Not that I want to give Kanye any more of my time & limited energy (Ive only got 7 spoons / day, right?), but heres a more reflective article on the incident with what I feel is a big Call to Arms... Kanye Wests Idiotic Attitude to Disability is Symptomatic of a Bigger Problem (September 14th, 2014 - by Scott Jordan Harris for The Telegraph) West wasn’t just exclaiming “Everybody dance!” as singers do. He specifically stopped his performance to shame these two disabled people for not dancing. Only when convinced that they had truly “got a handicap pass” and “get special parking and s**t” did he continue the show. ... Smaller versions of what happened to those two Kanye fans have happened to me many times and will, I imagine, happen many times more. For example, I’ve been a guest of film festivals and asked by the host to speak from the audience, only to be interrupted by the usher who handed me a microphone demanding that I stand up. Equivalent incidents occur whenever disabled people use public transport, visit the theatre or supermarket, or park in a disabled parking space. These are not major, life-ruining events. But they are among the daily indignities to which disabled people are ceaselessly subjected. And the cumulative effect of those indignities can ruin one’s life, or at least make it far less tolerable than it would otherwise be. Kanye West gave so little thought to disabled people that he was surprised to find two among an audience of thousands. When he did, he felt it was his right as an able-bodied person to determine whether those people met his personal standard for disability. This attitude comes from the belief that public spaces belong to the able-bodied and that disabled people can only ever trespass in them. It is this belief that causes disabled people to be subjected to constant street harassment. It is this belief that makes able-bodied people think they can lean against, or physically move us in, our wheelchairs without even saying excuse me. It is this belief that forced a disabled person to remove their prosthetic limb to prove they had “a handicap pass” not to dance at a Kanye West concert. And it is this belief that needs to be changed. Now. #NoMSnAround #MS #MultipleSclerosis #MSAwareness #DontMessWithSomeoneWithMS #InvisibleDisease #InvisibleDisability #ButYouDontLookSick #Disability #DisabilityDiscrimination #DisabledPeople #Wheelchair #KanyeWest #Kanye blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/scottharris/100076162/kanye-wests-idiotic-attitude-to-disability-is-symptomatic-of-a-bigger-problem/
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 01:12:43 +0000