Some parents complain that disabled TV host "scares children"

From The Independent:

Disparaging comments by adults about a children’s presenter have led to an angry backlash in support of Cerrie Burnell, the 29-year-old CBeebies host who was born missing the lower section of her right arm. One man said that he would stop his daughter from watching the BBC children’s channel because Burnell would give his child nightmares.

Parents even called the broadcaster to complain…  some of the vitriolic comments on the “Grown Up” section of the channel’s website were so nasty that they had to be removed.

“Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on CBeebies may scare the kids because of her disability?” wrote one adult on the CBeebies website. Other adults claimed that their children were asking difficult questions as a result.

Children asking questions! Horrible, horrible! It must be stopped!

There is some good news here: Many other parents have Burnell’s back.

…other parents and carers labelled the remarks as disgraceful, writing in support of Burnell and setting up a “fight disability prejudice” page on the social networking site Facebook. […]
Burnell, who described her first television presenting role as a “dream job”, has also appeared in EastEnders and Holby City and has been feted for performances in the theatre while also worked as a teaching assistant at a special needs school in London. She also has a four-year-old child. “I think the negative comments from those few parents are indicative of a wider problem of disabled representation in the media as a whole, which is why it’s so important for there to be more disabled role models in every area of the media,” she said in response yesterday. […]

“In some way it is a pretty sad commentary on the way society is now and that both parents and children see few examples of disabled people. The sooner children are exposed to disability in mainstream education the better,” said Mark Shrimpton at Radar, the UK’s largest disability campaigning organisation.

Even if a child is disturbed by seeing Burnell’s arm, so what? It’s up to the parents to explain to the child that all people are different — not up to the BBC to fire their host so that parents are spared having to parent their children.

That said, I think we know the core issue here isn’t frightened children — it’s prejudiced adults. As one disabled child care worker said in the comments to the article, “I found the children, once they’d asked about my arm, quickly moved on and became more helpful and considerate of my disability… Some of the adults I have encountered however have been downright rude.”

Thanks to Elkins for pointing this out to me. Elkins also recommends reading the comments at The Independent, “both for outrage and reassurance,” and adds that “The original comments on the CBeebies forums have all now been deleted. I guess that makes sense on a forum that little kids might read, but it’s somewhat of a disappointment.”

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55 Responses to Some parents complain that disabled TV host "scares children"

  1. 1
    chingona says:

    This is astounding. What do these parents do when they walk past someone on the street who looks different?

    At least the overwhelming majority of the comments were supportive.

  2. 2
    Laura says:

    The BBC news website also reported this and according to the article there:

    Online message boards on CBeebies and the BBC’s disability magazine Ouch! were brimming with support for the employment of a person with a disability, and the way this educated children about diversity.

    But a minority of parents expressed concern that Ms Burnell’s appearance was “scaring” children.

  3. 3
    Lilian Nattel says:

    I agree–the response should be to have more people with disabilities in the media, not less. I’m glad that there were parents standing behind her. Toddlers are often frightened by odd things. It’s a stage. I’ve seen kids that age frightened of pipes, stop signs, and big dogs. I haven’t seen any frightened by people in wheelchairs or with partial limbs. Even if they were, it would be up to the adults around them to calm the child’s fears. But interestingly, young kids are generally accepting of physical and developmental differences. They are taught to fear people through instruction in prejudices.

  4. 4
    Aftercancer says:

    Is it offensive to call these parents morons? I had cancer while my son was in daycare and kindergarten and the kids asked great questions about why I was bald and they were able to understand that people can still do things, even if they’re “different”

  5. 5
    Kristin says:

    This is astounding. What do these parents do when they walk past someone on the street who looks different?

    Unfortunately, they often stare, point, or act afraid/make sure to scurry their children quickly by. Either that, or they’ll approach the PWD and use them as an Inspiring Super Crip example meant to inspire the kids. This often involves such things as head-patting and being treated as if one is stupid: “Look at you, out grocery shopping by yourself! Good for you for doing that!”

    Ableism 101. Lesson brought to you by me.

  6. 6
    Kristin says:

    Is it offensive to call these parents morons?

    Eh, morons? Has kinda ableist connotations, yeah? I’d be cool with calling them stupid fucks. Or whatever…

    That said, this kind of response from parents is not at all shocking to me. It’s very common. What *does* shock me is that a critical mass of parents are vocally supporting this woman.

  7. 7
    NancyP says:

    Young kids don’t scare that easily. They note a difference, ask, then go back to what they were doing. (“Why do you have only one hand?” “I was born without it.” “Oh. I want another story about Polly Parrot.”)

  8. 8
    Lexie says:

    Oh, please….

    My children (4 year old twins) have a quadriplegic amputee father, a deaf blind mother, a blind step father, and know a lot of other disabled people, including a little friend in their preschool with CP.

    It is the most natural thing in the world to them. They play with the wheelchair, they play with their dad’s prosthetic leg, they know how to use my white cane at night when they can’t see. They explain to other children why their parents are different with ease.

