aegipan-omnicorn:

jesse-the-k:

aegipan-omnicorn:

I made a thing. I drew it in response to  this essay that Son of Baldwin posted on Twitter. Especially this line: “
In many ways, I believe ableism is the root bigotry of humanity.” So I took that metaphor and made it visual.

Image description: A black and white tabloid sized poster in the style of an educational diagram, showing a tree and its root system, combined with text.

At the bedrock level: “BIGOTRY: Beliefs and policies which work to exclude people from full membership in human society.”

In the root system: “ABLEISM: Judging the value of a person’s humanity on the basis of ability.”

The trunk has two forks; the left-hand fork is labeled “RACISM:” and leads to an example racist belief in its cluster of leaves: “Blacks are Less Intelligent than Whites, but they are More Athletic.”

The right-hand fork is labeled “SEXISM:” and leads to two clusters of leaves. The main cluster reads: “Women are Weaker, & Less Rational than Men;” the secondary cluster reads: “Gays are effeminate. Lesbians are emasculating.”

The top cluster of leaves, centered between these two branches, with a freely curving arrow pointing down to each half, reads: “Claims about Ability used to Pass Judgment on People’s Humanity (This is ABLEISM)”

Description ends.]

It may become part of a larger essay on how ableism 1) fuels other
bigotries and 2) impedes solidarity and resistance to oppression
(Consider this Fig. 1, out of X number of illustrative figures).

But I’m not sure how long it will take for me to write that longer essay, and I wanted to start the discussion now.

P.S.: If you repost this without the image description, then you’d be excluding people with vision and text impairments from the discussion.  And that would be a schmuck, bigoted, thing to do. Don’t be a bigoted schmuck.

Another source for this compelling graphic – wouldn’t it be a great coloring book? –

Created in response to this article, by Mel Baggs: There is Ableism Somewhere at the Heart of Your Oppression, no Matter What that Oppression Might Be (published May 1, 2016)

http://capriuni.dreamwidth.org/800172.html

Thank you, @jesse-the-k​!

But as it’s only one picture, wouldn’t it be a very short book?

–

I was also inspired by this line from Disability Rhetoric (Jay Timothy Dolmage, Syracuse University Press):

“Ableism … positively values and makes compulsory able-bodiedness.”

Because, yeah: “makes compulsory” – ABA, anyone?

Thinking about that is how I came to figure out the definition of “bigotry” as a means to exclude people from human society.

Which is why so-called “reverse racism” ain’t a thing. “All white people love mayonnaise” may be a racial stereotype, but nobody’s been denied housing or the right to vote because of it…