Given your stats then, you obviously do not need minorities or people of
color in your organization--since you seem to be handling diversity so
well.
At 09:34 PM 10/1/99 -0700, you wrote:
>To open more windows and clear more air, I thought it might help the
>discussion
>on diversity in disability studies to add some data. A review of this year’s
>program for the annual meeting of the Society for Disability Studies (SDS)
>indicates that at least 7 panels had presentations that specifically
>focused on
>race/ethnicity. Many other presentations considered race/ethnicity as a
>dimension or variable in research, among such variables as gender, age, etc.
>Related issues of poverty and class were also addressed. Because I am not
>personally acquainted with everyone who presented at SDS, it is hard for
me to
>determine exactly how many presenters were from ethnic/racial minority
>communities. Just counting persons I knew, there were at least 10.
>
>The questions about diversity raised on this listserv are critical if we hope
>to address in our scholarship the status and experience of all disabled
>people,
>not just the “damaged” privileged. The facts above are by no means a
>defense of
>SDS. If anything, they demonstrate how much room for improvement there is.
But
>SDS’s membership and Board program committee have at least evidenced some
>commitment to examining the intersection of race, ethnicity, culture and
>disability. I did an Internet exploration of programs, organizations,
>institutions and curricula in other area or minority cultural studies (e.g.,
>African studies, African American studies, Latino studies, Asian American
>studies) and found virtually no evidence of disability or disabled people
as a
>dimension of that scholarship. It appears that more work on diversity is
>needed
>all around.
>
>I am willing, however, to take the stance of defender against the charge that
>disability studies does not address "any issues of say, poverty and
>disability,
>the double impact of disability and minority status, or just plain cultural
>issues of disability and minorities.” True, traditional medical and
>rehabilitation approaches to disability research were certainly guilty of
>neglecting intragroup variation. But disability studies models have prodded
>researchers to attend to socially constructed boundaries, such as race and
>gender, and related oppression. Increasingly, disability studies scholars
>engage in self-criticism around issues of inclusion, representation, equity,
>diversity and privilegeas we should.
>
>The sources of minority under-representation in disability studies are
>complex,
>persistent and deep-seated. It will take concerted effort to understand and
>overturn them. Although it is good to know our colleagues from
>ethnic/racial/cultural minority communities will be “watching” to keep the
>rest
>of us honest, I hope some will not just watch us but will guide and work with
>us to make disability studies more just and encompassing of the human
>spectrum.
>
>
>Carol J. Gill, Ph.D.
>Assistant Professor
>Department of Disability and Human Development
>Executive Officer
>Society for Disability Studies
>University of Illinois at Chicago
>(312) 355-0550 V
>[log in to unmask]
>
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]
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