    This is all about the parents prejudice and nothing about kids being scared. Lovely that the parents are passing their fear down to their children.

  9. 9
    Denise says:

    Either that, or they’ll approach the PWD and use them as an Inspiring Super Crip example meant to inspire the kids. This often involves such things as head-patting and being treated as if one is stupid: “Look at you, out grocery shopping by yourself! Good for you for doing that!”

    Ugh, that reminds me of a time I was out on the town with a friend in college, and we went to a Wendy’s or whatever, and he pointed out this dude that was staring at him. Some time later the dude came up and handed my friend a note. It read, “Jesus loves you”. My friend said that kind of shit happens to him all the time. I guess since he is in a wheelchair that means his life must be so incredibly crappy that random strangers have to assure him that once he dies he’ll be out of this hellhole and with someone who loves him. *eyeroll*

  10. 10
    PG says:

    Denise,

    I’d have been tempted to yell after the note-giver, “Thanks, Jesús, but you’re not my type.”

  11. 11
    chingona says:

    Unfortunately, they often stare, point, or act afraid/make sure to scurry their children quickly by. Either that, or they’ll approach the PWD and use them as an Inspiring Super Crip example meant to inspire the kids.

    On one level, I know that this happens. On another level, I just want to scream “What the fuck is wrong with people?” I’m white and able-bodied and middle class and educated. I have privilege coming out the yazoo, and I’m sure I’ve stuck my foot in it more than once or twice in my life. But some of this is just basic human decency. It’s not rocket science. You don’t need to study advanced theories about how oppression works. It’s just … don’t be an asshole. How hard is that?

  12. 12
    Marta says:

    Don’t forget that the whole campaign was started by the Daily Mail – a tabloid that some call the Daily Heil.

  13. 13
    Adrian says:

    I know CBeebies is for preschool kids, and elementary school is very different in a lot of ways. I recently learned that local 8 and 9 year-olds have explicit lessons about disability as part of physical education class at school. They have the kids use wheelchairs and crutches, to learn what it’s like to not be able to walk. Or try to walk a maze wearing dark glasses, or pick up coins and do puzzles wearing mittens. It’s obvious that the school is *trying* to teach the kids to understand disability, but I don’t know how well that approach is likely to work.

  14. 14
    Ali says:

    I assume these same parents would have tried to have Cerrie Burnell expelled from school when she was younger if she happened to go to the same school as their precious snowflakes.

  15. 15
    Alison Hymes says:

    It’s been wonderful to see the push back on this especially from parents. As the close relative of a young child with a prosthetic foot I know that some adults do indeed point and stare at him and his parent in public. It’s not the children who have a problem, children may ask questions and a young child may get tired of answering them but they do move on once their question is answered. I like stupid fucks as an alternative phrase by the way, or maybe ignorant, entitled, rude a-holes :).

  16. Pingback: Parents Complain About Disabled Children’s Show Host « The Czech

  17. 16
    Yusifu says:

    @Adrian: That school’s tactic sounds well intentioned but completely perverse. Trying to simulate a disability doesn’t give anyone a sense of what it’s like to live with it. All it can really do is horrify someone. It’s awful not to be able to walk/see/whatever. Kids wouldn’t get the experience of using alternative techniques, nor would they really grasp the fact that much of the problem stems from the expectations of the world at large.

  18. 17
    Kristin says:

    Some time later the dude came up and handed my friend a note. It read, “Jesus loves you”. My friend said that kind of shit happens to him all the time.

    Yep, this is also common, along with Specific Targeting by religious cults whose members are taught to assume that PWD are all lonely and have no friends.

  19. 18
    Kristin says:

    Yusifu:

    It’s awful not to be able to walk/see/whatever.

    This kind of school lesson is also troubling to me. I don’t agree with it, and I think “lessons” that attempt to teach children “what it’s like” to be a PWD or a POC or queer are highly problematic. Don’t treat them like idiots, give them the real history, don’t do facile and insulting “experiential” shit.

    That said, I’m troubled by your assumption that disability is so “awful.” What’s awful about it is that the world is designed and set up in ways that are inaccessible to us, and we face structural ableism every day of our lives. While I am *not* suggesting that there is nothing about disability that causes difficulty in itself, it is *not* essentially “awful” in any way. Please, I really don’t want your pity. Or Jerry Lewis’s.

  20. 19
    Sarah says:

    ITA with Kristin about “simulated disability” lessons. The only productive way in which these could work would be if students were made more aware of the social barriers and discrimination that PWD face. A high school acquaintance of mine who used a wheelchair for several months because of a serious sports injury wrote a column in our school paper about the school’s huge accessibility issues, not how much it sucks to be in a wheelchair. That’s the kind of “disability awareness” we need.

  21. 20
    PG says:

    I wonder if a more productive experiential learning project would be to divide the class into two teams, and give one person on each team a “disability,” then require that person to accomplish a task — with her team assessed on whether and how well she accomplishes it. E.g., if the person in a wheelchair is required to get something from a cabinet that’s not in reach when she’s seated, the kids have to think about reaching tools to make such cabinets accessible, but also probably will have the insight that cabinets also could be made to be accessible at the seated level of height.

