The question Dr. Hirsch and others have asked is:
Has anyone heard of a social movement for change that didn't have an
educational
component ?
My answer is yes--status movements for "change," (such as Temperance, Birth
Control and Women's Rights, in the 19th century) tended to push for change
that -preserved the status quo (Gusfield, Symbolic Crusades, 1986). In
these cases, there was less an educational component because the status
groups calling for change knew what they wanted and knew who they wanted to
exclude. I have read and watched all of the emails on this topic and have
yet to hear anyone point out what you all know is true. That when you say
you want diversity at universities to include people with disabilities, and
that you want the SDS to send speakers around to talk about disabilities,
you actually mean white persons with disabilities and their issues. Since
there are few (if any) people of color with disabilities in SDS, I don't
see any issues of say, poverty and disability, the double impact of
disability and minority status, or just plain cultural issues of
disability and minorities. It puts me in mind of the early women's movement
when women said they wanted to be treated as "equals," but their issues had
nothing to do with minority women--did they want to be treated as equals. .
.or treated like white men? Look around you at the "history of people with
disability" Where are the minority issues that our history is full of.
Which of you scholars are writing about disability in an all inclusive
manner--such as to include people like me, a black woman who has spent her
life in a wheelchair ? Are you even aware of the issues of my group?
The early temperance movement was started by the elite upper middle class
when they felt that (due to a large amount of poor and eastern European
immigrants) they were losing control. Temperance was their way of gaining
that control back. "Status concepts lead us to focus upon such elements of
values, beliefs, consumption habits and the cultural items differentiating
non class groups from each other." (David Reisman, The Lonley Crowd, Yale
University Press, 1950 pp31-36) By using temperance as a sign of being in
the elite class, this group was able to maintain their status by
identifying all who were not in their class as lower and deserving less
respect.
I bring all of this up because, as I mentioned earlier, I see a great many
parallels between the symbolic crusades of the 19th century and the
Disability Cultural movement of today. This seems to be a status struggle
for an elite group of persons with disabilities (white, well educated)
to--in the midst of the Diversity movement--acquire the status of their
able-bodied white counterparts. This does not seem to be about equal
rights but about getting the same rights as other elite white persons have
in this society. So my questions are: when you say that diversity programs
need to include issues and persons with disabilities, what issues and
persons are you meaning? when you say you should send speakers from SDS
around to talk about disability at these campuses, how diverse will your
speakers be and how diverse will your issues be? Where are the disabled
people of color in the Disability Cultural Movement? Where are the
Disabled Speakers of Color in your movement? And finally in quoting a
saying you all seem so fond of ,"Nothing about us without us," what "us"
are you meaning? I ask these questions because I think that you may need
to answer them before you begin "educating" people on disability.
This is not a complaint or a flame to this list and I don't mean to
insult but to perhaps get us thinking about what we mean when we say
Disability Studies. And --more important--what groups we leave out when we
do Disability Studies. From my perspective, you seem to have used the
minority studies model to create it and then you did away with any minority
perspective--as if being disabled is the only minority that's important.
Now you accuse Diversity Programs at universities of doing the same thing
that you seem to have done, which is to forget the struggles and issues of
a whole group of people with disabilities. W.E.B. DuBoise said, "The
foremost issue that needs to be resolved in the 20th Century will be that
of race (The Souls of Black Folks, Duboise 1941).
Call it Disability Studies, Disability Culture, whatever, you will still
need to acknowledge and resolve the issue of race within within your group
if you are to gain any credibility with other status groups in this
society. Those of us in the "minority people with disabilities" group
will be around. . .watching. . .to keep you honest.
Carlos Clarke Drazen
UIC Athletics/Department of Disability and Human Development
1640 West roosevelt RD m/c 626
312/413-7520 v 312/413-1326 FAX
[log in to unmask]
I am not a crook! --Richard Nixon
To sign off the list, send a message to [log in to unmask]
with the message signoff dsshe-l To search the archives, go to
<http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=dsshe-l>http://listserv.buffalo.
edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=dsshe-l
Questions? Contact Listowner Dan Ryan at [log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|