Content note: this post contains the r-word in a quote. I’ve decided to leave it in because it’s spoken by a person with intellectual disabilities making a statement about their own experiences and wishes.
There’s a lot of emphasis on intelligence that results in throwing people with intellectual disabilities under the bus. Most if not all of us end up doing it one way or another when we talk about intelligence as if it is the most important thing for someone to be. Those of us who have physical or sensory disabilities will often say things like “I may have x but my brain is fine!” – indicating that people should focus on our intelligence above all else because that’s what matters. The implication is that it would be okay to treat us badly if we had an intellectual disability.
And what does intelligence even mean anyway? In a post from 2018 liminalnest wrote:
“When you actually try to pin down what some sort of inherent “intelligence” is vs “has learned some stuff, addresses ignorance” It becomes clear that intelligence is a social construct That is used to maintain privilege and also oppress others”
Read the full post: “Intelligence is a myth : on deconstructing the roots of cognitive ableism”
Posted on June 23, 2018 by liminalnest
Part of the problem of course is how quickly we judge people for not understanding something. People with intellectual disabilities are treated as if they can’t possibly ever understand anything which causes them to become infantilized no matter how old they actually are. A lot of assumptions get made about a person intelligence and competence if they don’t automatically know something others think they should. Very few take the time to figure out why someone might not know something. Maybe they never got the chance to learn. Maybe they do need it broken down into easier concepts to fully understand.
I recommend reading all of Cal Montgomery’s work but his post “On Stupidity” is particularly relevant, especially the section where he was telling the story of how he was teaching a group of women from a group home about calling 9-1-1 and made a critical mistake.
“If you know the number to Nine-One-One (it’s 9-1-1), it’s really obvious. If you don’t, and if you are accustomed to all kinds of things having all kinds of confusing names, it’s not. It’s really not. And instead of preparing these women to be ready to take decisive action in an emergency, as they had asked me to, I had set them up to fail badly at a moment when failure would have had real consequences. I was not doing fine. I had prepared them to be stupid at a moment when they could have been brilliant and saved a life. And they weren’t going to ask, because their whole lives they had been encouraged to accept that they were just not the kind of people who know things, to accept that nobody is going to slow down and make sure they have the tools to learn.”
There’s a reason why people with intellectual disabilities still prefer person first language. Don’t be fooled by people who insist that it was created by non-disabled people. People with intellectual disabilities came up with it and asked for it because they knew exactly how badly they were being treated.
From “The History of People First”
On January 8, 1974, the People First movement began in Salem, Oregon, with the purpose of organizing a convention where people with developmental disabilities could speak for themselves and share ideas, friendship and information. In the course of planning the convention, the small group of planners decided they needed a name for themselves. A number of suggestions had been made when someone said, “I’m tired of being called retarded – we are people first.” The name People First was chosen and the People First self-advocacy movement began.
Yes it’s true that the organization started with parents who said they “spoke for them” but here’s the first from the same article:
People First is part of the self-advocacy movement. The movement began in Sweden in 1968 when a Swedish parent’s organization for children with developmental disabilities held a meeting. The organization had the motto, “We speak for them,” meaning parents speaking for their children. The people at the meeting decided they wanted to speak for themselves and made a list of changes they wanted made to their services
No one forced person first language on them – it was entirely their choice. This is one of the many reasons those of us with physical and sensory disabilities cannot act as though identity first language is the only way to speak about us. The long history of people with intellectual disabilities having their choices taken away from them is another. It’s the whole reason they wanted it in the first place. It’s why “see ability not disability” continues to be important to many people. Because there are disabilities that result in dehumanization and choices being taken away more often than others.
It’s true many of us with all kinds of disabilities have assumptions made about us but it’s how we respond to those that remains important. We cannot continue to focus on intelligence as the only thing that matters. We cannot continue to throw people with intellectual disabilities under the bus. When we do we’re no better than the people who make the ableist comments and assumptions about us. We all deserve to be treated with respect no matter what our disabilities are because we’re people.