as small as a world and as large as alone, Loretta Claiborne, “Let’s Talk About Intellectual...

10:46am April 14, 2014

Loretta Claiborne, “Let’s Talk About Intellectual Disabilities”, TEDx Midwest.

I’m always incredibly gratified to see people with developmental disabilities in settings that are generally full of intellectual snobbery. Because the rest of the time, I’m wondering “Where are we in their world?” I once went to a self-advocacy conference and two days later I went to MIT. At the self-advocacy conference I was totally welcome and felt a belonging I rarely feel anywhere. At MIT I felt like I didn’t belong, like I was trespassing and would be unveiled in an instant as one of those people who doesn’t belong on a university campus – something I’d been told many times when I tried and failed to go to university. I did my best, while I was there, to open it up for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities, but I don’t know how much good I did. I got angry more times than I can count, for reasons I couldn’t even name. And I get angry the same way when I watch TED talks, it’s the same bunch of people there as were at MIT, the same mentality.

At MIT it didn’t matter how much they reassured me that I belonged there. I knew I really didn’t. I knew it every time anyone told me my “real IQ” couldn’t be as low as it was last time it’d been measured. I knew it every time someone made it clear I was only interesting insofar as I had talents to make up for being disabled. But I did my best to make it so I belonged there, to change the environment so that more people could follow me there. And I don’t know how much change I made in just a few days. But I tried.

So to see someone with an intellectual disability presenting at a conference full of intellectual snobbery makes me overjoyed. It’s not everything but it’s a start.