Editor’s note: This is the third of a three-part series exploring ableism and the rhetoric that sustains it.
This may sound stupid, but there used to be these bushes on a railing where I work at Cal Poly Humboldt that made me mad nearly every day for two years. The railing is there to keep people from falling on an otherwise incredibly steep walkway. The bushes weren’t raggedly overgrowing the railing, either — they were carefully cut like cute little balls over and around parts of the metal. People remarked that it looked like they were “eating” the railings.
I would watch landscapers trim these bushes before graduation and again in fall, knowing that I had asked for months that they be removed. At first, I heard nothing back. Then I was told, “We will look at them.” After I was told they would be trimmed, weeks and weeks went by before they were cut back — on the wrong side of the street. Only after I asked again did the school make the railing usable.
As a communication studies professor, I try to explain big ideas in simple terms, which is hard. I have the opportunity to describe what ableism is through a three-part series on ableism in this paper. As I wrote in the first part (“When We Walk Right By,” May 15), ableism is a type of systematic oppression that emerges not from the way we talk about disability but from how we build and utilize space. This line of thinking suggests bodies are not inherently disabled — rather the ways we build and utilize spaces disables certain bodies. We are all only temporarily able-bodied, and we can all be disabled at any time. We can use all the right inclusive language, but if someone cannot participate without navigating stairs, for instance, then people are going to be excluded. (Ableism is also not strictly about mobility, this has just been my history.)
In part two (“Walkies Only,” June 26), I wrote about ableist spaces on campus. As with confronting any kind of power, it has been exhausting and frustrating, and expensive, and in many ways to this day — fruitless. “It’s not a big deal,” “This is the best we can do,” “It’s really too bad,” “It’s too expensive!” “Let’s make the most of the space we have,” “This is a lower priority on a large list of issues.” There are lots of ways that we normalize little to no progress for years if not decades. You can try asking nicely, protesting and poetry, but invariably you will be told you are doing it wrong. Progress, if it comes, will be incremental, slow and sometimes even counterproductive.
So what do we do now? How can we make a difference? These are the most common questions folks ask me about problems faced by people with mobility challenges where I work. And to be honest, I don’t know. I often reply, “You can start by asking them to cut the bushes every day until they do!”
If it doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, listen when someone else tells you it is. Then treat it like one.
When it comes to mobility denial — a term I use to describe the result of decades of putting off accessibility improvements like ramps, railings, elevators, fire escapes, bathroom infrastructure, parking zones and effective signage — I am talking about problems that exist in broad daylight.
And many don’t require vast sums of money to fix — they’re just enabled by ableist rhetoric.
Consider signage on campus. Signs instructing wheelchair users where to go are sometimes themselves inaccessible (the ADA sign to the Department of Communication Studies was placed at the top of a flight of stairs for decades before it was removed entirely). Some are inaccurate (until just recently the official accessibility pathway on campus pointed users down a flight of stairs). Others are incoherent (there are still ADA signs pointing to each other with no accessible place between them). These are visible problems (literal signs, for Pete’s sake) that are cheap to fix, and yet getting people to see and treat them as a problem has taken years.
This isn’t just about me. I have spoken to students and other faculty who have likewise struggled, risking their safety to participate in these spaces. I have spoken to parents who stopped bringing their children to campus. We all have our version of, “I told a bunch of people years ago but nobody else would speak up about it.”
We also have to learn to go looking for the problem. Especially in places that have historically disregarded these issues, we should expect there to be not one or two small concerns but whole buildings that might not be acceptably useable. For instance, the new Jenkins renovation at CPH took months to complete and years to plan, and there are still obvious and clearly overlooked problems with accessibility. It cannot be up to the community to find and resolve these issues. People in positions of power have to make it their priority to acknowledge them and resolve them.
Eventually, CPH cut the bushes eating the railings, but the bigger issue is a campus on which this is a common problem that isn’t rooted out. (I am never one to pass on a pun.) From bushes to signs to doors to pathways to bathrooms and emergency exits the campus community says: “walkies only.” Inclusive discussions are not enough if they go on for decades and exclude so many.
If we are subjecting people to increased risk of bodily harm or injury day in and day out for years, we have to stop calling it a problem and start referring to it as an emergency. Apparently, stairs are some of the most dangerous spaces in public life, and yet they are everywhere — not because they are necessary but because they are affordable. There are the obvious risks and consequences of falling, but there are also whole populations for whom the exertion required to climb even a dozen could be life threatening. Leaving folks with no option, or exactly one roundabout option that is frequently blocked or closed, is asking them to gamble their wellbeing to be included. This isn’t simply challenging, it is dangerous.
I recently found an article in an academic journal called Dilemata about the word “resilience,” which we often use to describe people who put up with a lot just to get by. I was researching the term because I’d read it in two different campus newspaper articles about accessibility. Resilience comes up a lot in conversations about ableism. The authors of the academic article share two ways of thinking about this term. The first and most common, the ecological way, sees resilience as a kind of struggle to survive. While often well intended, this frames pain and even death as inevitable parts of getting along. We celebrate those “strong enough” to get by no matter the challenges before them. This is a grim way of shaping shared space. We must do better.
Another way of interpreting resilience — one invoking a feminist ethics of care rooted in justice — can be less problematic. As I understand it, through this lens, resilience is seen as a kind of wisdom and folks who speak up are strong enough already. They are strong enough to tell us what is necessary to make a difference, and so we must believe them. Instead of celebrating resilience, we ask if it is necessary at all. And when it isn’t, we work together to ease the burdens expected of those who want to belong.
So, what do we do now, and how can we make a difference going forward? These are great questions. They are the questions people need to ask seriously every day.
Aaron Donaldson (he/him) has been a collegiate educator and speech and debate coach for more than 20 years. He has lectured in the Department of Communication at Cal Poly Humboldt since 2015 and lives in Arcata with his family and two filthy dogs.
This article appears in ‘No Signs of Recovery’.