    I think that would give kids a more useful and creative way of looking outward at the world, which is “How do I ensure that all members of my team can be productive in this environment?” instead of focusing on just “gosh, being disabled is hard.” Because most of the kids won’t be disabled themselves, when they can take off the blindfold or get out of the wheelchair, it’s kind of “well, that’s that!” But most of them will be on a “team” at some point, whether at school, in the workplace or among family or friends, that will include someone with a disability (or someone with a disability will be trying to get on that team, e.g. applying for a job position), and so thinking in terms of an inclusive environment will have long-term usefulness. They won’t think in terms of how hard it is to have a disability, but rather how relatively easy it is to accommodate disabilities.

  22. 21
    Kristin says:

    I wonder if a more productive experiential learning project would be to divide the class into two teams, and give one person on each team a “disability,” then require that person to accomplish a task — with her team assessed on whether and how well she accomplishes it.

    No, fuck no. That’s trivializing as hell. It’s trivializing and offensive when it happens wrt issues of race in the classroom. See, for example, the lovely “experiment” that feministe recently highlighted that was designed to teach children about the horrors of slavery. Yeah. This kind of thing always feels suspect to me. Anyone else experience “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes”? Sarah is exactly right in pointing out the kinds of “disability awareness” that we need in schools. We’re not Object Lessons for Morality Plays like what is being discussed here. Ugh…

  23. 22
    Kristin says:

    I responded more substantively, but I think it got lost in spam because of a link to feministe? When my comments are moderated, they usually show up in the mod queue–that’s why I think it got lost.

    The shorter version of my response to what PG said is just: No. Just no. Fail. We’re not Object Lessons for Morality Plays, and that kind of thing is extremely trivializing.

  24. 23
    Alison Hymes says:

    Yup, Blue eyes, brown eyes and also a male history teacher who decided on his own one day in 11th grade to tell all the girls in the class they had to sit behind the boys without any initial explanation and even the explanation was pathetic. Since this was a long time ago and I still remember it my conclusion is that it was only successful in being upsetting and humiliating to the girls. And no one in our quite small class ever talked about it to anyone else.

  25. 24
    PG says:

    The shorter version of my response to what PG said is just: No. Just no. Fail. We’re not Object Lessons for Morality Plays, and that kind of thing is extremely trivializing.

    1) How did morality come into this? It’s posing a practical problem that needs to be solved: how do we ensure that this environment is one in which everyone can operate? It’s not saying, “And disabled people are saints!” or “God loves you if you love the guy in a wheelchair.” To the extent there’s any morality here, it’s at most the implicit assumption that disabled people aren’t supposed to be killed at birth Spartan-style but instead are integrated members of our society.

    2) It’s trivializing for people to think about how to make an environment accommodating to someone whose abilities are different from the average person’s? How exactly is the ADA supposed to be complied with if people aren’t supposed to think about this before an actual disabled person presents herself? The biggest headaches in ADA litigation come when a place open to the public (e.g. hotels, amusement parks, etc.), school or workplace hasn’t had the imagination to think through this when designing the space. My friends who are architects at firms that handle small projects run into this all the time with relatively unsophisticated clients who never have thought to look at whether a space accommodates the needs of the disabled. Why is it a bad thing for this to be part of kids’ spatial assessment?

    3) The comparison to feministe or other classroom experiments where the goal is to make the kids “feel” like they’re living in slavery or hyper-patriarchy seems inapt. (Particularly where those experiments involved putting the historically-oppressed group *back into* the status of being oppressed; I suggested putting a kid who is averagely abled into the wheelchair. I don’t know what your school was like, but mine didn’t have so many kids in wheelchairs that a teacher could count on one in every class.) Creating an ADA-compliant environment is not a fake situation; it’s a real concern that any business owner or employer has to take seriously. The focus of the simulation is not on the disability — how does it “feel” to be disabled? — but on the environment: how do we fix this place?

  26. 25
    Yusifu says:

    Kristin, Yipes, I phrased that very badly–my only excuse is that it was late at night where I am.

    What I had meant to convey was that the lesson suggests it’s completely awful to have a disability, even though the experiences kids get have very little to do with actually having one. All it really serves to do is to make kids scared of disabilities, which is utterly perverse.

  27. 26
    Lexie says:

    As a PWD who has both worked in disability advocacy and formerly in the public schools, let me just say that we do NOT do disability simulations. The results are usually trivializing and do only bring up fears of disability than teach any kind of empowering lesson about disability. I think you will find this policy fairly universal among disability advocacy groups.

    The thing that is not recognized is that PWD have skills and knowledge about how to traverse the world with a disability. Most of these simulations last no more than from 10 minutes to a day, and that is not long enough for the participants to gain the skills and practice needed to become confident in their skills as “disabled” people. PWD usually go through months, if not years of training such as physical and occupational therapy, orientation and mobility, augmentative communication training etc. respective of what their disability is. They also often have very, very customized equipment that is made exactly for them. Throwing someone in a generic wheelchair with no training for a short amount of time is not simulating disability, it is real frustration.

