February 20, 2018 - 11:25
Harriet McBryde Johnson ties together the themes of stereotypes, ignorance, and systematic exclusion that are prevalent in the readings this week in the third-to-last paragraph of her article “Unspeakable Conversations.” She states: “the peculiar drama of my life has placed me in a world that by and large thinks it would be better if people like me did not exist. My fight has been for accommodation, the world to me and me to the world” (Johnson). Johnson weaves themes of systematic oppression and ignorance into her article, describing a society where genuinely well-intentioned people can also believe that disability makes people and the world “worse off” (Johnson). This fight for accommodation that Johnson describes through her piece is essential in disability studies theory and activism. According to Margaret Price, disability studies centers around this fact: “minds are best understood in terms of variety and difference rather than deviations from an imagined norm” (Price, 4). I am interested to discuss the ways our world conceives disability as an individualistic problem, rather than a problem built into the structures of the world itself.
I read excerpts from Peter Singer’s writing in at least two Political Science classes at Haverford. I only learned about his views on disables when people protested Singer’s talk at Haverford. Looking back then, and especially after reading Johnson’s article, I am extremely disappointed that we did not touch on this aspect of Singer’s work in the classes I took here. This experiential example emphasizes what Price describes as the “Ivory Tower” nature of institutions of higher education, in her article “Mad at School” (Price, 7). In Price’s article, she describes ways colleges and universities have “gates” in the way of getting in or excelling, such as standardized exams. From my experience at Haverford, I think these gatekeepers also extend to the authors we read in class. Institutions of higher education are one part of the whole system of institutions that put pressure on people with disabilities to cure themselves, rather than society searching for its own cure. Something else I found odd and unsettling was that Peter Singer came up a few times when I google image searched Johnson.