The New Darkies
November 30, 2007 at 2:03 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: civil rights, disability rights, handicapped
NOTE: The following was originally written in 2003 when Maura was seven and Julia was only two.
Remember when we had “darkies”? Remember those images of a smiling, simple folk singing and happy despite all of life’s hardships? Never mind that black people did backbreaking labor, had the injustice of family members being separated, and many other injustices culminating in free black men being lynched. They still sat around singing spirituals and dancing. At least that’s the images that whites with any consciences or sense of decency wanted to hold in our heads. Then the civil rights movement came along. Blacks took Power to the People. Those racists images still persist but have dissipated over time.
We need another group to help us feel good again. Let me bring you the new darkies.” Crippled people. That’s right. Look at how joyful they are and smile despite many indiginities. Oh, how they laugh. Why, if they were ablebodied, they’d probably do a nice shuffle step just like the darkies of a previous age. So let’s crank up put some Stephen Foster tunes on the jukebox while I drone on about those joyful crippled people. I feel eminently qualified, being the mother of one. Everyone tells me how smiley Maura is. Ah yes. And not a care in the world. As far as the powers that be are concerned, she won’t learn anything. So let’s just crank her through Special Ed ’til she’s twenty-one as the law allows and slap a done sign on her. That way the educators can feel less guilty about sweeping her and her classmates under the rug.
Kids like Maura continue to fall through the cracks. Can you gauge a person’s intelligence by just looking into their eyes? You could if you were sufficiently in tune. The trouble is, educators and school psychologists prefer to rely on “one size fits all” tests to measure intellect. And you cannot skip questions in the evaluation. If you have two “nos” in a row, then you have to stop that section of the test and move on to the next. On paper, Maura looks to be only twelve to fourteen months developmentally. The
principal where Maura went to special pre-school decided to cheer me up by telling me that “Maura is so cheerful and smiley. She will lead a good life.” The meta-message, of course, is that Maura is substandard, intellectually, but she won’t ever know what she’s missing. She’ll be happy and I should just be happy for her. Well, shucks. Let me put on my smiley face, too, and just smile, smile, smile.
What perplexes me is why these educators are dissatisfied with their inability to properly access these children. Why aren’t they coming up with better testing tools? Why are they relying on tests at all? These tests have been producing bad results for the last fifty years, but it’s better than having no test. And why are they inclined to tell parents that their children won’t amount to much and so we should all just grin and bear it. This poisonous attitude breaks a parent’s spirit. And these kids are NOT dumb.
They’re pretty perceptive. They pick up on the expectations of failure. Sad parents. Sad children. Eventually the children give up. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the look of defeat on a child as young as five. His parent berates him at his own birthday party. “I don’t know why we even needed to hire a clown because you’re the biggest clown here.” Is it any surprise that these children don’t thrive? Their parents have given up because the prevailing message is that their children are subhuman.
So we fail these children. We fail them miserably. They don’t fit the norms. They cannot talk. They cannot walk. They cannot feed themselves. They need to be toileted. But we dare not look in their eyes. If we do, then we become mighty uncomfortable. We suddenly are aware that there’s a human being there looking back at us. Not just a fellow primate. A fellow human. Tiny Tim got it all wrong when he told Bob Cratchett that it’s good that he appears at church so that their fellow congregationalists may look upon him and remember Our Lord who heals the crippled. Tim, I hate to break it to you, buddy, but they wish that you’d disappear entirely. When the Ghost of Christmas Future shows Scrooge a crutch with no owner, the initial reaction might be sorrow but that’s quickly shifted to a sense of relief. If we were to be honest about it. Brutally honest about it. We all avert our gaze from the crippled child. Or we make a spectacle of them and trot them out for telethons. Not much in between.
Well, if I cannot beat them, I’ll join them. I think I’ll take up the banjo and sit here on the front porch and sing and smile. Maybe I’ll come up with something that Stephen Foster would have been proud to have penned. Let’s see. It’s got to be sufficiently sentimental and sappy. Join us on the porch and set a spell, and I’ll introduce you to my daughter, Maura, The New Darkie. But don’t let her giggle fool you. She’s really got a wicked sense of humor. Check your shoes before you leave. Maura’s younger sister, Julia,
will likely have untied them.
nicolen said,
November 30, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Uh…wow! Where to start. I have worked with children who have disabilities for almost three decades, and I have witnessed much of what you speak of in the school system. However, I really have to say that, in my experiences, most (not all) of those who work with these children are sincere and dedicated. Most don’t even bother with the test scores as they know that they fail to give you a true picture of the child.
The primary problem is bureaucracy. Believe me, when I tell you, the majority of administrators and authorities HATE having special education programs in their schools. They truly despise being forced to accomodate these students.
I have watched very good teachers become so disillusioned when they cannot get the supplies and the equipment that they need, or when the district refuses to give them access to the programs and services that they need so much. Sure…there are bad teachers. There are teachers who have no business in the field - but, the majority really do care.
Society remains ignorant to the problems that parents face when seeking the best for their handicapped child - and society doesn’t handle things they don’t understand very well. Prejudice of any kind is generally spawned out of ignorance and fear - hence we have racism, bigotry, and discrimination. You are correct to point out that discrimination and bigotry against the handicapped is a huge problem - so what’s the answer? How do we turn it around?
I guess you could “join them,” but somehow, I doubt that’s your style.
debbiegleason said,
November 30, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Bigotry, yes. Someone wrote “mental.” in chalk on a piece of masory in front of our bungalow. Didn’t ever tell out daughter about it.
Yes, there a good teachers. My daughter had a very good one for two years. Then after thirty plus years, this wonderful woman retired. And then she died. A scant two months later. I was looking forward to tapping into her for friendship and resources. She knew the law backwards and forwards, too. She treated me like a colleague and not like some problem to get rid of.
I admire the dedication of really good teachers. I watched this woman in action. I couldn’t do what she did. She treated all her kids with respect and much love. But she was an oasis to me in a desert of indifference and incompetance. School are run like little fiefdoms. Good principals hire good people. Bad principals hire glorified babysitters. I didn’t want to hear that my daughter was a good eater, for example. I wanted to hear that she was learning something. I wanted her to have more than a two object talker, but was told, “baby steps.” Things like that have got to change.
How do we turn this around? We raise the bar. We decide, collectively, that we are going to have higher expectations of these children. One of the things I would like to do is duplicate the efforts at places like Bridge School where the philosophy is to get the appropriate technology to the child so that they can develop their potential and participate as fully as possible in the community.
One of the things that I’ve observed repeatedly are teachers, well meaning though they may be , who don’t look at the whole picture. They rely on developmental checklists. I’ve tried to get them and related professionals like school psychologists to look beyond the checklists but to no avail. One psychologist told my husband one thing in private and told everyone at the IEP meeting everything that showed that she towed the line. She’s the one who improperly stamped my daughter with an improper label, mainly duplicating the assessment of those who had good before her. So how do we hold these people accountable? The only thing I can think of, in hindsight, is that if Maura had had the proper communication technology in place prior to this and other evaluations, she likely would have tested better. The tools are not very good,and, frankly, if people simply look at what is in front of them nstead of delving deeper, then my daughter and others like her will continue to be warehoused because that is the easy way for these professionals to take. We turn this around by holding these professionals accountable. We turn this around by teaching them to look beyond the checklists. Unfortunately, we cannot train someone how to be more intuitive. As Holmes said to Watson, “You see, Watson, but you do not observe.”
If you know dedicated teachers, Nicole, who really look at the child as a whole, please, please, please send them my way. I would love to know more of these types of professionals. Thanks for stopping by.