    I think some long-term simulations WITH TRAINING can be valuable in certain circumstances. For example, teachers of the blind who go through 3-6 months of blindfold training 8 hours a day while gaining the skills of Braille, computer tech, and orientation and mobility can be very useful. But these little “disability day” simulations usually do more harm than good.

    It is MUCH MUCH more effective to introduce students to real live PWD as guest speakers and the like who can show their competence and humanity and also answer questions accurately about how they accomplish things and what their lives are like (which most teachers cannot). Introducing students to real people has almost universally more positive impact than the whole disability simulation game.

  28. 27
    Lexie says:

    Also, PG. When people think ADA they usually think architectural barriers. Obviously that is a important issue, but there are already written out standards that architects and contractors can use that are very specific. A small business owner hasn’t thought through what needs to be done in their architectural space not so much because they didn’t run around in a wheelchair for ten minutes, its because they didn’t open a book and bother to build to the standards and comply with the law. I’m not saying it would be worthless for a dense contractor to get in a wheelchair and see how it works, but again, that is an adult with a specific task at hand.

    The issues that PWD deal with go way beyond architectural barriers. Most are attitudinal and affect things like employment, health care, access to housing and transportation and social issues. Disability simulations are not going to get you anywhere in these domains besides further “othering” PWD by showing how different and difficult it is to sit in a wheelchair /put on a blindfold for an hour with no other information or training that comes from an actual person who knows something about disabilities. Almost universally, when you do exit interviews of children who have done simulations, they will talk in terms of what was hard and what they couldn’t do. Almost univerally, when you talk to kids who actually got to meet a PWD and ask questions you hear things such as how that person has a lot in common with them and how they could do a lot of things. The proof is in the research, and if I didn’t have to run my kids to preschool right now, I’d find it for you. Maybe I can dig it up later.

  29. 28
    PG says:

    Lexie,

    It is MUCH MUCH more effective to introduce students to real live PWD as guest speakers and the like who can show their competence and humanity and also answer questions accurately about how they accomplish things and what their lives are like (which most teachers cannot). Introducing students to real people has almost universally more positive impact than the whole disability simulation game.

    I agree that PWD would be valuable guest speakers, but a lot of teachers don’t like to rely on passive listening as the sole method of pedagogy, and prefer to mix the guest speaker with a more active method.

    I am evidently not communicating the point of the exercise very well, but I’ll try again: the point is NOT to experience being in the wheelchair or blindfolded — only one person does that, and doesn’t do it for the experience — but to experience working with the person who is in the wheelchair or blindfolded. Say you have a class of 24, divide it into two teams, with one simulated disabled person on each team. That means 22 of the kids are not simulating having a disability, but simulating accommodating a disability. That’s the point, because that’s what the statistical majority of people in our society do in relationship to disability: they don’t have a disability themselves, but they work, play, learn or live with people who do. I agree it’s trivializing to pretend for 10 minutes that one has a disability, but I don’t see how it can be trivializing to introduce kids to a real, live issue that they’re very likely to encounter.

  30. 29
    Kristin says:

    Yusifu: Okay, you meant something far different. Thanks for the clarification.

  31. 30
    Kristin says:

    Yusifu: Okay, you meant something far different. Thanks for the clarification.

    Lexie: Thanks for speaking up here. So you know, PG seems to gleefully turn every post about disability on this blog into a cesspool of ableism and never gets called out by the bloggers. She’s not worth engaging, though I’m happy to see others calling her out at this point. It’s not really our obligation to teach bigots about Ableism 101. Plenty of resources out there. I’ve posted some in the past, and I’ve seen others do so as well. From here on out, I’ll ignore her or leave it at a succinct “fuck you.” No point. For me, at least.

  32. 31
    PG says:

    Kristin,

    Can you cite a single prior post on AAB that’s about disability, where I’ve commented about disability and you’ve been reading? As I recall, in the prior thread where you decided that you were too offended to continue your participation in a conversation about disability, you said you weren’t going to read any more before I even started commenting on the issue of disability (my only comments at that point were about bean’s definition of abuse).

    I know that you often say that you’re not going to educate people when they disagree with you (instead of reading their argument in good faith and explaining why they’re getting it wrong), but I think this is one of the few times I’ve seen you make stuff up out of thin air. (Although the “gleefully” is par for the course — why consider the possibility that someone is seriously trying to engage a topic, when you can assume they’re just happily trying to be hurtful?)

    Also, have you considered that people who disagree with you do so because they’re coming from a different perspective, not because they’re wholly uneducated on the topic? You talk about disability from the perspective of being disabled. My background comes from studying the legal issues and working for the ABA’s Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law. I acknowledge that I don’t know what it’s like to be disabled — but I thought the whole “experiencing what it’s like to be disabled” was what you thought was trivializing about the simulations.

