MULTICULTURALISM AND
DISABILITY
- A PARTNERSHIP IN OPPRESSION
NACDD Annual Conference 2015
Sparks, NV
Graham Mulholland, Executive Director
Karen Reed, Project Officer
Dana Thompson, Project Officer
Or…
• How we went from being a model of multicultural
expertise to a model of angry incapacity in just
five years.
Introduction (or) Our Recovery Model
• How
• One Very Small Attitudinal Change
• Understandable only in Context
• Has had Huge Ramifications for our Council and its
thinking
We…
• started on this journey 17 years ago:
• had a minority outreach work group
• A multicultural outreach work group
• A multicultural diversity work group
• And a diversity work group
We Also…
• produced a Paving The Way Toolkit
• evaluated the cultural competence of our grantees
• evaluated the cultural competence of our Council
• got the Council membership up to double the minority
participation our population would suggest
Then We…
• did outreach grants
• did access grants
• did mini grants
• did minority outreach grants
• gave grants to people who didn‘t think the way we think
• gave grants to people who didn't share our standards
• gave grants to people who didn’t share our values
In The End
• It was not clear to whom to give grants
• Sometimes our projects seemed to end without follow
through
• Our efforts have never been picked up by Council as a
whole
• There was no clear Council mandate for this work
• Many people nodded their enthusiasm into their cell
phones
• It was very hard to think about
• We didn’t like people who just don’t think the way we think
• Or follow rules and regulations
• We kept changing our name, and
• There was very little support for multicultural projects in
the planning of the last five year plan, and
• Our peculiar experiment looked like it was coming to an
end
It Kind Of Seemed Like
• The definition of Cultural Competence, for many people
rooted in the dominant culture, was
• A bunch of Black people doing something in a corner
• (that we don’t need to worry about)
The Beginning of the End
• Came when some of us realized that, sitting in our
statement of values, was the vital notion that
• Disability Competence = Cultural Competence
• That how we address disability determines the way we
address “cultural competence”
• And that we were on the cusp of a new way of addressing
disability
Precursors
1. Generic Social Change
2. Stigma
3. Social Constructs and Cultural Change,
and
4. (Eventually) Cultural Competence
ALL THESE THINGS…
• …ARE ABOUT CHANGING THE ATTITUDES AND
BEHAVIOR OF THE DOMINANT CULTURE
• (This is a Theme)
GENERIC
CHANGE
An Emerging Model
GENERIC CHANGE
• Generic Change, in our thinking, has two parts:
• 1) people should live, work and benefit in generic settings
and situations (The CMS Rule), and
• 2) sometimes it is the generic system, and not the person
with the disability, which needs to do the changing (The
Generic Social Change Rule)
Generic Implementations
 Education
 Faith Participation
 Employment
 Early Education
 Health
 Transportation
 Housing
 Leaders
 Stigma
Development
 Recreation
The Common Theme
Our Generic Social Change Model is an attempt to find
ways to achieve change for people who are seen as
different, not by changing the people, but by changing the
settings in which they live, work, play and worship.
This has implications for our relationships with others who
seek change in the dominant culture rather than
acceptance and adaptation
Stigma
Stigma – Our Experience
• Has been a long struggle to find the right provider and the
right values
• Suffered from the idea that “exposure equals acceptance”
• Suffered from the suffocating effects of the paternalism
model
• Suffered from the notion of “inspirational porn” – the idea
that high “achievers” in the dominant culture would lead to
the acceptance of an entire disability sub-culture
Stigma, continued
• Came to the conclusion that the need for change lies in
the general public and not the person with the disability
• Encourages the stigmatizer to think about how they think.
• Is another example of fixing the broader culture (the
regular, generic, dominant, modernistic culture) rather
than fixing the people whom God made different
• …and She doesn’t make mistakes
Social Constructs
Social Constructs in Disability
• DSM5 versus ICD9
• DSM5 versus DSM4
• What insurance companies will pay for
• Mental Illness and Mental Health change over place and
•
•
•
•
•
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time
AAMR definitions of MR
Alcohol Abuse
Failures of attempts to break down silos
Autism growth
Developmental Disabilities
Corrective Measures
MI examples
• Mental Illness in US 27%
• Mental Illness in Belgium 12%
• Anxiety Disorders in US 18%
• Anxiety Disorders in Shanghai 2.4%
• Mental Illness in US 27%, or
• Mental Illness in US 6%
In Fact, There May be no Such Thing as
Disability at all
• Disability is a social construct created by the temporarily
able-bodied, the current participants in the dominant
culture, and the allegedly sane
Racial and Ethnic Social Constructs
• Race and ethnicity are defined by the actions of
governments and other dominant cultures
• We are surrounded by social constructs which define us,
often against our will. Whether it is our disability and the
danger that comes from our disability, or the danger that
comes from being of the wrong race in the wrong place,
or views of our employability, we are surrounded by social
constructs.
• We share this oppression with our allies in other
oppressed racial, ethnic, income or sexuality groupings.
• We can learn from each other.
So…
• The dominant culture has created social constructs to
define and stigmatize people who are seen as
• Disabled
• Racially, ethnically, economically and sexually different, and
• Mentally ill
• We need to stand together in defiance of our construction
by the dominant culture and work together to create
alternative definitions of reality
• We need to change, not ourselves, but the dominant
culture
Diversity/Multiculturalism (at last!)
