ableism*

Discrimination, I imagine, looks different to everyone depending on where they’re coming from. It’s relative: the discrimination happening to me always looks worse than the discrimination happening to you.

The government of Canada recognizes me as a visible minority, which is kind of funny. I look “white”**. I am white (half). I hesitate to say I act white, because I don’t think there’s such a way to act (and please see the footnote). But I was born and grew up in Canada. My attitudes and way of looking at the world were pretty much standard in comparison with my classmates. That’s how white I act. But the government says that because my father is ethnically Indian (like, from India … even though he’s never been there) his children will be acknowledged to be “visible minorities” as well. Sure. Fine. But I can still pass as white.***

So I’ve never encountered any racism directed at me before. I’ve encountered some racism directed at Indians or “mixed” people before, but upon revealing my ethnicity, the offender in question has always backed off, looking shocked at they weren’t talking to, you know, one of them. Most recently I was on the receiving end of a lovely comment what went something like, “&%$#ing brown people – they’re always so ____” until I coughed and pointed out that I’m half Indian to get him to shut up, at which point the he corrected himself and said he was mostly talking about “&%$#ing Pakis” anyway. Incidentally, that was not less offensive. I don’t think. Like I said, I encounter almost no racism directed at me.

I’m not going to count the racism directed at white people I’ve encountered because white is the majority here, and I don’t think that racism does as much damage as the other kind, though I could be wrong. It still separates us.

The most bit of discrimination I get directed at me either directly or indirectly is sexism. And yes, to me it feels like it must be the worse kind of discrimination out there. Maybe it is. But I’m probably in no position to make that call if that’s the only one I experience.

Last summer, however, I was suddenly privy to another form of discrimination: Ableism, which Wikipedia describes as a form of discrimination or social prejudice against people with disabilities.

You see, I broke my foot. It was stupid – I misjudged where the stair banister was and kicked it quite hard in my attempt to step past it. The lighting was okay, I was completely sober. It was a stupid, stupid accident. I tell you this because no one bought my story about saving orphans from a fire…

For the first ten days or so, I barely walked anywhere. The doctor said I could go back to my retail job involving standing all day at the end of those ten days, and he couldn’t have been more wrong. I wasn’t going anywhere. It was a month before I could walk without assistance, and two months before I could use my foot like I used to be able to with the running and dancing and all that. Though I’m putting off walking in heels again until after the winter.

The first time I seriously ventured from the house was for a store meeting, which I could not attend at the store I worked at because I’d missed it. So I went to another location in the city for that store’s meeting. Half the people at that meeting were from various other stores around the city. I only knew two girls from my own store, so I sat with them.

They knew I broke my foot and had been away from work, so it was no surprise to them that I was walking slowly around with a cane (crutches were too cumbersome). They were nice enough to get the handouts at the front of the room for me, and stuff like that. We chatted about stuff I’d missed since I’d been gone.

That was why I probably didn’t notice anything at first.

But then we were divided into groups for some stupid presentation (oh, the horrors of retail work – that is another blog post entirely), and I was not with the two girls from my store. I was with four other people I didn’t know.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not always my best in random, unknown social situations (who is, I ask you), but after a few minutes, the awkwardness seemed a little more than it should have given the circumstances. No one was really talking. No one made eye contact with me. Granted, I can’t remember what I was wearing that day – maybe it was a hat with antennae, but I don’t own one, so I doubt it – but it was probably the Business Casual I went for during most of my shifts at that store, so it couldn’t have been some kind of massive fashion faux pas. And I’m pretty sure I was just talking about the presentation we were supposed to be putting together. So what was it?

Well, as soon as I mentioned the BROKEN foot, things improved. Drastically. I even got laughs from my saving orphans story. They were the laughs of people who understood that I was actually just like them, just with a broken foot. That’s okay, right? Anyone can break something. Most people probably have broken something at one point. It’s normal.

Maybe I should have gone with the crutches after all. Crutches say, hey, I’ve done something stupid or saved some orphans recently – this is not a permanent condition. A cane says, hey, this may or may not be a permanent condition, and this may or may not be both a physical and a mental problem. And God knows what a person with an actual mental disability must go through.

But I didn’t go for crutches, not even after that. I put it out of my head, maybe thought it was coincidence, or that I was feeling self conscious from walking around with a cane. It’s not something I felt entirely comfortable with, after all. It made me feel old and unattractive, like I was 200 years old instead of 24.

I went shopping with a friend a few days later. I probably wouldn’t have agreed to visit a mall where it takes years to get around at my pace if I hadn’t been bored out of my mind sitting at home for the previous two weeks. So my friend and I chatted as we ever so slowly made our way through the mall, we visited stores, we tried on and bought clothes we didn’t need^. It was fun.

