Earlier this week, I got my mind blown at my organization Southern California Grantmakers’ first-ever conference on disability equity: “Enabling Foundations, Nonprofits and Partners to Include People with Disabilities.” Here are my favorite gems from the day, in hopes they may shine for you as well:
“The fundamental question of our country is, who belongs? And who gets to decide who belongs?”
– Dr. Robert Ross, President & CEO of The California Endowment
“This work is not new. It’s just new to funders.”
– Catherine Townsend, Disability Inclusion Adviser, Ford Foundation
Turns out the first recorded American sit-in was by the League of the Physically Handicapped, in 1935. Amazing to see how the history of the disability rights struggle is largely unknown to most of us!
“Impairment is a medical diagnosis. Disability is a social construct. It’s an identity, community, and culture, not a problem to fix.”
– Catherine Townsend, Disability Inclusion Adviser, Ford Foundation
So, in our funding, we should think about fixing structural discrimination and societal barriers, not individuals. Yes, health care and medical research are important and needed, but the “you need to be fixed” model is not helpful or accurate.
“Disability and inequality are inextricably linked.”
– Catherine Townsend, Disability Inclusion Adviser, Ford Foundation
Rates of disability are disproportionate by gender, race, ethnicity, poverty, and education. People with disabilities are twice as likely to live in poverty – and the causality goes in both directions. Poverty causes disability, AND disability causes poverty. “Yet our social justice work rarely acknowledges these disparities and the structural discrimination that causes them.”
Learning about language and cultural competency from Catherine Townsend, Disability Inclusion Advisor, Ford Foundation:
- Avoid calling things “lame”. That’s using a disability to mean “bad” or “not fun” – taking part of someone’s identity and using it pejoratively. Same for “blind to” or “deaf to.”
- Say “disability” rather than euphemisms like “special” or “differently abled.” There’s nothing wrong with having a disability! 1 in 5 people do, so it should be normal and accepted. And remember, “A need isn’t special if other people get to take the same thing for granted,” to quote Lawrence Carter-Long of the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund.
- However, allow people to identify in whatever way they choose – if they prefer “special needs,” don’t correct them!
“Sometimes we think about how to fit people into the structures instead of stopping to ask how the structures can fit the people.”
– Catherine Townsend, Disability Inclusion Adviser, Ford Foundation
Taking a compliance-based approach to employing people with disabilities frames it as “what’s the least I need to do under the law?” But companies do so much in many ways to help their non-disabled people be their best at work — why not do the same for disabilities too?
“Diversity without power is tokenism.”
– Ryan Easterly, Executive Director, WITH Foundation
Always an excellent reminder to carry forward into our work for equity and justice!