  33. 32
    Kristin says:

    PG: Why, yes, I can. The last one. I can’t be arsed to dig up the link, but the one in which the woman with asperger’s syndrone and another illness was denied home healthcare coverage. It was not terribly long ago.

  34. 33
    PG says:

    Kristin,

    PG: Why, yes, I can. The last one. I can’t be arsed to dig up the link, but the one in which the woman with asperger’s syndrone and another illness was denied home healthcare coverage. It was not terribly long ago.

    Remember where I said just now, “As I recall, in the prior thread where you decided that you were too offended to continue your participation in a conversation about disability, you said you weren’t going to read any more before I even started commenting on the issue of disability (my only comments at that point were about bean’s definition of abuse).” and could be arsed to dig up the link?

    https://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2009/02/08/rights-of-nasty-people/

    Could you point out where, when you were still reading the thread, I started a “cesspool of ableism”? I could have sworn it was bean that you were accusing of being a horrible, no good, very bad person in that thread.

  35. 34
    Mandolin says:

    Okay, this isn’t my thread, and I wasn’t deeply interested in the conversation besides “Arrrrrrgh, what the heck is wrong with people complaining about a disabled children’s TV host? Clearly there need to be more people with visible disabilities on TV.” I mean, that seems self-evident. I didn’t realize the thread was going to move on from there, so I didn’t follow it, and I’m not sure any of the other mods did either.

    But clearly a mod should have stepped in earlier. Let’s see:

    1) Yes, it’s ableist to slur someone by calling them a moron, and a particularly odd/ironic/poor reaction to a situation where you’re criticizing the target for ableism. Kristen’s recommended “stupid fucks” is an excellent alternative suggestion, as is … well, most anything that’s not an insult which would end up reducing your argument to “you’re such a bad person for discriminating against people with one kind of disability that the best way I can describe you and your behavior is to imply that you’re someone with another kind of disability.”

    2) Kristen, your reactions to PG are way too personal, and not in keeping with our comments policy. PG has pointed out that you are extremely free with slinging bad faith accusations at people who disagree with you. That’s not cool.

    3) PG, I understand the distinction you’re trying to make where you’re suggesting that kids learn (via roleplay) what it’s like to work with students who have disabilities, rather than having kids learn (via roleplay) what it’s like to be blindfolded for 10 minutes while being told that that’s what it’s like to be blind.

    I might ask that you consider it like this: it’s basically going to always be problematic when you’re asking a member of a privileged group to act like a member of a non-privileged group for a brief period of time for educational purposes. It wouldn’t be okay to have one boy at an all boy’s school dress up as a girl so that other boys could learn to work with him, or to have someone wear black face at an all-white for a lesson on integration, or to use fat suits, or so on.

    Even though the purpose of your exercise is not for any one student to learn what it’s like to have less privilege by role playing for a short period of time, there are still problems with the model of bringing the ‘other” into the classroom (or any other environment) not by actually admitting that person, but by maintaining segregation and only allowing the “other” to be represented by an allowable proxy that can be quickly transformed back to “normal.”

    Also, what kind of reaction do you expect kids with disabilities who are in the classroom to have to these proposed exercises? Maybe they’re not blind or in a wheelchair. Maybe they have ADHD or other kinds of psychological or physiological conditions that are classified as disabilities. The framework of your proposed lesson others and eliminates them.

    I don’t think your proposed lesson plan is a fundamentally bad idea from a teaching perspective, but I do think that it would end up reinforcing privilege and othering in ways that weren’t your intention when you proposed it.

    4) Lexie, it’s awesome to know that research exists. That’s really framework shifting in my head. Thanks so much.

  36. 35
    Sailorman says:

    Er…

    Kristen, is PG being ableist, in your view, because she disagrees with you? It sorta seems that way. Obviously people can have differences of opinion, and PG doesn’t seem to be acting maliciously.

  37. 36
    PG says:

    Mandolin,

    Thanks, and sorry for my part in requiring moderation (this is the second time in a month for a thread I’ve been on… maybe I’ll keep a few thoughts to myself for a while :-P).

    You make good points. Any kind of role play may just be fundamentally unworkable, although I’d point out that ADHD to a kid often comes across as an exaggerated version of the average child’s difficulty in staying focused and on task, so I’m not sure to what extent a child will perceive it as a disability rather than just “Joey goes to the school nurse to take medicine every day.” (I’m wondering these days if there’s such a thing as adult-onset ADHD, as I find myself having more trouble staying focused now than I did as a kid.)

    It wouldn’t be okay to have one boy at an all boy’s school dress up as a girl so that other boys could learn to work with him, or to have someone wear black face at an all-white for a lesson on integration, or to use fat suits, or so on.

