Honoring those with disabilities

Today is the UN’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities. The UN doesn’t do much for people with disabilities or for anybody else but they have these commemoration days. I want to tell the story of my brother, Paul--not to garner sympathy or pity for myself, but to generate understanding of those with learning difficulties. Paul was born in an era when “retardation” was an ignominy & families were advised to warehouse their children in state institutions. But it was the beginning of “enlightenment” when schools began to develop special needs classrooms where they dumped anyone who didn’t fit in--from those with learning problems to those with emotional problems to rebels. Paul, who was a shy child, got stuck in one of those. God knows how “disabled” he actually was! That’s where he began to think he was an oddball, an inferior, a weirdo, a victim. Things have advanced in many public schools beyond those days but children with disabilities still chart an uphill battle for respect in many places. In the state of Minnesota, they still & often serve time in isolation rooms in public schools. A penitentiary guard in Minnesota once said, “I’m not allowed to do to prisoners what elementary teachers do to my disabled child.”

My parents weren’t particularly enlightened on disability & felt shame at Paul’s difficulties. They didn’t know how to take on the school system so that Paul wasn’t made a target of ineptitude, stupidity, & prejudice. There were no disability rights movements & certainly no disability rights laws. There was nothing to guide or educate about disability--though, thank heavens, there are now.

Paul lived with me for long periods & though I understood very little about learning disability, I began to appreciate there was more prejudice than disability involved, along with  political manipulation of IQ figures to eliminate people from assistance programs. I saw how he suffered from the whip of that stupid IQ number & from a sense of inferiority. But I also saw him read the NY Times every day & discuss the news with intelligence; I heard his clever wit & subtle observations on life & politics; & his contemptuous regard for soap operas when he was stuck at home with a broken leg. And when I took him to clinic for that broken leg, he said to me, “You know, Mary, I was the only white person in that waiting room--but that’s okay. What do you call them, Hispanics or Latinos? I don’t care. They’re just human beings & they’re all the same to me.”

He was a lonely man who wanted love & sex & companionship but knew all that would most likely be denied him. The companionship he did find was usually abusive & exploitative & he spent many poignant hours describing the indignation & hurt he felt.

He took his own life in January 1997--just after a Christmas dinner where he dressed like a million bucks & looked so handsome but where everyone refused to speak to the “retarded man.” My grief at his loss isn’t relevant but my grief at the life he was denied is  relevant to this day commemorating those with disability. When he died, I lashed out at the social workers & state agencies that had so badly failed him & repeatedly insulted his intelligence & at the people who victimized him. But when all was said & done, I understood my role in not rejecting the very category of disability as stupid & prejudicial--as if that meant someone was less than or could be patronized.

I take great umbrage at the use of the “retard” word, considered an epithet by those with learning problems--& I’ve lost many friends on that account. But I think that on this day (even if meaningless in UN terms), we ought to pay tribute to those who struggle for a good life despite disability, honor those who were exhausted by the struggle for respect, & commit ourselves to the belief that all men & women are created equal, with no exceptions.