This past year I have worked as an in-home healthcare aide for a few adults who have development disabilities. I help cook their meals, provide transportation, and assist with other miscellaneous needs. The more I have taken them out into public, the more I have noticed the ways people choose to interact with them. I have begun categorizing people into four groups depending on how they address my clients’ presence: those who give them dirty looks, those who completely ignore their presence, those who communicate with them as if they’re two years old, and those who treat them as actual human beings. I fully recognize that they may lack certain social skills and need extra time to respond, but they are still intelligent, thoughtful people. One of my clients teaches me a new historical fact every time we’re together and my other client has learned to trick his staff into giving him caffeinated coffee, even though he’s strictly limited to decaf. Society has been stigmatized to treat people with disabilities as if they’re broken, but they are not. They have feelings, can understand when they’re being made fun of, and know their self-worth. When I see people treating members of the disabled community negatively, I educate them to help them better interact with people like my clients. The system has failed to teach people ways to constructively help and interact with them, and instead has silenced and alienated my clients.
It is too frequent that we see the isolation of those with a disability because of a stigma. In Toni Morrison’s Recitatif, we heard Roberta and Twyla bully Maggie, one of the women who worked in the kitchen who had “legs like parentheses” (Morrison 2), signifying she possibly had a physical disability, and an intellectual disability because they mentioned she never spoke. They screamed things like, “Dummy! Dummy!” (Morrison 3) and “Bow legs! Bow legs!” (Morrison 3) at her. I have attached an article with great advice on how to best communicate with people with disabilities of any kind:
This article does a fantastic job of providing great communication techniques, such as talking in a normal toned voice and asking if they need assistance, instead assuming they do. Something I really want to highlight in the list is to refer to them as “someone with a disability,” not “a disabled person.” This might seem like a slight grammatical change, but keeping their disability separate from them as a person is empowering. After all, whatever their disability, it’s not who they are, it’s simply one of many characteristics making up who they are. I found a great article that further educates how to talk about people with disabilities:
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/disability-inclusion.html
This article focuses on the importance of wording that is chosen when referring to those with disabilities and offers a wonderful chart highlighting language that’s acceptable as well as language to avoid. People with developmental disabilities deserve better and one way for us all to do better is to educate ourselves.
This is a great post Abby! I can relate with your experience with working with individuals of the special needs community. I was a Unified Parter for the Special Olympics throughout high school and am still heavily involved with volunteering. Individuals who belong to this community definitely face daily systemic injustices, as they are either ignored, misunderstood, or bullied heavily for their conditions. The example with Maggie is also a great connection to this injustice. It is evident that the girls were clearly picking on Maggie because she was an easy target and unable to communicate for herself.
Great post Abby! It is too often we see people treat disabled people unfairly. A disability does not mean they are not still human. They deserve to be treated like any other person. It’s sad that you had to experience four different categories of people based on how the treated these clients. This personal experience of yours ties in very nicely with the character Maggie from the Recitatif reading. The girls picked on Maggie simply because she was “different” from the rest of them.