When talk show hosts Rosie O’Donnell and Chelsea Handler were trading ideas about people with dwarfism, their conversation included little person Chuy Bravo, who is Handler’s sidekick on her late-night show, Chelsea Lately. Handler said that Bravo “couldn't get a job if not for her
.”
O’Donnell chimed in with her own dismissal of little people, saying they are "like having a child.”
What are the sources of our initial, reflexive reactions regarding people with disabilities? Where does this stuff come from?
Our response to the...
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In the workplace, what does the word "disability" evoke?
"Can't work," right? One "goes on" disability.
There is a virtual flood of deeply engrained messages that rise up simply through the power of the word itself. At the least it speaks to inability; at it's worst it suggests horrible, tragic circumstances for which we should feel sympathy — if not outright pity.
This reflexive relationship to the very notion of disability obstructs our ability to clearly assess what a person with a disability is capable of — whether someone is being considere...
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