    True, but there isn’t much of a possible accommodation perspective on race and gender differences. It’s reasonable to make kids aware that someone in a wheelchair or who is blind or deaf is working with a different set of tools (ramps; beeping sidewalk signals; lip-reading or ASL), but do we really want to teach boys that girls, or whites that blacks, all have a different perspective on a physical environment than boys/whites do? I think there is a reason that we have a statutory requirement of accommodation for PWD that doesn’t exist for people of color (having a wheelchair-accessible bathroom is mandatory; designating a “black-accessible” bathroom would be illegal). Maybe it is because I am coming too much from the legalistic, “the goal of the ADA to maximize all Americans’ access to public accommodations, workplaces and educational institutions” perspective, but the comparisons to race and gender don’t work for me.

  38. 37
    chingona says:

    PG, I see your proposal as kind of problematic. On the one hand, it seems too similar to the exercise where all the kids pretend to have a disability. I know it’s just one, with the other ones helping, but it basically seems problematic in the same way, just on a slightly different scale. On the other hand, while helping to improve accommodation or remove barriers isn’t a bad thing, it seems to me like the kids could still be left with a message about what people with disabilities can’t do. I think the potential to create pity instead of understanding is still pretty high.

    I’m not saying accommodation isn’t important, but in this post, the issue is people reacting with disgust and revulsion to someone who looks different, people who think they should never have to deal with the fact that people who are different in some way exist. Whatever drives that, it is something much uglier and deeper than not realizing how that woman on the show might need an additional tool to open a jar or something.

  39. 38
    PG says:

    the issue is people reacting with disgust and revulsion to someone who looks different, people who think they should never have to deal with the fact that people who are different in some way exist. Whatever drives that, it is something much uglier and deeper than not realizing how that woman on the show might need an additional tool to open a jar or something.

    I’m not sure that all of it is. Definitely most of it is about not being able to handle someone who is physically different in this way, just as some people have a lot of trouble looking at a child with cleft palate. But I think some of it also has to do with a belief that people who are disabled are supposed to be in institutions or “homes” or some other place other than out in public, on TV, because my gosh this world just isn’t built for them so they should stay home. (I bet there is significant overlap between the kind of people who would complain about this host and those who think disability accommodation is too burdensome.)

    I guess what I was hoping could be fostered with the role-play I described was:

    1) what all learning should encourage, children’s sense of their ability to problem-solve and think creatively to achieve goals; and

    2) an embedding of the attitude that there’s a PWD equivalent of “we’re here! we’re queer! get used to it!” — that PWD are part of our team and although they’re different in a way that’s not quite the same way people of other races or genders might be different, it is part of our responsibility as good citizens to ensure that all our society’s members can use their talents.

  40. 39
    Ruchama says:

    an embedding of the attitude that there’s a PWD equivalent of “we’re here! we’re queer! get used to it!”

    The issue is that, in your proposed exercise, they aren’t there. Other people pretending to be them are.

  41. 40
    Mandolin says:

    “Maybe it is because I am coming too much from the legalistic, “the goal of the ADA to maximize all Americans’ access to public accommodations, workplaces and educational institutions” perspective, but the comparisons to race and gender don’t work for me.”

    Probably — if you think of it as drag, or -face, as I think wheelchair dancer recently suggested one might consider abled people’s pretending to be disabled, then it might be clearer.

  42. 41
    Alison Hymes says:

    “Maybe it is because I am coming too much from the legalistic, “the goal of the ADA to maximize all Americans’ access to public accommodations, workplaces and educational institutions” perspective, but the comparisons to race and gender don’t work for me.”

    PG, I think that is exactly the problem, you are responding to a post about feelings and identity and prejudice from a legalistic perspective rather than a personal perspective. Well, I’m still not sure why the comparisons don’t work for you though–this post was about prejudiced behavior not legal discrimination nor accommodations–how this woman opens a jar seems an odd point to make in this context.

    You may not mean it to come across this way at all, but to say the comparisons don’t work for you comes across as if you see or think of people with disabilities as fundamentally “other”. I keep trying to think of another way to read what you have written but I haven’t found one.
    As a lawyer, would you not expect 18 years after the ADA was passed and just after the ADA restoration Act was passed that the folks in charge of complying with it have had enough time to learn what they need to do to obey the law of the land?
    Segregation of people with disabilities is illegal–from the voc. rehab. act to the ADA to the Olmstead decision-so I’m not understanding why as a lawyer you are saying it’s different?

    If you could explain the difference instead of stating it that might help.

  43. 42
    PG says:

    Ruchama,

    The issue is that, in your proposed exercise, they aren’t there. Other people pretending to be them are.

    Agreed, but 1) it’s impractical to assume there will be a physically disabled person in any given classroom (no one in my elementary school classes was physically disabled, to my knowledge); and 2) the point isn’t to focus on pretending to be disabled.

    Mandolin,

    Yes, I think the drag and -face are useful terms for having someone pretend to be something they’re not.

    Alison,

    Well, I’m still not sure why the comparisons don’t work for you though–this post was about prejudiced behavior not legal discrimination nor accommodations–how this woman opens a jar seems an odd point to make in this context.

    That was the original post. People, starting with Adrian @ 13, then commented about educational role-plays in which people pretend to be disabled in an effort to gain more understanding of the experience of being disabled. I find it implausible that people who do such role-plays are engaged in prejudiced behavior, although it probably is stupid and insensitive behavior, because the whole point is to try to understand what it’s like, rather than to just see PWD as this unfathomable Other who needs to stay far, far away.

