Perspectives
Steven E. Brown
Co-Founder, Institute on Disability Culture
www.instituteondisabilityculture.org
© All Rights Reserved, Institute on Disability Culture, June 2015
I’ve been contemplating perspectives since posting a poem I wrote in the mid-1990s called “WHERE IS…?” on Facebook over the first weekend in June. Someone commented with frustration and disbelief that there are celebrations of “legislative reform and complacency.”
So first let me say there are plenty of times I’ve been frustrated and upset with lack of progress. On days when: I have trouble getting in the shower, which is not a roll-in and which was not a choice where we live; or getting up and down from increasingly lower toilets; or know that every time I fly I will have to fight with every other male patron of any airport for accessible stalls, because they are the ones everybody wants to use—and for good reason, because they are easier to use in many ways. Why aren’t all the stalls accessible ones?
And I still tell—often—the story of my experience with employment discrimination in the early 1980s, partly because legally the same kind of experience is possible. But I’m also aware that thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act (see http://www.ada.gov/2010_regs.htm) even if the same kind of discrimination is experienced, avenues to redress it are much more likely to be available.
And that is where perspectives come in. I learned I had what we now call a disability in the late 1950s, at the age of five. Almost nothing was known about it at that time; now so much is known that are there competing drug therapies (none of which I use, but that’s another story—see my book, Surprised to be Standing-see http://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Standing-Spiritual-Steven-Brown/dp/1456521691).
In the 1980s, when I experienced employment discrimination, I could also be discriminated against—legally—in many other areas of society, including trying to board an airplane or see a movie.
There have been many changes in my lifetime in how people with disabilities are treated. And yet, we have not arrived where I want to be. For example, I can pretty much count on any house I want to visit being inaccessible—unless someone with a disability lives there and has expended enormous efforts and money to make it accessible.
In the early 1990s, I consciously sat down to write a poem trying to express my feelings about disability culture and why it was so important to me. I wrote a poem that—over 2 decades later—I am immensely happy to have created. It’s called simply “Tell Your Story,” and to me the most important stanza has always been:
“The lessons are in the telling
they provide a framework and a dwelling.
We all have so many stories to bear
Cry, laugh, sing, and despair;
how will our children learn and compare
if we're too timid to dare
to raise the flare
share that we care.”
(Entire poem at: http://www.instituteondisabilityculture.org/examples-of-our-disability-culture-3-of-steves-poems.html)
At the time I wrote those lines my daughter was about 12 or 13. Now she has kids. And I am hopeful that someday they will understand why I needed to write those lines, how things have changed—and how they haven’t.
All of these feelings led me to share my poem, “WHERE IS…?” which both acknowledges some of our historic leaders and their achievements and continues to ask questions about what we still (and I say this in 2015, just as I did in the mid-1990s) need.
WHERE IS...?
Where is our Malcolm, I heard them say,
Over and over again, two or three years ago,
When Spike Lee and Denzel Washington made Malcolm X
come alive once more;
Where is our Malcolm, I heard them say,
Over and over again, two or three years ago,
When Spike Lee and Elijah Muhammad destroyed and martyred Malcolm once more,
Where is our Malcolm, my sisters and brothers wrote,
Over and over again, two or three years ago,
Bemoaning our missing Malcolm,
Apparently forgetting the Heroics of The Man
Led also to the Annihilation of The Man,
And apparently forgetting also,
The Incarceration, Annihilation, mostly silent martyrdom
of our brothers sisters
Across the land,
In nursing homes and out,
Supported by the morals
And the Courts
OF OUR TIMES
As we struggle
TO FEED OURSELVES
TO CLOTHE OURSELVES
TO HOUSE OURSELVES
TO MOVE OURSELVES
TO IMPROVE OURSELVES
TO SUPPORT OURSELVES
TO BE OURSELVES
Where is our Martin, I hear over and over again,
From my brothers and sisters,
Forgetting about Judy and Ed, Lex and Justin,
Marca and Denise,
Where is our Martin, I hear over and over again,
Forgetting that even Martin was not merely Martin,
He, too, was Stokely and Meredith and Eldridge and the Evers and the Panthers and
the Christians and the Muslims;
Martin was the Power,
Martin was even Malcolm,
Martin was X We all were
Some of us still are.
Where is our James Baldwin, our Richard Wright, our Ralph Ellison, our Maya Angelou, our Toni Morrison,
I ask myself over and over again,
Not remembering, often enough, Irving Kenneth Zola, Anne Finger, Lorenzo Milam, Jean Stewart, Hugh Gregory Gallagher, Kathi Wolfe, Paul Longmore, and so many other resilient voices, including, I'd like to think, myself.
When will...
We eliminate...
Where is...
From our vocabulary...
And replace it with...
We have...
We have...
WE HAVE...
WE HAVE!!!
from Steven E. Brown, Voyages: Life Journeys (Institute on Disability Culture, copyright 1996, All Rights Reserved).
