retaining disabled candidates for jobs -- cares more about equity.

The idea that everyone ought to be -- or is -- "independent" is ableist, because in reality, no one is truly independent, materially, emotionally, or otherwise. Most people don't grow/kill all of their own food (I don't mean some; I mean 100%) or do 100% of their repairs or do all the things involved in making clothing from scratch (making the cloth, cutting, dyeing, sewing, assembling, etc. -- and potentially cultivating the raw materials for silk, cotton, etc.); etc. Ableist values treat some types of dependence (like relying on someone else to make a lot of the ingredients that go into your food, or relying on someone else to make sure the parts of a car work if you have a car, etc.) as not-really-dependence but others as dependence (like needing help going to the bathroom or changing clothes or reading a document).

Actually there are some people that do grow all their own food because they have no other option. A friend of mine told me about their neighbor who had lived in a country that had no grocery stores. If this neighbor and family wanted to eat at all they had to grow their own food. They emigrated to the United States from that country, and kept up the habit of growing their own food.

Also, most farmers in third-world countries are subsistence farmers because they only grow enough food for their own family to eat, which for some crazy reason is looked down on. How could there possibly be anything wrong with growing food for just your family to eat? It makes way more practical sense than factory farming. If we want to preserve natural resources, we should only use just as much as we need, which is precisely what subsistence farming does. Anyway I digress.

My answer to the idea of quotas for disabled persons is that quotas are a bad idea. Quotas are a bad idea for all occasions. Why? Because quotas intentionally divide people based on specific traits. This division doesn't encourage a cohesive society. It can also be an unfair discrimination, because people with actual better resumes and skills for a specific job will be passed over to fit a quota.

A better solution is better understanding of different groups skillsets. For example, a paraplegic bound to a wheelchair can't run a marathon or lift heavy boxes, but this paraplegic can program a computer or design a house. He or she doesn't have use of his or her legs, but he or she can do a lot with his or her hands and mind. A paraplegic would do very well in an office.

The goal shouldn't be to force numbers but educate businesses on disabled persons' strengths. If done correctly, the disabled persons would be fully and completely regarded as persons not just numbers. That's another problem with the quota system, all that matters in that system is numbers not actual, living, breathing people.

Disabled or not, isn't that what every person wants, acknowledgement as an actual person?

"It can also be an unfair discrimination, because people with actual better resumes and skills for a specific job will be passed over to fit a quota."

And people like me and Ylanne then are stuck with shitty jobs or no job at all because we have had difficulties acquiring our qualifications due to the exact ableism that wants to get rid of quotas and our chance to find decent employment. You can't just think away disability.

Business do not care if someone have a possible skill, they only care about paperwork and verifiable experience which many disabled people don't or barely have. Even with greater awareness and quotas, disabled people are still mostly unemployed because the able are prefered over the disabled.

Face reality and stop living in your neolib world of theoreticizing.

What is acknowledgement as a person, if you aren't acknowledged as a possibly qualified employee?

Ylanne, what movement are you not a part of?

Anyway:

I understand disabled bias. There are fields and potential job requirements that make employing various disabilities difficult. For an extreme example, you wouldn't let an amputee be a firefighter, would you?

That being said, regardless of job qualification, I think it's a lot of comfort to customers and business associates to deal with the "normal" employees they expect. "Healthcare Specialists" (combat medics) in the US Army can be color blind, and either gender. If you've been shot, would you rather a normal-vision man be sent to drag you behind cover, or a color-blind woman? Now obviously if the job is open, that means that all of the color-coded medical equipment is labeled or deliberately chosen to be easy to distinguish, color blind or otherwise, and if that woman is in the infantry she can drag your fat ass whether you think she can or not. But if I'm seriously injured and in a life-or-death situation, if I look up and recognize Color-Blind Johnny, I'm going to take a moment and think "If he confuses the morphine with the adrenaline, I'm fucked." Now I know that isn't going to happen, because the rational part of my brain says "Johnny is a certified EMT in all 50 states and he's been doing this longer than you have, why the fuck did you get shot in the first place, shut the hell up." But that much, much louder part of my brain that says "Fuckfuckfuckfuck I'm going to die" makes me wish 20/20-Charlie was responding instead.

I just realized that's another really extreme example. But I think that's the mentality of unequal employment for the disabled: Regardless of whether their handicap is prohibitive to their ability to perform their job, it's just assumed that it will be disadvantageous and therefor hurt the company, and it's the HR department's job to hire the most qualified individuals, not be nice. And that sucks, but it makes perfectly good sense: If you think someone is less qualified, you shouldn't hire them.

I'm not saying that all able people are better than all other people, or that their reason to think the disabled are unqualified, is right. But if, in their brain, it's true, then it would be selfish of them to put moral righteousness over their job and the benefit of their employers.

[quote=FyreT1ger]My answer to the idea of quotas for disabled persons is that quotas are a bad idea. Quotas are a bad idea for all occasions. Why? Because quotas intentionally divide people based on specific traits. This division doesn't encourage a cohesive society. It can also be an unfair discrimination, because people with actual better resumes and skills for a specific job will be passed over to fit a quota.[/quote]

Affirmative action is terrible. I believe in a true meritocracy, in which individuals are able to prove their worth and benefit from their skills, talents, motivation, experience, and prowess in a field or knowledge, not because someone is afraid of being sued for discrimination. If you want to be claim disability makes you unable to seek suitable employment, ask your government for a welfare check or move a country that will give you one. It's the same thing for the race card. No welfare state can survive. The country in which I live is not a socialist paradise. You do what you can for yourself, and you cannot do for yourself then you ask for sympathy. You do not ask what your country can do for you; you ask what you can do for your country.

[quote=Martin Luther King Jr]If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.[/quote]

You want a better job? Be a better candidate.