Disability, Diversity, and Inclusion
This post is the text of a keynote that I was asked to deliver on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Utah Disability Law Center. I dug this up while reviewing my various writing projects and felt like these comments are more relevant today than even when I delivered them in 2018. I hope that you enjoy these thoughts and find some utility in my insights:
A few years ago I was sitting on a beach in Hawaii with a friend who used a wheelchair. It was funny to watch all of the other beach-goers gawk at him; people looked at him as though he shouldn’t be there, with his wheelchair in the sand, enjoying the waves as they rolled over his bare toes. This is a common phenomenon for people with disabilities. The “gaze” which clearly situates them as the “other”, the “oddity”, and the “out of place”. Although Western philosophy would argue that humans are “rational”, our cultural attitudes towards disability indicate otherwise. We continue to see disability as the “exception to the norm”, something that is atypical and uncommon. Nevertheless, besides birth and death, disability is perhaps the most common aspect of the human experience.
In spite of current debates about the fluidity of identity, I cannot go out and join most minority identity groups. I can’t choose to become African-American, Asian, or Latinx…but I can acquire a disability at any time that could change my life options and opportunities. In fact, it is almost assured that all of us will acquire a disability at some point in our lives, either through accident or aging. Therefore, the civil rights and legal protections that we fight for and extend to “the disabled” are not for some abstract minority group that needs our magnanimous charity; the disability rights protections that we fight for and defend are for all of us. Thinking otherwise is irrational and contrary to the nature of life as we know it.
Nevertheless, as a society we continue to struggle with inclusion and even a basic acceptance of disability. A cursory review of the cases handled by the DLC in just the past year indicates that many in our state and nation still don’t value people with disabilities and their role in our communities. There are many who still don’t understand that disability is a key element of diversity, and that having people with disabilities included in our schools, workplaces, and communities is an important step towards changing attitudes and cultivating a more widespread understanding that disability is a natural part of the life course, and an inevitable part of being human.
Recent events in our country seem to indicate that we are not moving towards more inclusion and understanding, but that we are, in fact, moving farther down the road of exclusion, isolationism, and tribalism. It seems that our ability to simply coexist with those who are different from us has deteriorated to the point that we have people who are again dealing with the age-old specter of ableism and insitutionalization, anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and just plain hate.
In the best of times, we have a remarkable ability to put aside our differences, to see beyond appearances, and to accept others for who they truly are, but lately it seems that diversity and difference are perceived as a threat instead of an opportunity.
We are now living in a fractured world, a divided world, where hatred, dissension, and strife seem to be the rule. People are separated into factions: Republican or Democrat; conservative or liberal; educated or ignorant; black or white; good or evil; with us or against us. We seem to have lost the ability to grasp complexity and appreciate difference. Compassion for the other side, for those who are different, seems to be in short supply.
We live in a world where we can choose to only listen to the voices, opinions, and ideas of those who agree with us…and tune out those who are different and who, maybe, challenge our basic assumptions about the world. We don’t have to engage with those who are different unless we want to; we can easily isolate ourselves in our little bubbles of filtered media and friendly faces. Isolating ourselves from the outside world and cultivating homogeneity is not realistic, nor is it healthy.
Organizations that embrace and nurture diversity are healthier and more productive because of the climate they create. In a recent study, organizations that embraced diversity in gender / sexuality were 15% more productive than organizations who did not, and in another study organizations that embraced cultural and linguistic diversity were 28% more productive and retained more employees than organizations that did not. And, according to a recent study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, 43% of corporations that hire people with disabilities indicate that they do so because of the measurable and observable business benefits. In short, inclusive organizations create a climate of acceptance where people feel safe and comfortable; people cannot focus on higher order tasks and thinking unless they feel safe and comfortable…therefore a diverse organization is a healthy and productive organization.
Unfortunately, creating healthy diverse organizations is easier said than done. Before coming to Utah, I taught a series of classes about monsters, freaks, and the social construction of difference in the Honors program at the University of Idaho. The two classes I taught in this series were entitled “The Monsters We Make” and “What is Normal?”; both of these classes explored the idea of “the other”: one class through investigating the ethics of evil and the other class through investigating the categorical imperative of human rights.
Both of these classes challenged students to step outside of their comfort zone and critically examine the reasons why we treat people differently. Students in each class grappled with weighty ideas and philosophical concepts, but, in the end, every student in each class reached the same conclusion: "Compassion is the basis of a moral society” (Schopenhauer, 1840).
Compassion and understanding are key attributes of inclusive people and organizations, but compassion and understanding are skills that require practice. Compassion and understanding are not attributes which we are born with in specific finite amounts. One common theme that is demonstrated over and over again in contemporary neuroscience is that the traits of a healthy mind (i.e. the ability to pay attention, the ability to exercise gratitude, the ability to be compassionate) are skills that can be practiced and refined; therefore as we engage in practices that require focused attention, we can increase our attention spans; similarly, as we engage in practices that require compassion, we increase our ability to be compassionate.
As we practice being compassionate, we also can see positive structural changes in the brain in the areas responsible for memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress management. Medical research over the past 20 years has shown that compassionate people are healthier, happier, and live more balanced fulfilled lives. Additionally, people who are compassionate tend to cultivate community connections and naturally create circles of social support because others want to be near them. Thus, as we seek to exercise compassion and help others we are also helping ourselves. As the Dalai Lama has taught: "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
Our world today requires us to look beyond difference and to strive to understand others if we are serious about creating inclusive communities. Although we can accept and tolerate that which we don’t understand, I do not believe that we can be truly compassionate unless we seek to listen and understand those who are different.
Difference should not be a threat, instead it should be seen as an opportunity to practice and grow in our love for those who are different from us. The sociologist and philosopher Erich Fromm observed: "“Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.” Difference and diversity offer the perfect proving ground for practicing our commitment to creating inclusive communities where everyone belongs.
In spite of what we see in the media, it is important that we remain firm in our commitment to our guiding values of inclusion and belonging for people with disabilities, but more importantly, we need to also remember that any infringement or assault on the rights of any specific group is an assault on the rights of all of us. Our commitment to these principles has never been more important than it is today and the survival of civil society is dependent upon our ability to ensure that inclusion and diversity are not relegated to the back seat as secondary considerations.