BADD: Disabled People Aren't Human, Are They?

I've had this sitting in my inbox for a month, now (h/t Lawrence Carter-Long). I have considered writing about it here; I have thought about blogging it on Ouch! I've wanted to write to the Guardian and complain, but I haven't known where to start. Every time I tried, I just came out with pages of rant and screed. They wouldn't have been able to take me seriously.

What can one say in this day and age? This has to qualify as the most offensive, appalling writing I have seen in a very long time. I was appalled to read it. I was appalled to discover it in the Guardian -- that bastion of British liberalism and tolerance. I am making it the subject of my BADD post, because I want to ask what we are willing to accept in order to help someone see that even disabled people might want to stake a claim on being human.

The story follows Stewart Dakers', a community worker's, learning curve, as he discovers that he can dislike a disabled person and that the fact that he can dislike them means he has to consider them as human. I imagine that the editors looked at this and found it worthy of publication because, well, Dakers ends up in the right place -- disabled people are human -- because he is honest about his journey, and because he has to come so far to get to that place.

For my part, I would argue that as praiseworthy as Dakers' journey might be, we should, by now, be able to be more discerning about what we publish in the name of anti-discrimination. My argument is simply that some things are unacceptable and that we should NOT be praising them in national newspapers -- even if the person ends up with the so-called "right" outcome. Some things, some examples of human behaviour -- and for my taste, this is one of them -- are so beyond the pale that they do not merit a pat-on-the-back if you learn how to stop doing them. So, Dakers learns something important, so what? I would argue that not only is his prejudice so ugly it is disgusting, but also that the newspaper's ablism is not far behind.

To publish the story, to assume that there is any kind of newsworthiness to this story is also to presume that the majority of readers would identify with Dakers and that they, too, might be shocked to see his journey and thus might begin similar journeys of their own. Perhaps the editors think that it is shocking and thus also newsworthy that Dakers does begin a journey. Or perhaps they think that it is newsworthy simply to see disabled people as, well, to quote the article "people." Perhaps they thought that this obvious ugliness of this piece would force others to recognize their own discriminatory tendencies? But even if this last insight was part of their motivation, I still don't see the justification for airing the piece as written. The writing here is so one-sided and so filled with extremely prejudiced views and so without interpretive guidance and judgment that I don't see it functioning in this way. In fact, I rather think it legitimizes the discrimination. So, on to the text.

Dave and Sue, the people at the heart of Dakers' essay, are disabled people who have the audacity to live their lives outside the institution and the what I can only think Dakers might see as perhaps irresponsibility to do so (though he never says that explicitly). And here's where the disablism comes in. Dakers, as you will see, says some awful things, but the article expects us to sympathize with him and reward him for being honest and for coming to a new conclusion.

Dakers starts as he means to go on with an assessment of his subjects' impairment: "In today's jargon, they suffer from global delay; a generation ago, they'd have been called "retards". What does this ask of a reader? Are we supposed to feel resistant to the politically correct terminology that hides the fact that Dave and Sue are, in fact, "retards?" Or are we supposed to feel glad that those poor disabled people now have better terminology to describe what Dakers goes on to say is "wrong with them?"

Dakers writes of Dave and Sue. Their "lives are proscribed, colourless - except once a week at the club, when they made rainbow magic, they were Romeo and Juliet, Tony and Maria. She beauteous among the obese and twisted, he articulate among the babblers and dribblers ...." Dave and Sue have jobs. They have a social life. Who's to say if anyone's life is colourless. And what counts as colourless? Dakers is a voluntary community worker -- emphasis on the voluntary. Does he volunteer because without the entertainment of working with the "babblers and dribblers" his life would otherwise be ... "colourless?"

Then, Dave and Sue get engaged and the tone changes. Dakers comments, "Awful to admit, I felt offended; they had taken the romance away and replaced it with a reality that was improper, unseemly. And I was not alone; over the weeks before the wedding, it became clear that neighbours, friends, relatives all reacted in a similar fashion. It wasn't that they shouldn't marry each other, but rather that they shouldn't marry at all." Well, hello. How do you even respond to that? Why shouldn't two disabled people have emotions and emotional lives?

Then, Dave and Sue have the nerve to buy a house. A buddy expresses everyone's feelings: '"So how come a couple of spastics can buy what I can hardly afford to rent?" Admittedly, it was the beer talking, but he was expressing in barbaric terms what we all felt."' Spastics? We all? Who is talking here?

Dave and Sue have a kid. You'll have to go read Daker's response for yourselves. There's all kinds of speculation about the self-esteem issues the kid will have because of his parents. In fact, being raised by Dave and Sue predestines the kid for becoming a hooligan. Dakers notices that he begins to dislike Sue because of the nickname she gives her kid. And bingo! Revelation. Suddenly, Dakers realizes that if he is feeling dislike for Sue, she must be human after all.

It is inappropriate to dislike a disabled person. You can cuddle and tease, pity and respect, because none of these affections involve handling; they can be arm's length, you can walk away, they do not rely on any reciprocation. In other words, Dave and Sue are commodities for charity, for photo opportunities, flags of convenience, the material of OBEs, recipients of unconsulted initiatives. They are not, well, people. But dislike? Dislike is a human affection that engages you and recognises the right of another to an independent life.

Then it clicked: by disliking her I had acknowledged Sue as a person.

Dislike as a marker of humanity. And does feeling this emotion towards Sue touch the claim that it is inappropriate to dislike a disabled person? Inappropriate? Note, also, the use of they. THEY. Dislike seems to engage Dakers, but it does not engage Sue (or Dave). THEY continue not to rely on reciprocation and, as far as this story is concerned, they are commodities for Dakers' inconsiderate navel-gazing.

What does it take to convert someone whose views are as extremely prejudiced (and prejudicial) as these? What do we give him when he sees the light? Why is this in the paper?