How to talk about disability sensitively and avoid ableist tropes

Ableism is woven into the words we use and the pictures we carry of disability, so talking about it sensitively starts with spotting those pictures. Disability advocate Talila A. Lewis defines ableism as a system that ranks bodies and minds against socially built ideas of what counts as normal, smart, and excellent. Rosemary McDonnell-Horita from LaVant Consulting, a communications firm focused on disability, and Cara Reedy, who started the Disabled Journalists Association, told National Public Radio (NPR) which tropes to avoid. Stop telling feel good stories that treat disabled people as props for nondisabled viewers. McDonnell-Horita points to viral prom videos in which a football player from a high school asks a girl who has Down syndrome, which spread because society treats disabled people with pity and calls them unlovable. Reedy points to wedding clips of a person standing up from a wheelchair. Both tell the public that disability is a flaw to beat, erase the effort and the barriers behind every achievement, and turn an ordinary milestone into a party. McDonnell-Horita says that more people who grasp how language harms, and who interrupt ableist talk, would lift that daily work off disabled people. The shame she learned to feel, the ignorant questions, and systemic ableism that shuts disabled people out of spaces are. Reedy says stories that skip the barriers do violence to one in four Americans.

Disability is no monolith. The community holds many subcommunities with their own experiences and cultures, so one interview offers one view, and McDonnell-Horita urges us to widen the voices that speak for the community. Language preferences differ from person to person too. One woman may prefer person first wording such as a woman with autism, while another prefers identity first wording such as an autistic woman, so the respectful step is to ask and never assume. Stories fail in both directions, when they paint disabled people as pitiable, unhappy, and bitter and when they paint them as saintly and cheerful every day. McDonnell-Horita describes days when her body frustrates her, and the exhaustion of two pandemics, the first being life under a society and government that seem indifferent to whether disabled people survive, the second being a constant fight to keep their rights. Disability also crosses every other identity group. Federal health figures show a disability in one of four Black people and one of ten Asian Americans in the United States, yet disability rights spaces have long centered white men who have physical disabilities. Reedy, a Black dwarf woman, cannot pull her identities apart when she talks about disability, and she says no story about poverty is complete without race and disability told together.

Infantilization, McDonnell-Horita explains, is power used by a nondisabled person to brush aside a disabled person's thoughts, opinions, and experiences. It shows up as talking to a disabled person only indirectly, or assuming they cannot speak for themselves. Reedy, a dwarf, has had people raise their voices and speak to her like a baby. Reedy says language that infantilizes is only cover, and the actions behind it are the insidious part. A National Council on Disability count puts about 1.3 million adults with disabilities under conservatorships across the United States. In Washington, D.C. and 31 states, laws allow disabled people to be sterilized against their will. The same habit shapes storytelling. Reedy has seen reporters interview parents, or nondisabled people at organizations, in place of disabled people. A parent may first meet disability when a child is born, and nobody can fully grasp disability without living it. Reedy does not say parents should be left out. She says going to them first steps over an entire community, and that putting disabled voices first is among the best ways to end infantilization.

Name the barrier, never blame the person. The fourth point turns the picture around: disability is a culture, an identity, and no flaw. The medical model treats disabled people as something to fix or cure, and critics trace it to eugenics and racism against Black people. The social model sees disability as what happens when a person meets physical, attitude, communication, and social barriers, and it calls for social change. The disability pride movement grew from that model, claiming disability as an ordinary part of human variety, affirming self worth and agency, and confronting systemic ableism. We should hold the same view: steps at an entrance, a form no one can read, and a rigid assumption about what a person can do are barriers a community made, and a community can remove them. The article shows how far daily practice sits from that view. Terms rooted in ableism and eugenics, like moron and idiot, still sit in our vocabulary, and Reedy calls refusing to even address them the most harmful response. Unlearning takes practice and commitment, and it is work nondisabled people share, so disabled people do not carry it alone every day.

Putting the blame on the barrier and the lead with the person is what that moral asks of us.

Read the Full Article: How to talk about disability sensitively and avoid ableist tropes.
By: Shruti Rajkumar

Also See:

• What is ableism, and what is its impact?
• Horror movies have an ableism problem. Isn’t it time we found new ‘monsters’?
• Ableism 101: What it is, what it looks like, and what we can do to to fix it
• Intersections Between Racism and Ableism
• I was nine when I learned what ableism is
• Anti-Ableism Fast Facts - Ways to Combat Ableism:
• Becoming Anti-Ableist: A Disability Justice- Informed Approach to Supporting the Disability Community
• 8 Ways Ableism Shows Up In Religious Spaces
• Inclusion Is Not Something You Earn

Questions for Reflection

1. When a story about disability is told in our community, who is asked first, the disabled person or someone speaking about them?
2. Which feel good stories have we shared that treated disabled people as props for others, and what did they leave out about barriers?
3. Do we ask each person whether they prefer person first or identity first language, or do we assume?
4. Where do we speak to or about disabled adults as if they were children, and who has told us so?
5. Which words rooted in ableism and eugenics are still in our vocabulary, and which disability language style guide will we use to replace them?
6. How do we share the work of unlearning ableism so disabled people do not carry it alone?