Arden Jones, Faith Hopkins, Lily Sportsman, Nathalie Luciano, Haley Schnitzer
A: Parents always worry about the future of people with disabilities. Had personal experience, it was positive, but some don’t have that environment. Several parts struck a nerve
F: It was hard to read how people treat people with disability
A: Gives them the thought that they need to fix it. “They’re suffering” instead just put up more ramps
N: People don’t really look at it like that, they just say “poor thing” and “how can they get out of the wheelchair?” and “a tragedy” But that’s not what people with disabilities are doing.
A: People focus on what people lack instead of what they have going for them. It’s part of their identity, but they are also more than their disability
F: “personal imagination” versus “cultural imagination” it’s exactly that, imagination. We shouldn’t be “imagining” we should be asking.
A: disabled people know what’s best for disabled people. How do you know how they’re feeling if you don’t ask them?
N: Abled persons projecting how they would feel if they were disabled. Abled bodied people don’t have to worry about ramps etc. When you are abled, it’s a nightmare to see yourself as disbaled which leads us to say “we need to fix this”
F: the study with blind folding kids and putting them in wheelchairs doesn’t do it justice. They are just temporarily blind/disabled
A: disabled people go through their daily life with these disabilities. Claiming to know it all just because you know someone who is disabled also doesn’t do it justice. You can be an ally, but don’t go as far as saying you are disabled.
N: This appears to be a trend on social media.
A: Everyone has a different experience
N: I personally don’t associate with disability but I do have invisible disability. People would say “that’s so OCD of you” which is wrong.
L: they start using it as an adjective. Like “gay” as a negative adjective, and “autistic.”
A: In my school they used “autistic” for stupid.
F: my mother opened my eyes to autism with a student she had who was on the spectrum and ended up being the smartest kid in the class. Why is it used to call others “stupid” when they tend to be smarter than most?
A: When people base your personality on whether or not your disability is valid or not
N: Like “oh this autistic person does this, how come you don’t?” Everyone is different, that’s why there’s a spectrum
A: People would ask me to diagnose them for autism because I was, but I’m not a doctor. I know me, everyone is different. Just because you have these quirks, doesn’t mean you have it.
To Kill a Mockingbird
F: Killing a mockingbird is a sin because it gives you a song, killing a “cripple” is a sin because they have a lesson to teach us, that connected well for me
A: I don’t know about that, a con would be that disabled people will have a lesson to teach you, but people won’t learn the lesson until something bad happens to them
H: People look at disabled people as pitiful and people w/o disability tend to validate their life through the disabled
N: You can see this in fiction too, they never show the black disabled person to be the main character.
A: Subconscious or not, people think they don’t have much of a life to live
H: They’re the subplot to help the main realize something about life
A: At some point they become “cured” or overcome it (like “As Good As it Gets”) in which disabled people need to be cured in order to live.
