Accommodate, not tolerate

It’s

by Pranavi Chintha opinions editor

In our fraught political landscape, one term has become key: allyship. But for all the talk of how people need to be allies and support communities, there’s been very little discussion of what exactly that means — and without that conversation, acceptance becomes nothing but a thin veil for tolerance, tolerance that holds us back from progress.

It’s not enough to simply recognize that we live in a diverse society with people of different sexual orientations, gender identities, bodies and minds, it’s important that we accommodate for the large and diverse scope of people rather than just the majority. Without accommodations, these people are dehumanized, seen as their social identity rather than a person. But these accommodations are seen as an inconvenience for the majority, so the fight for equality becomes a problem seemingly best solved by changing their identities rather than dealing with our own biases and lack of knowledge.

Equality

Each individual or group of people is given the same resources or opportunities. Recognizes each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.

For example, some believe that people with ASD, autism spectrum disorder, lead less than ideal lives because of their disability and not because of the lack of accommodations given to them. It’s a part of one’s identity, much like anything else that makes up who they are. The desire to “fix” them stems from thinking you’re superior to them, that their lives are something to be looked down on.

our parents and our grandparents, and while there has definitely been progress, the journey towards achieving not just equality, but equity has become halted.

While no one is likely to admit that they have a prejudice or bias against others, they will make it apparent through subtle, but significant ways such as pitying disabled bodies, believing that their lives need to be fixed, that their disability is such a huge disadvantage for them that they can’t lead successful lives. This ideality is a perspective that’s often sympathized with rather than criticized because it seems as if they care about the people in question despite what this message implies.

How can we fully recognize people unlike us to be human if you believe that the very thing that makes them “different” is something that needs to be fixed? For someone who’s able-bodied and someone who has never known a life not being able to rely on that privilege, it’s harder to imagine a life where that’s not the case. It becomes easy to default to the idea that they live despite their disabilities rather than with them. The solution to the problem should not be fixing them as people but fixing the systemic issues in order for everyone to get equal opportunities. We want to believe we’re a generation that’s much more accepting, that we understand a lot more than

Accessibility by the numbers

Information and statistics on various disabilities

EQUITY LEARN MORE

17% only of students with learning disabilities received accommodations in higher education settings

3.3 million wheelchair users in the United States

Our own idea of acceptance has become so black and white. It’s in the decision to accept someone that we then fail to acknowledge our less apparent, yet still significant, internal biases. In order to not just accept, to not just tolerate other groups, but to treat them as humans and to accommodate them the same way the majority has been accommodated for their entire lives.

5 million need mental health treatment every year deaf individuals in the United States

In the United States, the unemployment rate for autistic people is as high as 85%

140% Autistic professionals can be up to more productive than the typical employee when properly matched to jobs

Sources: HBR, NCLD, Physiopedia, WICHE

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