VALUES STATEMENT
• Our Values Statements include:
• Cultural Competence. The Council believes that the
skills involved in understanding disability (generic social
change) are closely related to the skills which lead to
other forms of cultural competence. We believe that
disability competence cannot take place in isolation from
the embrace of all human diversity (a natural part of the
human condition). Therefore we seek alliances with all
those who are excluded or dispossessed (by social
constructs) on the grounds of poverty, race, ethnicity or
sexuality.
WHAT THE VALUES STATEMENT
MEANS?
• The values statement seems to say that there is such a
thing as disability competence
• And that our understanding of disability culture, and
the strategies we use to overcome disability oppression,
is somehow related to the skills and situations of
other oppressed groups
And therefore our task is
• to form mutual understandings with other oppressed
cultures,
• To learn strategies from them (including strategies for
living in multiple cultures), and
• To form partnerships with them in their struggles (as co-
equals in opposition to the dominant culture)
“Partners in Oppression”
• People with disabilities are the largest minority group in
the country
• We have been subject to institutionalization, eugenics,
experimental surgery, oppression, exclusion, devaluation,
electric shock therapy, sterilization, selective abortion and
stigmatization
• Even when other oppressed groups are stigmatized, they
have been stigmatized in the language of disability and
deformity
Therefore…?
• We are an oppressed group and share the experience of
oppression and social deconstruction with the racially,
ethnically, economically and sexually oppressed
• We are the allies of other “minority” groups, rather than
the paternalistic dispenser of grants and support to them
as if we are their moral and cultural superiors
• We share a stand in opposition to the Dominant Culture
• As in so much of our work, the target of change is not the
“minority culture”, but the world in which that culture must
live
The Connection
• Disability culture is not identifiable by any shared characteristic,
other than rejection by the dominant culture as worthless, pitiful,
dangerous and devalued. It is a social construct which parallels the
social constructs around race, ethnicity and sexuality.
• And just as we act as a single disability culture, even although it is
a creation of the dominant culture, so we must act as a single
alliance of the oppressed, sharing a common history and a common
need for self assertion, acceptance and liberation
• We are created, all of us, variously oppressed, by a three hundred
year dominance of Modernism in America; the view that there is a
single correct way to be, which should be conformed to by all,
implemented by force if necessary, according to their different
hierarchies, rather than embracing the value of diversity
Connection continued…
• If you understand the work of DD Councils as changing
the people on the other side of the interface between
people with disabilities and the rest of the world, and
preserving the right of disability cultures to be recognized
by the rest of society as equally valid as the dominant
culture, then it seems impossible to do other than enter
into partnerships with those who seek equally to have
their cultures, traditions and selves recognized as valid by
the dominant culture and its members.
Define “Modernism”…
• (Two Points)
What to Do?
• Stop dispensing “largesse” – handing over goodies to
•
•
•
•
•
keep people quiet
Stop acting in a corner
Ensure the diversity agenda is common to all of Council’s
work
Change attitudes
Make alliances
Respect everyone’s right to be different
More To Do…
• At the very least we should try to view our grantees as
partners in the struggle of the oppressed, rather than treat
them as oppressors who need to be taught by us, through
imposed training and programs, how to interact with other
oppressed groups as dominants rather than as partners
• Our grantees need to view themselves as part of a
liberation struggle, even if their local dynamics do not
identify anyone other than disabled people as part of the
oppressed. This stuff is no longer about ethnicity and
race.
Rewiring The Council
• Stigma
• Communications and Publications
• Policy Information Exchange
• All of Council
Intended Consequences
• Anti-Paternalism Attitudinal Change on part of Grantees
• Structural Change for MCD Work Group
• MCD Work Group becomes the Diversity (or Other) Work
•
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Group
Diversity group assumes leadership position on par with
Evaluation, PIE and Communications work Groups
Change in small grant program
Disparities Grants (not paternalism or inspirational porn)
Large Grant Creation/initiation
School to Prison Pipeline, and
Forced Change in Council Mainstream
Conversations/Alliances
MORE TO DO…
• Meet with other minority groups
• Learn from other groups not as the guilty but as partners
in a common struggle
• Ally ourselves with the struggles of other oppressed
groups
• Seek out oppressed groups who struggle with the
disability system and support them in their efforts at
redefinition and re-understanding of the way the system
works.
We need to take:
• The target of change derived from our work in Generic
•
•
•
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Social Change
The target of our work as discovered by our work in
Stigma
Our understanding of Social Constructs
Our co-extensiveness with other oppressed groups
discovered in our work in multiculturalism
Our rejection of the “exposure” model
Our rejection of the “institutional porn” model
• And put them together to get something like this:
Mission Statement?
• We are a group of oppressed peoples, allies of other
oppressed peoples, who reject the construct that we are
broken and devalued, and choose instead to assert our
own worth and stand ready to change the dominant
culture, its behavior and its expectations
• In this way we challenge the cultural expectations of the
larger society while providing benefits for people with
disabilities.
• The core of the work is to find ways to make the change
that needs to occur at the interface, occur on more than
one side of the line
• It requires adaptation, acceptance and redefinition by the
dominant culture
More Than This…
• We should ensure that we are structured so that there is
an integration in model and practice of all these related
parts of Council’s work. This will take careful planning
• Relatedly, we should make sure that none of this work
rests in an organizational “ghetto” where its influence is
not imbued in all of Council’s work.
• None of our work should “fix” poor, broken disabled
people
• None of our work should “fix” poor, broken “minority”
people
Discussion