Just Because I'm Quiet Doesn't Mean I Don't Understand

by Dora Raymaker

categories: Advocacy, Communication, social justice

Published May 01, 2009 @ 09:11AM PT

[2009 Blogging Against Disablism Day submission]

About a year ago, coming home from doing an invited presentation at a national scientific conference (AAIDD's annual meeting if you're interested), I listened while the two middle-aged businessmen sitting in my row discussed, loudly, their misfortune at being forced to sit near me. "Well, at least it's a short ride," they consoled each other. I was unable to form words, too tired to pull out my communication device to set them straight, but believe me, I understood the message of discrimination.

Lucy Blackman writes in her book Lucy's Story, "My giggling, hand-biting, angry-singing days seemed to the staff [at the school] to be more frequent than my interactive cooperative ones. They could not know that my comprehension was good enough for me to be distressed by television news or even drama, such as the episode in Holocaust where intellectually disabled people were loaded into a gas wagon." Lucy Blackman also understood the message of discrimination.

A popular autism video included a mother saying, in front of her autistic daughter, that the only reason why she didn't kill her autistic daughter was because of a non-autistic sibling. Perhaps that girl too understood the message of discrimination?

And two days ago at the state capital, I listened to an hour and a half of invited and public testimony in front of the House Education Committee which included gems like, "He was so normal looking...if only he hadn't been so normal looking, it wouldn't have mattered so much that he was self injurious."

Yeah. I'll give a moment here for the urge to vomit (or perhaps the actual vomit) at that horror to pass.

These too, all these: messages of discrimination.

"Much of that was really hard to listen to," another self-advocate started her testimony off-script, responding directly, not quietly, to the message of discrimination.

We understand. We have feelings that can be hurt. She spoke out.

We are not to be discussed in the third person.

We are not to be discussed as objects.

We are not to be discussed as though we are not really there.

I sat at the speakers' table with my spankin' new ultra portable speech device and pressed the right buttons, "It is important that the state of Oregon consult with the cross-disability community regarding media, policy language, and promotional materials related to autism and other developmental disabilities. Like any minority, we need input into how we are being represented in order to combat stigma."

I pressed the right buttons, "Nothing about us, without us."

But whether I/we have the ability to press those buttons or not, whether I/we am/are silent or screaming, either way, believe me, I/we understand.

Just because I'm quiet doesn't mean I deserve discrimination.