Autism

The Finer Points of Employment Discrimination

by Dora Raymaker

category: employment

Published July 10, 2009 @ 10:52AM PT

The sorts of employment issues we tend to read about, write about, worry about are all fairly large and obvious, and often times even against the law. But employment discrimination can also be subtle, insidious, and even culturally sanctioned.

True Story: County social services, wowed by a person's skills, wants to hire the person--until they find out the person is also a client of county social services. There is a rule in the office that the county can not employ anyone who receives county DD services.

True Story: Person with an impressive set of skills is hired--but not for their actual skills, only as a representative of a person with a disability on the staff. When the person attempts to apply their actual skills to the job, they are told their skills are not wanted (in fact, that the person even possesses such skills is actively denied), and they are only wanted in their capacity as a PWD, not as a professional in any of the ways they have been trained.

True Story: Dora says, "Why aren't there any self-advocates on your autism committee, only parent advocates?" Committee member answers, "Oh, because those parent advocates have other skills that they can contribute to the committee." (It does not cross anyone's mind that the same might also be true of self-advocates.)

True Story: Autistic person who has appropriate credentials does a training series for education workers on how to work better with students on the spectrum. The education workers ask for personal details about the trainer's life: details about the trainer's marriage, mental health, and childhood. The education workers do not ask for details related to the content of the training.

True Story: An appropriately credentialed graduate student attempts to hook up with an academic group involved in assistive technology design. The student is instantly dismissed with no further discussion because the student is an end user of the type of assistive technology being developed--the principle investigator (even after some coaching by others) simply can not fathom how someone who uses the technology could possibly have anything useful to contribute to its design (the fact that this is a grad student looking for research experience like any grad student is completely ignored).

The fact is, none of these things would happen to someone who wasn't on the spectrum. These are clear cases of discrimination. However, there is no recourse to them. They are socially sanctioned as acceptable forms of discrimination. They exist because of attitudes. Because of how disabled people or autistic people are perceived. That we are only good for work that has to do with our disability, and that we are not useful in any other way. That what makes us "remarkable" is our knowledge of being autistic or being disabled, but never our knowledge of things like graphic design, computer programming, engineering, nursing, or whatever else is in our actual skill sets.

Anti-discrimination laws alone do not solve discrimination problems. A paradigm shift in how society sees us is equally necessary. Else these sorts of stories will continue to be told.