Author Bio: Ryan C. Parrey is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Disability Studies program at EWU. His research and teaching focus on how meanings of disability circulate between practice-based settings and everyday encounters, with a focus on popular culture and lived experiences of ableism.
In August 2004, a few weeks before beginning my PhD in Disability Studies, a friend’s aunt questioned why I was even doing it. Because I’ve been disabled for most of my life, she asked, “why are you doing that, I mean, don’t you know it?” I described my academic interests in the lived experience of marginal groups as well as this new thing I’d heard about called disability culture and even that I was looking forward to marching in the annual Chicago Disability Pride parade. Here, she had another question: “Disability pride? What’s there to be proud of?” I remember wishing I had a good answer at the time.
July 26th marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This landmark civil rights legislation prohibits discrimination against people on the basis of their sensory, cognitive, or physical impairments. Significantly, the ADA also prohibits discrimination based on societal or cultural beliefs about people with sensory, cognitive, or physical impairments. Disabled people have celebrated the passage of the ADA for decades and July has been nationally recognized as Disability Pride month since 2015. As with other months set aside to recognize traditionally marginalized groups such as Black History month, Disability Pride month is intended not merely to acknowledge the presence of disabled people in the world but to celebrate it.Like other pride months, its commemoration makes up part of the cultural identity for people whose history has long been devalued.
Reflecting on the passage of the ADA and its role in the formation of disability culture, Disability Studies scholar Steve Brown (2015) makes two important points about the relationship between legal rights and cultural identity. First, he writes that the establishment of legal and policy-based rights for traditionally marginalized groups signals that population’s socio-political power. That is, in order to persuade law-makers that new legislation is necessary, a group must demonstrate not only that the issue(s) they are concerned with matter but also that they themselves matter. Second, he argues that the community and coalition building demanded of disparate individuals in the process of political organization and collective action reinforces the existence of disability culture. In other words, in working to address social inequities faced by disabled people, we had to see ourselves as a “we”. Over time, Brown shows, this sense of collective identity has taken the name “disability culture” to describe a set of shared values and experiences.
The history of disability culture is a history of exactly this sort of personal and collective identity formation. For instance, in 1962 Ed Roberts was admitted to UC Berkeley only to be told that he could not actually go to the university because his Iron Lung breathing device did not fit through the doors of the dorms and because academic buildings were inaccessible to his wheelchair. He, and other disabled students, lived in a nearby hospital where they soon came to identify as a group. Calling themselves “The Rolling Quads”, these students advocated for accessible student housing, classrooms, and other campus spaces. Across the country, in upstate New York, a camp for disabled children became an activism incubator as it provided the opportunity for young disabled people to bond over shared experiences. The 2020 documentary Crip Camp traces the development of the disability rights movement, and disability culture, through the lives of particular campers such as former Secretary of Education Judy Heumann but also how they came to create a vibrant cultural identity rooted in disability experience.
Today there is a proliferation of disabled student groups on college campuses working towards increased access but also to build and foster a sense of Disability community. The oldest of these is the Disabled Students Union at the University of Illinois Chicago started by activist Sarah Triano in 2001. Triano also founded the national disabled student union and launched the first annual Disability Pride parade in Chicago in 2003. I attended my first Disability Pride parade in Chicago in 2005 and was immediately struck by the sense of belonging I experienced during the march and at the cultural festival afterwards. Parade participants routinely attest to the joy of belonging and camaraderie they experience.
Organized by local activists from Access 4 All, Spokane’s first Disability Pride parade took place in 2016 with over one hundred participants. While the route was short, marchers were boisterous as we wound our way into Riverfront Park to join the annual Unity in the Community celebration. Last year, the Disability Action Center held a celebration in Riverfront Park that promoted disability culture and provided information about disability history. Currently, excitement is growing for the upcoming 2024 Paralympics summer games in Paris. Local athletes who train at Parasport Spokane have competed in previous games including Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and are preparing for qualifying events for this summer’s games.
Disability Pride month invites us to reflect on the history of disabled people in the US as well as the tremendous progress made by activists, scholars, and artists, to change the ways that disability and disabled people are understood and valued. It also provides an occasion to get together, enjoy a sense of belonging, and collectively build a future in which no one questions the idea that disability is a source of pride.
References
Brown, Steve. (2015). “Disability Culture and the ADA”, Disability Studies Quarterly 35 (3)
https://dsq-sds.org/index.php/dsq/article/view/4936/4062
