Throughout the past year or so, I have been writing with the intent of helping organizations unseat possible assumptions about people with disabilities. As a consultant, I regularly work in a system that is not reflexive of how negative perceptions might alienate people and create barriers for others. This thought process acts to atrophy critical thought at a time when it is absolutely necessary to be able think outside the box. A prominent feature in my past articles has been the ideological vehicles of accommodation, accessibility and inclusion within the work space but the concepts should not be limited to disability as they apply to all Human Rights Code grounds.
Current social action that is taking place in order to attract attention to systematically oppressed peoples have taken a mind altering approach by raising the voice of those whose identities are considered to be intersectional. The concept of intersectionality is housed within the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s interpretation of how people might experience identities under multiple code grounds, but in reality the fact that people can consider themselves part of multiple and intersecting identities falls on white and able ears (meaning that discourse on the subject is buffered and problematized by dominant and normative paradigms).
What this means for the landscape of work, employment is the same as what is being requested of all of us in terms of equal participation in the public sphere. We need to take a step back and reassess our assumptions that preclude those who are marginalized. We need to get a sense of how we can think inclusively while building roads to view human diversity as more than a product of a singular association or identity. The concepts of accommodation, accessibility and inclusion that an organization uses have to be robust enough to pay respect to the fact that people are a system of identities that continuously flow and change.
This is an exciting time for people who inhabit geographies and personhoods that are inherently privileged, including me. This is the time to broaden interpretations of what is meant by accommodation, accessibility and inclusion to naturally allow for intersectional identities. To end this brief article, I would suggest that we confront the uncomfortable reality that many of us still inhabit a narrative that works to the exclusion of difference so that social systems of thought can have time to regain focus on community.
- Disability as a variable – A new optic - November 29, 2016
- Intersectionality: Re-think your pre-think - August 31, 2016
- Definition of disability and the Ontario Human Rights Commission - July 29, 2016