    And I never said anything about how this particular woman opens a jar — that was chingona! Can we please pay attention to who says what in a thread instead of lumping everything together?

    Segregation of people with disabilities is illegal–from the voc. rehab. act to the ADA to the Olmstead decision-so I’m not understanding why as a lawyer you are saying it’s different?

    Well, for one thing disability isn’t at all Constitutionally protected (unlike racial and gender classifications) — it’s protected by statute, which means that, for example, there are limits on the extent to which you can enforce your Equal Protection rights as a disabled person on state governments. See, e.g., Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett. Moreover, the ADA isn’t about simply treating PWD like non-disabled people, as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other anti-discrimination laws dealing with race and gender are simply about “treat all people the same”; it has mandates on how to ensure equal access for PWD that simply do not have an analogy to how the law mandates equal access for people of color or for women. Seriously, what is the equivalent of the wheelchair-accessible bathroom, or the blind-accessible website, for a person who is of a different race or gender than the default?

  44. 43
    Alison Hymes says:

    My mistake PG–I don’t tend to lump everything together but I did attribute one comment that you did not make to you and I apologize for that.

    I think I can’t figure out a way to get this across to you, the other aspects of this, especially since you aren’t really responding to those concerns so I hope that you figure it out at some point, it’s a long journey sometimes, and I do hope you get the opportunity to represent someone with a disability in an accesss law suit if that is what you would like to do.

  45. Pingback: Parents Disturbed By Disabled TV Host Need To Rethink, Methinks « Gossips And Stars

  46. 44
    Lexie says:

    Oh, back on the thread and stuff has happened.

    First, I want to say, PG, that Mandolin is right on about the weird sort of othering your exercise will promote. I don’t know if I can explain the feeling I get when reading your plan. It is like teaching the kids that the whole focus of being around a person like me is to accommodate me and that there is a learned way to do it that must be taught. I am an individual person first, I am not a mess of accommodations. Every deafblind, blind, deaf, wheelchair user, whatever, is going to require different accommodations. We need not be categorized by “this person is going to play the deaf person. How would you accommodate her?” because each deaf person is an individual first and the number one requirement is to meet and get to know that person. Only after getting to know that person will you know what you can do to be accommodating. It is all about communication and getting to know each other as equals. Is a child pretending to be a PWD really going to have the knowledge to communicate his or her needs to his classmates in any meaningful way? Are the classmates going to learn anything about how to feel comfortable interacting with a PWD when the person they are play interacting with is just pretending and doesn’t even know what accommodations a real PWD would really need on an individual basis? It seems like a recipe for disaster, or at the very least, ineffectual. I can imagine it now. My kids’ dad (wheelchair user) and I are walking down the street, minding out own business. And we pass a school where the children have just completed your exercise. Instead of the usual innocent QandA that we usually get where we have a positive interaction with each other, the kids will rush around us going “There’s the curb cut! You need to go there!” or “Here! Grab my elbow and I’ll help you across the street!” or “Hi! In front of you is a tree, and a blue car! and a boy wearing a green stripped shirt and jeans! and there is a sidewalk! And let me go on to describe everything to you rather than just talking to you!” The number one rule of being around PWD is not knowing any special way to accommodate them but it is just to treat them as human and communicate/ask that person what they need and have them explain it to you themselves. We are all individuals. The only way to really be comfortable doing that is to see and interact with real live PWD, not play pretend actors representing us like curious zoo animals who need special care.

    Second, you seem to have this idea that PWD are some rare tiger that is hard to come across out in the woods. When I used my speaker example, I did it with the knowledge that every city of a certain size (say 100,000+) is more than likely to have an independent living center, a commission for the blind/hearing impaired, advocacy chapters like the NFB, NAD, ADAPT, etc. All of these places have speakers bureaus. There is hardly a disability services agency or advocacy group out there who doesn’t have “public education” as one of their missions and a speakers bureau to go along with it. Not to mention just a general population of PWD which can probably be found within the school community. I can see access to PWD being a problem in rural districts, but that is one reason why they attempt to field trip a lot. But in a city? Not going to be a problem, in my experience. Also, when ever I’ve ever done these kinds of presentations with schoolkids, I’ve always made it interactive. Since as a deafblind person, I am gadget heavy, I would bring a ton of small gadgets that I use, pass them around and show how they work. There is a way to make presentations active, as long as the presenter is actually speaking from within the community. Kids always seem very engaged and interested, have fun and ask excellent questions during my presentations.

