US

Yesterday as I was wheeling myself around Sobey's, our local grocery store, I felt wonderful. I hadn't been out anywhere where I could really move for several days. I saw a long aisle with no one in it and I 'ran' down it - pushing the chair as hard and fast as I could. I swear I could feel the wind in what's left of my hair. It was, wonderful. I slowed myself and rounded the corner. Forgetting, momentarily, what I was (who I am seldom matters) and found myself being stared at by a mother and child. Mother pulls child into her and away from me, like I had some disease that her innocent child could contract.

Every disabled person understands that there is a deep and abiding social prejudice against disability.

I was 'on line' chatting with a new friend of mine, also with a disability, who was telling me about having recently been told that her disability arose from a sinful state. That she represented, bodily, the ugliness of the human soul. That she needed to 'wash in the blood of Jesus' and receive healing in her heart - the healing in her body would follow.

Every disabled person understands that there is a deep and abiding social prejudice against disability.

A few days ago, in the course of a consultation, I spoke with a mother of a little boy with Down Syndrome. She was telling me that at her local day care - parents have petitioned to have her son removed from the day care. They don't want their children being around 'one of those kind of children' and they want their child to be raised in a 'healthy atmosphere'.

Every one who loves a disabled person understands that there is a deep and abiding social prejudice against disability.

A few months ago my boss at Vita had to go to a community meeting to settle down neighbours upset at having a group home with disabled people on their street, in their world. She told me the story with a tired voice, like she's fought this battle for far too often for far too long.

Everyone who works with disabled people understands that there is a deep and abiding social prejudice against disability.

So why don't other people get it?

I've recieved several emails from people about the judgement in the case of Brent Martin. The boys who brutally beat him to death all received life sentences. Fine. Good, even. Some kind of justice. But at the same time, no justice. The judge did not in any way relate the crime to Brent's disability. This will not go down in the books as a disability hate crime which it so clearly was. Brent will die simply a victim of drunken youths. His death, ultimately, may not matter. His martyrdom will be taken from him, from us. From we who need his death to matter.

Why?

I recieved a snarky email from a Latimer Lover who tells me that the court stated that Tracy's disability had nothing to do with her murder. That I misunderstood Latimer and his motivations and since the court said disability was irrelevant then disability was irrelevant. Yeah, right. If Tracy had been a bright child, a talkative A student, who suffered from pain - her murder at the hands of her father would have been seen in the same light. Please. But the court refuses to 'see' her disability. To acknowledge that there is a social prejudice.

Why?

It has only been recently that the words 'disability' and 'community' have been used together. Only recently that we have been acknowleging in language that there is a collective sensibility of those of us in chairs on canes, crutches and walkers. That those who learn differently, walk differently, talk differently - may be united by difference. It is our community, the community of those with disabilities, those that love those with disabilities, those that support those with disabilities - that must become forthright in talking about prejudice when it occurs. Confronting disphobia when it happens. Using the word 'bigot' to describe those whose prejudice guides their actions.

It's up to us.

Because we are failed by others.