Steven E. Brown
Co-Founder, Institute on Disability Culture
www.instituteondisabilityculture.org
© All Rights Reserved, Institute on Disability Culture, June 2015
I’ve been contemplating perspectives since posting a poem I wrote in the mid-1990s called “WHERE IS…?” on Facebook over the first weekend in June. Someone commented with frustration and disbelief that there are celebrations of “legislative reform and complacency.”
So first let me say there are plenty of times I’ve been frustrated and upset with lack of progress. On days when: I have trouble getting in the shower, which is not a roll-in and which was not a choice where we live; or getting up and down from increasingly lower toilets; or know that every time I fly I will have to fight with every other male patron of any airport for accessible stalls, because they are the ones everybody wants to use—and for good reason, because they are easier to use in many ways. Why aren’t all the stalls accessible ones?
And I still tell—often—the story of my experience with employment discrimination in the early 1980s, partly because legally the same kind of experience is possible. But I’m also aware that thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act (see http://www.ada.gov/2010_regs.htm) even if the same kind of discrimination is experienced, avenues to redress it are much more likely to be available.
And that is where perspectives come in. I learned I had what we now call a disability in the late 1950s, at the age of five. Almost nothing was known about it at that time; now so much is known that are there competing drug therapies (none of which I use, but that’s another story—see my book, Surprised to be Standing-see http://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Standing-Spiritual-Steven-Brown/dp/1456521691).
In the 1980s, when I experienced employment discrimination, I could also be discriminated against—legally—in many other areas of society, including trying to board an airplane or see a movie.
There have been many changes in my lifetime in how people with disabilities are treated. And yet, we have not arrived where I want to be. For example, I can pretty much count on any house I want to visit being inaccessible—unless someone with a disability lives there and has expended enormous efforts and money to make it accessible.
In the early 1990s, I consciously sat down to write a poem trying to express my feelings about disability culture and why it was so important to me. I wrote a poem that—over 2 decades later—I am immensely happy to have created. It’s called simply “Tell Your Story,” and to me the most important stanza has always been:
“The lessons are in the telling
they provide a framework and a dwelling.
We all have so many stories to bear
Cry, laugh, sing, and despair;
how will our children learn and compare
if we're too timid to dare
to raise the flare
share that we care.”
(Entire poem at: http://www.instituteondisabilityculture.org/examples-of-our-disability-culture-3-of-steves-poems.html)
At the time I wrote those lines my daughter was about 12 or 13. Now she has kids. And I am hopeful that someday they will understand why I needed to write those lines, how things have changed—and how they haven’t.
All of these feelings led me to share my poem, “WHERE IS…?” which both acknowledges some of our historic leaders and their achievements and continues to ask questions about what we still (and I say this in 2015, just as I did in the mid-1990s) need.
WHERE IS...?
Where is our Malcolm, I heard them say,
Over and over again, two or three years ago,
When Spike Lee and Denzel Washington made Malcolm X
come alive once more;
Where is our Malcolm, I heard them say,
Over and over again, two or three years ago,
When Spike Lee and Elijah Muhammad destroyed and martyred Malcolm once more,
Where is our Malcolm, my sisters and brothers wrote,
Over and over again, two or three years ago,
Bemoaning our missing Malcolm,
Apparently forgetting the Heroics of The Man
Led also to the Annihilation of The Man,
And apparently forgetting also,
The Incarceration, Annihilation, mostly silent martyrdom
of our brothers sisters
Across the land,
In nursing homes and out,
Supported by the morals
And the Courts
OF OUR TIMES
As we struggle
TO FEED OURSELVES
TO CLOTHE OURSELVES
TO HOUSE OURSELVES
TO MOVE OURSELVES
TO IMPROVE OURSELVES
TO SUPPORT OURSELVES
TO BE OURSELVES
Where is our Martin, I hear over and over again,
From my brothers and sisters,
Forgetting about Judy and Ed, Lex and Justin,
Marca and Denise,
Where is our Martin, I hear over and over again,
Forgetting that even Martin was not merely Martin,
He, too, was Stokely and Meredith and Eldridge and the Evers and the Panthers and
the Christians and the Muslims;
Martin was the Power,
Martin was even Malcolm,
Martin was X We all were
Some of us still are.
Where is our James Baldwin, our Richard Wright, our Ralph Ellison, our Maya Angelou, our Toni Morrison,
I ask myself over and over again,
Not remembering, often enough, Irving Kenneth Zola, Anne Finger, Lorenzo Milam, Jean Stewart, Hugh Gregory Gallagher, Kathi Wolfe, Paul Longmore, and so many other resilient voices, including, I'd like to think, myself.
When will...
We eliminate...
Where is...
From our vocabulary...
And replace it with...
We have...
We have...
WE HAVE...
WE HAVE!!!
from Steven E. Brown, Voyages: Life Journeys (Institute on Disability Culture, copyright 1996, All Rights Reserved).
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