  47. 45
    A.W. says:

    “Agreed, but 1) it’s impractical to assume there will be a physically disabled person in any given classroom (no one in my elementary school classes was physically disabled, to my knowledge); ”

    There’s that, too. Disability doesn’t depend on visual aids – a lot of people attempt work without them, or only use particular gadgets for particular jobs, and lot of things can’t be helped with accessibility devices. A lot of problems were (are? probably still are, I was one of those ‘largely missed’ kids) also missed in school because kids learn to compensate to the best of their ability by themselves. Just because you didn’t notice adaptive techniques as a kid doesn’t mean there was nothing there, and as an adult I imagine it would still be difficult to spot the same, since you don’t use ’em yourself, and everyone has different techniques, many – wildly – different. The ‘Have a kid pretend to be disabled to teach peers accomidation techniques’ also encourages invisible disability ignorance besides the “I can’t do this thing in the ten minutes allotted with dark glass/a blindfold, so therefore, people with such and such disabilities can’t accomplish this task either”. It also encourages relying on visual aids (cane, wheelchair, hearing aid) for disability recognition. No Visual Signifiers = No Problem, you’re just like Everyman, no difficulties for you, so there’s – one -way to do something, and no variations are allowed, especially in adulthood. The people with signifiers get stereotyped and ‘help’ when it isn’t needed or wanted, the people with no/little signifiers get informed they’re faking/lazy and to Try Harder. Better to have people talk about their disabilities and the many variations therein, much more workable.

  48. 46
    Ruth says:

    I can think of a simple solution to the problem of cheap and timely access (for lack of a better word) to people with various disabilities for consciousness-raising/educational purposes. If you cannot find or easily schedule a visit from a real person who can explain the real strategies they use and difficulties they encounter, you can bring a real person’s perspective in via books, articles, videos, etc.

    As a child I was read “Emma and I”, a book about the author’s experiences growing up in the 1950s in a family whose members all had serious visual impairments and living independently with a guide dog as a young adult. I also read the Little House series, which portrays Mary, the daughter blinded in late childhood, as a skilled and valued member of the family, not an “angel of the sickbed”. None of these stories is very PC, as they reflect the attitudes of the times, but both of them revealed to me as a child that people with disabilities (or blindness, at any rate) are individuals who deal with the practical and social disadvantages of their disability by developing skills and strategies and by calling on friends, family and the government for dignified assistance. They also gave me practical examples of what life is like for blind people.

    As an adult, I found “Moving Violations” by John Hockenberry similarly useful and enlightening account (as well as being a fascinating account of stuff he reported on).

  49. 47
    denise says:

    I always taught my children that you do not dislike people for how they look like but you can dislike then for how they act. What horrible parents these children have and what terrible human beings they must be. I have many more horrific names for these parents. Children are more accepting of differences of people than adults. It is hard to imagine anyone being upset by this wonderful person. They will be going to hell in a hand basket. Karma will get them and they will regret the day that they were totally disgusting morons. Obviously they are not very educated because they are so stupid.

  50. 48
    Brian says:

    So it’s perfectly okay to have a cartoon dragon in a wheelchair to portray disability in society, but when we are presented with it in a real world setting…. it’s bad?

  51. 49
    Chris says:

    Pardon my ignorance, but what is the ableist connotation of the word “moron?” Has this word been associated with people with actual mental disabilities? I’ve never heard it used that way, ever, but of course I could just be uneducated about this.

  52. 50
    PG says:

    Chris,

    Historically, words like “moron,” “imbecile,” “cretin” and “idiot” have been used to refer to the mentally disabled. If you go to dictionary.com and look up “moron,” you’ll see this:
    “Psychology. a person of borderline intelligence in a former classification of mental retardation, having an intelligence quotient of 50 to 69.”

    See, e.g., Justice Holmes’s famous pronouncement in Buck v. Bell that “three generations of idiots are enough.” (The case supported Virginia’s eugenics program in which Carrie Buck, deemed an “idiot,” was forcibly sterilized; aside from the violation of her human rights, this was factually wrong as she had been categorized as an “idiot” simply after getting pregnant out of wedlock; her child was taken away and also assumed to be an “idiot” despite later documentation that she performed above average academically.)

  53. 51
    Alison Hymes says:

    Carrie Buck also is rumored or more than rumored to have been the victim of sexual assault by a male member of the prominent family that she worked for/took her in.

    Moron was in many U.S. state legal codes and idiot just went out in Ohio last year.

  54. 52
    Chris says:

    Wow. That is quite a sad story. Thank you.

  55. 53
    Jackie says:

    Well, I might have been more of an anxious child but in my opinon, I think there are some things parents should consider their children might be thinking when seeing Cerrie:

    1. What if this we’re to happen to me?

    2. What happened to her to cause that to happen?

    Pretty much, the issue is feeling a sense of security in understanding why someone would have their arm like that, and that there are ways to go on about your life regardless of it.

    I have noticed watching Sesame Street every so often, that they have really done an excellent job of having disabled children on their show, to discuss their disabilities, or just be another one of the kids. I think though, once a child knows this couldn’t happen to them out of nowhere. I mean, I could imagine a kid coming up with a monster under the bed stole her hand story, as a way to explain it in their mind. And that Cerrie is okay, and her having her arm being different like that is what’s normal for her, should clear up most issues. I would say you’d have to be one lazy parent to not even be able to discuss those things.