There’s something about the end of a year that inspires hope for change. As the final hours of 2014 fold themselves away, many of us will find ourselves daydreaming of social possibilities. We may muse on the kind of Australia we want to live in, and wonder what practical steps we can take to get there.
Unfortunately (as a political cartoon reminded me this week), while many of us want change, far fewer of us are prepared to change. And so we are drawn instead to the small acts of kindness, taking pleasure both in helping someone else and in how it makes us feel about our own essential goodness. This isn’t bad in and of itself. But those of us who pride ourselves on our progressive values should take care to remember that individual goodness alone won’t change the world – policy, infrastructure and equality will.
Consider a recent social protest. When racial tensions flared after the recent Martin Place siege in Sydney, a simple gesture on social media snowballed into an idea that captured the global community’s imagination. Inspired by a Facebook post made by Rachael Jacobs and then turned into a hashtag on Twitter by Tessa Kum, the #illridewithyou movement rapidly found praise in outlets like the BBC, the New York Times and Al Jazeera. From the metropolis of Sydney to the tiny town of Katanning in WA, people donned stickers and badges declaring their availability to “ride with” those Muslim passengers on public transport who may be afraid of or even experiencing racist backlash because of the siege.
It was an admirable cause, showcasing the essential goodwill most people have towards their fellow citizens. And there’s no doubt that, despite the hint of self-congratulation that began to rear its head in the earnestly posed selfies and carefully constructed social media posts, it did demonstrate solidarity and support among Australians of all creeds. This is a good thing. We need more kindness.
But kindness is not the last stop on the line.
The same week people pledged to ride with Muslim Australians in solidarity, I sat in the Melbourne Town Hall and farewelled Stella Young. With her biting wit and uncompromising determination to assert herself as an adult deserving of dignity and equality instead of some kind of saccharine mascot for humanity’s pluck, Stella had been instrumental in the ongoing battle to change Australian attitudes towards disability. I knew what Stella would have said about #illridewithyou. In colourful but astute language, it would have been something about how it would be nice if once in a while people thought to offer solidarity to the disabled people who can’t even use the public transport system half the time, or who have to travel far out of their way just to find an accessible stop or a taxi that will pick them up. Indeed, there is no lack of terrible irony in the fact that one of Stella’s closest friends and mentors couldn’t make it to the party celebrating Stella’s life – because she couldn’t access public transport or find a private taxi service willing to take her.
This is a social issue, but it’s also a corporate one. Too often, the issues of access are placed in the “unnecessary expense” basket, with businesses seeming to reason that disability affects such a minority of people that it’s not worth incorporating as a consideration. As disability activist Carly Findlay told me, when disability training is even included in business training models, it’s treated as a peripheral component rather than holistically weaved in to ethos and practice. After filing a complaint against a taxi driver who directly discriminated against her because of her condition, Findlay was disheartened to encounter a lacklustre attitude within the cab company towards disability awareness. She responded by creating a training video that she hopes will result in improvements in the industry.
Access for disabled Australians cannot be viewed through the prism of practicality for able-bodied Australia, or a narrow (and frankly incorrect) economic cost-benefit analysis. It was Stella who taught me about the social model of disability, which posits that people aren’t disabled by their own bodies or conditions but by how society refuses to adapt itself to fully accommodate them. We live in a world that has more respect for heritage-listed buildings than it does for the actual human beings who can’t get into them. There is more outcry over children being denied entry into pubs and bars than there is over the fact that wheelchair users can’t even get into many of them – and when they can, they still can’t be guaranteed that there’ll be a toilet they can use. Ignorance and bigotry still actively prevent disabled Australians from making autonomous decisions about their own lives, even while the rest of the country insists on exploiting them for inspiration and motivation.
It has to end. It’s time the status quo starts declaring our solidarity with our disabled peers, colleagues, fellow Australians, children, elderly, family members and citizens, all of whom have been saying this for far too long with too little response. A wheelchair isn’t the marker of a disability – an absence of a ramp and an accessible toilet is. Blind and deaf people are perfectly able to function in the world, but not if they don’t have appropriate tactile, aural or visual aids to accommodate them. Disability isn’t enforced by birth or accident but by a society that can do more and be better, and yet chooses not to because it doesn’t see the point.
Small acts of kindness are meaningful and we shouldn’t turn our backs on them. I’ll symbolically ride with anyone targeted by bigotry and oppression. But if disabled Australians are consistently denied access to the things able-bods take for granted, maybe it’s time for another message.
We ride together, or not at all.
Read the full story... (off-site)- Topics:
- Inclusion and access
- Author:
- Clementine Ford
- Source:
- The Age
- Date published:
- Wed 31st Dec, 2014