1:34pm January 2, 2012

➸ Harry Potter and the Allure of Separatism

Even within the disability community, even within the communities that work on disability rights, various subgroups adopt a strategy of tinkering with meritocracy so that the “right” abilities are rewarded and others treated as irrelevant.

A wheelchair user tells me that public transit does not need to be accessible to autistic people. She says that people should not be denied opportunity on the basis of physical ability, but that those with cognitive impairments should be under 24-hour-a-day supervision and control in special institutions built for us. An autistic tells me that public buildings do not need to be accessible to wheelchair users. She says that people should not be denied opportunity on the basis of cognitive ability, but that those with physical impairments should be under 24-hour-a-day medical care in special institutions built for us. And while we’re fighting this one out in the disability communities and in the larger society, known barriers remain in place, barrier removal is treated as a handout and an unfair advantage rather than a just response to entrenched disadvantage, and I indulge in the guilty pleasure of imagining finding a group of like-minded, like-bodied people and seceding from disability rights. Wouldn’t be too many of us: we’d be leaving a whole lot of people out. But we’d be the insiders for once, not the outsiders; and wouldn’t it be great?

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