Have you ever noticed that when people are approached by a person in a wheelchair they often do one of three things: give the person more space than is needed to pass; try not to make eye contact; or react by waiting patiently to see if the person in the wheelchair will miraculously stand and start attacking them for no reason.
It’s amazing how people “fear the chair.” My husband, who is paraplegic and requires a wheelchair to get around, told me that it’s worse in job interviews. He said when people realise that you have a disability, they instantly shut down. Of course, they go through the usual interview questions, such as, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” or “What do you consider to be your weaknesses and strengths?” But it is obvious to him that they are just being polite.
However, he wonders why they don’t ask the real burning questions. “Did you bathe on your own this morning?” or “How did you get here?” or “Can your body take working late hours?”
Those questions will make the interview meaningful and will make a difference in giving him employment or not, because then the employer has something that will help him or her understand my husband’s situation.
I can’t lie, though. If I were physically challenged, I, too, would want to miraculously stand up and take the wheelchair and beat someone with it because of his or her ignorance. But at the end of the day it is better to educate than inflict violence.
Asking ‘why’
Senator Floyd Morris, the first blind person appointed to the upper house in the Jamaican Parliament, said, “It is often said that the way a society treats its elderly and disabled is an indication of its level of development and civilisation. All societies should aspire to have mechanisms to take care of these vulnerable groups.” We all know this. Approximately 90 percent of our society is well educated, and lives within the working to middle-class level of the economy, but the majority of us are still ignorant to the words of this statement.
My husband and I, and many other disabled people living in the Caribbean, have often asked, “Why?” Why do we fear the chair? Especially with the heavy influence of the West and European countries, why do we fear the chair? Does the chair have some sort of secret powers that we feel will hold us spellbound and cause us to do what the operator wants us to do? When touched, will our hands end up with boils or sores because we were badly burnt? Is the wheelchair such a dangerous weapon of mass destruction that allowing the “handler” to be gainfully employed would cause the society to disintegrate right before our eyes?
Nope, I doubt that. But we treat it that way. We treat people who are physically challenged as if they were the plague. We believe that they are unable to perform in any capacity within our society.
World statistics
The website “Disabled World: World Facts and Statistics on Disabilities and Disabilities Issues,” states, “Disability affects hundreds of millions of families in developing countries. Currently around 10 percent of the total world’s population, or roughly 650 million people, live with a disability.” Therefore, why is it that in our population of more than 25,000, we have about 100 people living with a disability (including children), and we can’t even take care of them? Election year is here, and I’ve been visited by several politicians looking for my vote. The conversation has touched on topics ranging from education to fishing. However, no candidates mentioned to me what they are doing to gainfully employ, educate and teach how to fish, the voters who are labelled “physically challenged.” In a previous commentary, I wrote, “Mr. and Mrs. Politician, these are your constituents.” I still stand by that.
How does that saying go again: “forward ever, backward never?” Or was it “forward never, backward ever?”
I’m still confused.