Yesterday, on talk radio: One of the morning team was offering his opinions on something a local football player was opting to do with his money. The football player (who will remain nameless, as will the announcer, because that's not the point of all of this) had decided to set up accounts for the children of a local woman who had died in order to support them as they reached adulthood. The woman had four children.
The announcer said something along these lines in describing the 'scholarships', and please forgive me if I leave out a function word or two: "She had four children. One of them has some kind of mental issues, so three children."
He was referring to how many of the children could potentially go to college when they reach young adulthood, I think.
I saw red.
I'm not normally a call-the-station kind of girl, but I was sorely tempted. I'm settling for a blogpost. I'm not sure this would have made it to the announcer's ears anyway, as it's only tangentially related to what they were discussing --a matter of some controversy.
Three points:
1. Why couldn't that fourth child also go to college?
Why is there this assumption that everyone with a disability looks the same, acts the same, has the same abilities and (yes) disabilities, etc.? Why shouldn't a child have a scholarship set up in his or her name, ready for him or her when the time comes? Just because that child has a particular medical diagnosis --especially when that child's siblings have had scholarships set up in their names?
2. That child is a human being, same as the siblings. To erase them from the list of children that lady left behind? She had four, so three? What was that?
I am not disabled, but I have had many years of observing as children with disabilities are forgotten about, not accounted for, and spoken over. It still irritates me greatly. I know how I feel when people forget about me --it's the same feeling. And it's not okay.
3. I don't know the nature of the child's disabilities. I know there are all kinds of disabilities. They differ in terms of how much they impact a child's (and later, an adult's) ability to engage in life activities they may want or need to engage in.
If the child's disabilities are such that college might not be the best option for them --and here's where I get really angry --that child does not disappear.
When children with disabilities finish with school, they are no longer children. Children with significant disabilities are permitted to stay with their local school district to complete job and life skills training through age 21 where I live, and this is called "aging out". They reach an age where they are no longer eligible for services through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (or IDEA), and any services they receive are community-based and may be funded through various government subsidies that don't cover much (and will cover less if we move to block grants as proposed in recent legislative attempts). Services cost money. Some of these now grown-ups get jobs, but they can have limitations put on their employment. Some of them cannot hold down consistent employment for whatever reason --and I've never heard of the reason being that they don't want jobs.
Does that mean they are worth less than people with jobs? Does that mean they are worth less than people who go to college? Because people with disabilities who cannot work or cannot go to college for whatever reason still have to eat, have to have a place to live, and have to access the world around them --and that requires resources. Why would the accounts set up in the children's names necessarily be for 'college' and not for whatever they happen to need support for, with no judgment placed that leaves one child lesser than his or her siblings?
I'm sure the announcer had not through what he was saying, and it's the sort of off-hand comment that people who don't have to think about disability make. He was concentrating more on other aspects of the story. But make no mistake: number four matters.
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