This week, Rach was speaking at a two-day online conference run by the incredible Mary Freer, called Compassion Revolution. Seth Godin was speaking too, but the really intriguing human that was sharing the stage with Rach was a woman named Haben Girma.
Haben is a deafblind woman of colour, the first deafblind person in history to graduate from Harvard Law School. She chats with presidents, advocates for greater human and disability rights, and is beautiful and funny and gracious. She delivered a keynote over zoom that got us all thinking deeply about our biases and identities and potential.
Incidentally, for those who, like Haben, are reading this post (yep, it’s possible) I am a tallish white male in my forties, currently folded into the back corner of a coffeeshop with a notebook and a laptop. I’m wearing a dark blue t-shirt that is splashed with white flowers that have pink edges. There are so many humans around me, but I can’t hear them, because I have headphones on, listening to “Games” by Bakermat. The music is joyful and melancholic, and feels like someone is shaking both your hands, but in time to your heartbeat, so that your whole body bounces in rhythm to your pulse.
Anyway, the morning after the conference, Rach and I are sitting in bed drinking coffee and she says simply, “my Instagram is ableist.”
I ask her what that even means, and she explains that without choosing to, without even thinking about it, she has built a collection of imagery and art that only those with sight can enjoy. There are videos whose auto-captions would barely make sense to someone without hearing who rely completely on captions.
“That’s hardly ableist, though.” I say, trying to defend her honour or something, “It’s not like you’re deliberately marginalising anyone.”
She stares into her cup, the steam backlit by the early sunlight. “But that’s the thing. It’s not deliberate, but it is ignorant. I’m being lazy, Nath, because I’m comfortable doing things the way I’ve always done them.”
“So it’s ignorant ableism, then?”
“Yeah, I think it is. By not even thinking about inclusion, we are by default EX-cluding people."
This is how we talk sometimes. Big concepts (at least big to me), just casually introduced at 5am before the caffeine has even kicked in. I try to keep up. “How can your Instagram be more inclusive then?”
And she comes alive. Descriptions for each of her artworks, captions that are accurate, commentary on the visuals of our white papers, multi-sensory experiences. And then I get excited too, and together we come up with all these ideas around experiential art exhibitions, better websites and identity descriptors, and other stuff that just feels powerful to talk about.
We talk about community, how it has always shined the brightest through service. Helping, lifting, sharing, encouraging, contributing, they’re all elemental traits that build humanity. Though all of us prefer comfort, as soon as we react to someone else’s need, we feel a sense of forward motion for humanity. Like we actually contributed to a meaningful story.
I know right now this is talk not action, but the talking helps remove the ignorance. It shines a torchlight in a corner that I forget to look at. Ignorant ableism is absolutely a thing I do. Along with ignorant racism, climatism, sexism, and every other big conversation. I just don’t know what I don’t know, and that’s a whole lot.
And, I don’t know what to do, all the time. What the right things are, the best way to act, etc. But I do know that I’m built for this: for learning, growing, serving, assisting. We’re all built for it. My challenge is to stay aware, and to not be fearful of the discomfort as I learn and grow. Because finding ways to lift each other up and value everyone equally is soul-edifying, it is life-giving, and it is absolutely human.
Learn more about Haben, and buy her memoir, at www.habengirma.com
More about Compassion Revolution: www.compassionrevolution.care