A pioneer changed the course of the history for the disabled - including me | Opinion

I met Judy Heumann once. I didn’t know it would be the last time. But before the civil rights pioneer, who forced this country to treat its disabled citizens more equitably, recently died at the age of 75, she said one day I should write more about what I told her when she visited Davidson College this past fall semester.

Here it is: Speaking with a severe stutter has been a more profound challenge in my life than growing up as a black man in the South, and by a significant margin. But I’ve vacillated between calling myself disabled or someone with a disability and struggled with how to express that reality. When I’ve shared that truth in the past, I quickly heard from friends and loved ones who tried to convince me I was wrong, that the biggest challenge I’ve had to overcome obviously had to be racism. I’ve struggled with how best to explain that layered reality in a world that far too often craves black-and-white simplicity.

I understand structural racism. I teach it. I’ve long lived in its morass. I know the effects of this country’s ugly racist history isn’t simply knowable or best understood by the number of times someone slurred me with the n-word or assumed me less intelligent or qualified than my white counterparts because I wear dark skin. I grew up in a sundown town where for a long time it was unsafe for black people to be found outside after dark. I know why I attended highly-segregated underfunded schools. I know the racial pressures that led to my mother being given away to a much older man when she was a 13-year-old girl. I can trace my family’s story to a plantation in South Carolina and an enslaved woman named Rose Graham Jackson who survived so that I could eventually live. Race and racism have profoundly shaped me and affected the opportunities I’ve had throughout life.

Speaking with a severe stutter has been orders of magnitude more difficult. People like me make up maybe 1 percent of the population. I know what it feels like to be the only black person in the classroom, which is what I experienced often at Davidson as a student. The even deeper level of isolation as the only severe stutterer in those same spaces is hard to describe. Almost no one understands what you’re facing yet almost everyone is convinced they know your struggles better than you do. You’re just talking too fast or are just too nervous or haven’t prepared your thoughts well enough. You just need to slow down or believe in yourself harder.

I’ve been dismissed in similar ways on the basis of race and have left life-long scars. But there is a larger community into which I can tap to help get me through those struggles and a more willing ear to listen. Dealing with a severe stutter – not being able to on command have the words in your brain flow freely out of your mouth the way even many toddlers can – can feel debilitating and lonely in ways unique to those who have to contend with it our every waking moment. The world in which we inhabit has been shaped by those without stutters. Something as seemingly simple as having to recite your birthdate to the nurse in the hospital or saying your name out loud during staff meetings can be humiliating. I’ve been hung up on by voicemail for blocking too long on a word.

I don’t know for sure if I’ve been passed over for a job because I’m black. I can say with certainty my stutter has robbed me of opportunities because potential employers could only see me through their misperceptions of my disability. For many years, major news outlets such as NPR, CNN, MSNBC and many others routinely passed on having me on air once they were informed I was a stutterer despite my accomplishments as a journalist. It’s why in the ‘90s I was passed over for a teaching fellowship at Charlotte Country Day School. After an awful interview, one which was designed to let non-stutterers shine but was like a straightjacket for those with my kind of stutter, I wrote the lead interviewer, told her what I could do if given the chance. I was qualified in every other way, she wrote back, but they couldn’t “envision” me standing before a classroom teaching. When given the chance during the intervening decades – to demonstrate I’m more than my stutter – I’ve stood in front of the classroom at Davidson, Coastal Carolina University, Harvard University’s summer school at the journalism school at Columbia University.

Heumann changed the course of history for the disabled because she didn’t allow the non-disabled to easily dismiss the disabled with short-sighted “envisioning” that reduces us to our most profound struggle. She got more people to understand that difference becomes disability at a systemic level when those in power prioritize their own comfort over equality. She was a quadriplegic since childhood. She refused to allow the broader society to reduce her to the wheelchair that helped her get around while not allowing bigotry to convince her to bow her head as though she was less than because she had to navigate life differently than the majority.

Heumann spent decades as an outside activist and an official in the Clinton and Obama administrations tearing down barriers that made the lives of the disabled unnecessarily hard. When I spoke with her, I didn’t get the sense that she was fearless, just that she understood her voice was too important to allow fear to cow her into silence just because so many around her did not appreciate that she, too, was a full-complex human being deserving the same rights as every other citizen.

She wanted me to share this story because she, rightly, understood that despite all the progress, those living with disabilities are still far too frequently misunderstood and dismissed, and have unfortunately been left out of important conversations about diversity and inclusion and equity. She didn’t want me to share it to pit one struggle against another but to help more people understand the complexities at play. She wanted me to remind everyone of the commonalities within our difference.

She also wanted me to share that we laughed together, enjoyed each other’s company, that while the fight for further progress is vital it mustn’t overshadow another truth: That while we aren’t only our disabilities, we have no reason to be ashamed of them and society must stop treating us as though we should.

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