It was fun until I stared noticing how the sales people in the first store wouldn’t talk to me. I mean, they’d answer questions I directed at them, but when they came into the dressing room area, they would ask my friend how she was doing, and almost flat out ignore me. Then again at the cash, the conversation I got into with my friend and the sales person quickly digressed into a conversation between the two of them. It wasn’t my friend’s fault – she knew I was NORMAL – it was just that the sales person was clearly uncomfortable talking to me.

This continued in other stores. I asked a question, and the sales person became conflicted on whom to address with the answer. That, I thought was a bit much. It also confirmed that this was not just going on in my head. That’s when I started giving some real thought to how I was appearing to people. Like I said earlier: a cane means this could be a permanent condition. But more than that: I think a cane with a 24year old means not only a possibly permanent physical condition, but it suggests there could be a permanent mental condition as well. I think people start wondering how much the cane-wielder can handle. Sure, she’s asking questions about the products, but will she understand the answer? Should I address her clearly able-bodied friend?

This is not me offering justification for these people. I think if someone asks you a question in these circumstances, you’re a jerk for addressing the answer to someone else. It’s the same as ignoring someone. Which is rude and so not justifiable.

We’ve all heard of those psychological studies that suggest if you treat someone like they are a certain way, that person will begin to act like you’re treating them. Famously, there was that prison guard/prisoner test that got wildly out of hand, the Stanford Prison Experiment. Google it, really.

And I kept it all in mind as I started feeling like some kind of leper. The next store we walked in was a shoe store, and since I was not able to wear heels at the moment, it was all I wanted to do then. Then I made some kind of literary reference to my friend who was nearby without thinking. It was something I would have said before, but I wanted to snatch the words back right after I said them.

My friend laughed, as I knew she would. But there were other people in the store. Surely some of them had heard. Great. Now they were going to think I was some kind of home-schooled loser who had no idea about pop culture. That was the first time I remember thinking like that.

After the day in the shoe store, there was no way to tell the difference between other people treating me weirdly, or it all being in my head. It was probably both.

One Saturday I spent the day writing. I was adhering to a schedule a friend set me to, and, God, I didn’t know if I was going to make it. So when my dad and his girlfriend came home too exhausted to cook that evening and asked me to go out for dinner with them, I gladly accepted the chance to get out of the house – again, without thinking.

I normally have a good time with my dad and his girlfriend. I probably would have gone out to dinner with them regardless of how I spent my day. So we went to a nearby restaurant and mostly had a good time. Except for the looks I kept getting. Was I actually getting looks? Or was I imagining more to the glances that happened my way? I don’t know. But I started seeing something specific in these looks: Poor girl, she’s only got her parents to go out with on a Saturday night. She’s probably never had a boyfriend or done anything cool.^^

Whatever the case, it started really affecting me badly. To the point where I gave up the cane in a whole bunch of situations where I probably shouldn’t have. I never took it on the bus to work. I would take it from the house to the car, but not from the car to the store. I limped around without a cane because I did not want to be seen as Someone Who Uses a Cane. I did not want to see myself that way.

And it’s discrimination. It’s discrimination I would not have given any thought to if I hadn’t experienced it firsthand.

Even if I had thought about it, I probably would not have guessed at any of these results. I might have thought: okay, sure this person is in a wheelchair, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re stupid; it doesn’t mean I won’t answer a question they address to me.

There’s a difference between addressing someone’s answer to someone else and making silent assumptions about someone two tables over, I know. And I like to think that I wouldn’t have been like those sales people from that day at the mall. But I can’t honestly say what I would have thought seeing that girl with the cane and her parents in a restaurant on a Saturday night.

Can you?

* I’ve had a complaint from one of my readers that my last post was not as funny as my previous ones. To him, I apologize sincerely. That said, I don’t think this one is going to beat it. It’s three in the morning and I can’t sleep because I’m sick, so maybe you should write your own funny posts, huh? Tough guy? Huh! And I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while. But hey, it’ll be hard to not be funnier in the post after this one! :D

** I understand there are different ethnicities within “white”, and “white” in itself isn’t particularly accurate (or PC, probably). But you know what I mean: some kind of European descent, fair skin, the ones with all the racial breaks in North America.

*** So can my dad. :/ He acts so “white” I guess, that people have been known to miss his Indian ethnicity.

Friend: “Have you been down south this winter?”

Dad: “Nope.”

Friend: “But you’re so tanned!”

Dad: “Well, I come by it naturally.”

Friend: *smiles and nods, missing the joke entirely*

^ A short gold strapless dress with a huge puffy skirt. I’m not kidding. But it was $29 down from $500 in this end of season sale, and I looked smoking hot in it. Or maybe I just thought I did because I had been walking around in sweats with a cane for two weeks. …Or maybe I looked smoking hot in it! Yeah! *facepalm*

^^ Does standing in line for the midnight release of Harry Potter count?