Tuesday, June 23
By Katherine Schneider, for the CVPost
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about diversities.
I volunteered to co-chair a county task force on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice. I’m working on text for an online exhibit about the Americans with Disabilities Act turning 30. The news is full of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and pandemic service gaps experienced by various racial and disabled groups.
I’m a cisgender, disabled, Christian, heterosexual, white woman, among other identities.
Need to Listen
The strongest conviction I have is that I need to listen to others’ experiences of the world as a first step toward doing something about the problems we as a county and as a nation face. Two books by black authors that have helped me a lot are Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper.
Both books enlightened me about the physical fear blacks, particularly black men, feel when carrying out their daily lives in our white-dominated society.
Both authors talked eloquently about feeling like they had to be on guard, micro-managing their emotions, not having the luxury of a childhood and feeling “different” in mostly white social groups.
Many of the points raised by these authors are similar to experiences I’ve had as a blind person in a sighted world: feeling both invisible and hyper- visible, needing to super-achieve to be thought competent and being a token minority.
These are familiar to me.
Empathy for lack of trust
The history of unequal treatment of my group, disabled people, gives me some empathy for the lack of trust people in the BLM movement have for the good intentions of us white liberals.
Another book that gave me much food for thought is Sister Outsider, a collection of essays and speeches by Audre Lorde. She takes on sexism, racism, homophobia, ageism and classism in such a way that both the struggles and the hope are apparent.
Originally published in 1984, eight years before Lorde’s death, this book could have been written today – a good reminder for me when I think about how slowly things change in the disability rights area.
More good reads
White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo explained racism as the system which gives whites the power and which is based on prejudices we all have. White Rage by Carol Anderson traces the history of negative reactions by whites to forward motion toward equality by blacks, cloaked in terms of “the war on drugs” or “fiscal responsibility”. I see parallel struggles for those of us fighting ableism and a parallel backlash against the ADA.
Ibram X. Kendi’s How To Be an Antiracist is engrossing reading both because of its suggestions for forward movement and for its exploration of how internalized racism affected him.
Our county task force has its work cut out for it to go from equity talk to equity walk. How will we go beyond a “mutual respect policy” to people respecting differences and being able to talk about them?
I’ll continue reading about diversities. Next on my list are This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson and Sissy: A Coming of Gender Story by Jacob Tobia.