An Important Debate

People-First Language is finally starting to be truly debated in the Disability community. I really appreciated this author’s thoughtful response.

“This graphic came across my Facebook page in April. It took me some time to discern all the things about it that are problematic.
At first, all I could see was a problem with the intent of the text: the idea that one has to choose between seeing the person and seeing the disability.”

Read more at:
http://www.disabilityandrepresentation.com/2012/05/30/the-problem-with-person-first-language-whats-wrong-with-this-picture/

The Myth of Culture As Dangerous

I live in a place where literally it has been outlawed to teach my culture to children. I live in a place where I have the shortest time in the country to decide what to do with my body if I become pregnant. I live in a place where I have to exhale a sigh of relief that the lightness of my skin saves me from suspicion of being illegal, although I’m first-generation Mexican-American on my Father’s side. I live in a place where oddly being disabled is the least of my oppressions, but I wonder when that too will come under attack.

As a Mestiza (Mexican, Indigenous, White) adult I am just now learning what it means to be me. I long for the way to open where I have a glimpse into my value and can understand my inherent worth.

Lord knows I was never taught that in school. In Jr. high and High School, returning to school after being broken apart by surgeons, my body manipulated to function in a less-disabled way (it was supposed to make me more functional, I hoped it would make me less of an outcast), I returned to classes where I was determined to fit in. In class, we learned about what gang violence was, not from our own very personal experiences but from the book the “Outsiders”. We learned about Helen Keller but only about her less threatening “miraculous” childhood, not the socialist, radical activist she grew into, and we read Crime and Punishment. This book fascinated me, how the school had no problems indoctrinating students with the idea of murder for a higher purpose.

In school, I never learned about the Mexican and American war. I never learned about Cesar Chavez. The only glimmer of depth was being taught every year about the horrors of slavery, the horrors of Jim Crow and sharecropping with a short nod towards the Civil Rights movement which we were told had fixed it all. Every year I was taught Racism was in the past.   

I grew up going through Border Patrol check points, always deeply guilty that my light skin saved me from suspicion. We joked about smiling and “acting white” although in my child-mind I wondered if that wasn’t what I was already doing most of the time. 

In school, I never read a book by a person or color, let alone a Mestiza like me. I never heard the reflection of my voice, my culture, my family’s way of telling 3 stories at once to make sure we all got heard. Listening hard was never rewarded.

I’ve lived my life thinking that my discomfort day after day was because I was Disabled, never quite fitting in. Never mind that all my friends of color had dropped out by senior year. It wasn’t until I watched Precious Knowledge that I understood a deeper truth. Tom Horne (old AZ school superintendent) talked about the danger of culture and the need to be taught that we are all individuals. The only thing that being taught I was an individual did for me was to teach me to be silent.

Watching the teachers of TUSD’s Mexican-American studies program talk to their students was like sinking my tired and strained muscles into a warm bath. They were explaining the world, not in a new way, an indoctrinating way, but in a way that felt like home, in a way I could understand. Students were treated not just as individual minds dealing with logical actions and thoughts, but as spirits weaving the stories of their souls. Community was not ignored but honored.

Turning to my partner later that night, I let him see the tears of relief I was shedding. I told him that I never felt as comfortable in any of my classrooms as I did for the few minutes sitting inside the camera filming at the TUSD’s Mexican-American studies program. It was a relief. And even though it has been disbanded and deemed illegal, it does continue to birth new gifts.  As a writer it gave me one more piece to believe in my own voice.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2214469459

Precious Knowledge Trailer