Graduation — Disability Pride

Description: Square black and white photo of Carrie outdoors wearing a dark demin jacket with a tiger face growling patch on the right, a patch of fist in a women’s symbol on the left, stud earring in one earlobe, other ear is covered by hair. Carrie has short hair above her shoulders, she’s looking at the camera and smiling. Background is blurry outdoor scene.

Carrie Basas returns with a guest blog post. Carrie delivered a graduation address at Harvard at the Disability Affinity Ceremony. She joins a storied league of graduation speakers imparting knowledge and hope to the next generation of ambassadors, doulas, and firestarters.

For allies, read her remarks and commit to undoing abelism and not asking our friends, colleagues, and relations for unpaid labor. Congrats to the graduates.

I never thought today would happen when I graduated 22 years ago. My time at Harvard shaped me, but maybe not in an inspiring way or one of healing– more like through a deep sense of feeling out of place. The good thing that came from it, however, was appreciating solidarity across communities, finding other misfits, repeatedly asking if we tracked alumni with disabilities, and organizing the parking garage attendants to get very mad and loyal when my access went astray here. Harvard made me realize that I needed a community, especially a disability community and mentors. But to be honest, I gave up on finding it at Harvard. So, for a person who is more snark than woo woo– which will become obvious quickly in our next few minutes together– I have been telling others for weeks that this experience that you all created, even though it’s 22 years late (We Harvard folks aren’t always perfect, either), is healing and wonderful– and I get to claim no credit for it, which is also great.

Let me explain why– today, I’d like to tell you about some unpaid labor you’re about to see increase as your career and personal lives move closer to my crone and curmudgeon status. Don’t worry– it’s going to be fun, well, sometimes, and I can promise you that you’ll have lots of stories. The good part is that everyone in this room who identifies as disabled or Deaf or living with a disability identity of any kind is also now employed in this free labor. You’ll have some choices to make along the way and that’s where my sparkling and snarky personality today can help you. You also might recognize some of these tasks, well, from just living as a person so far with a disability, but they’re about to become even more important, usually when you least expect it.

First unpaid labor role: Ambassador

Though we might have a few Kennedy School students here, when I say prepare to be an ambassador, I don’t mean it in an overachieving, on the payroll, negotiate a peace accord, kind of way. I mean you will– and probably already have– been an ambassador for how others view disability.

The ambassador role isn’t for introverts, but congrats, I am one, and sorry for those who cringe in recognition. The ambassador role is both constant in its hours and surprising in its workload peaks. If you have a visible disability or you’ve shared your disability story, you become more recognizable. Upside: You can just live into having a facial recognition disability because everyone already knows your name or thinks they do.

You’ll be approached in yogurt aisles (true stories, friends), courtrooms, playgrounds, and sidewalks with someone sharing how you’ve inspired them, maybe hugging you inappropriately, or wanting to share a story about their third cousin who had a disability that was nothing like yours but how he is happy every day. This will probably happen on a day when you are not happy, just warning you.

But here’s the upside: You will also be approached for the visible choices you make in community, for things you have said and done when you thought absolutely no one was watching, and for reminding people that disabled people belong in public everywhere, doing everything. While it is absolutely exhausting to be representing wherever you go, you should also remember that part of achieving our liberation is asserting our right to just be some days, to even be mediocre, as one of my disabled friends dreams of at times.

The second unpaid emotional labor role is: Disability Doula

Now, some of these intimate yogurt aisle conversations don’t just end in mistaken identity about which disabled person you are that they met, they are sometimes people really grappling with their own place and identity. While I highly encourage you to get a counseling license and charge hourly rates especially for impromptu sessions, I see these moments where someone is struggling with naming disability for themselves as beautiful opportunities for recruitment. See, one strategy for making this world more accessible and responsive is we’ve just got to raise our numbers, particularly among people with money and access to power.

One of my dear friends calls these my “foot moments” because while it’s way too early at least for this Pacific Time speaker to give you an inspiring speech about feet, a surprising number of people have shown their feet to me and told me they have disabilities. I have a doctorate in law, which makes me very confident about googling really any issue, but not as comfortable providing direct medical care. A law school friend said it was more like I ran a confessional. I’ve always threatened to print disability membership packets, but so far, I haven’t. Still, it is one of the coolest and most sacred moments when someone shares their disability with you, even if they haven’t figured out all the politics of it.

We know how much stigma there is about disability, particularly mental health disabilities. The reality, too, is that our disabilities evolve. When I was at Harvard, I only understood that I had physical disabilities, but in my 30s, I realized that maybe one of the reasons that I skipped class so often in law school was that I had ADHD and anxiety. It took me a while to feel like being neurospicy was not yet another thing someone would hold against me.

As one of my colleagues says, we need disability doulas– not just for the newcomers or the ones we’ve been waiting to realize were always members of our community. (Side note here: I play the long game.) We need them for ourselves as we sort through any internalized ableism. Community is hard to build and doing so will be one of the roles that I won’t get as much into today, but know, too, that some of our worst and best behavior comes from how we treat each other.

The third unpaid emotional labor role is: Firestarter

According to MA fire code, given the age of this building, and some supreme court cases involving shouting words about fire, I want to make clear that I am not asking you to start a fire today. Also, as a disability-proud group, we hold space for our siblings in this movement whose disability might be pyromania– please just mind our dogs, canes, and prescriptions with your matches.

There will be so many times when the ambassador and doula roles aren’t it, when you are shaking with righteous rage about an injustice, something that has been said, or something you need to say. I struggle with this one a lot. A nondisabled friend with an autistic young adult daughter told me that she just wants her daughter to not be treated as a “commodity” or object that services and providers move around and find inconvenient. I told her that I sometimes feel like I can’t be angry or fierce because I’m vulnerable to how nondisabled people– from my doctors to potential employers– will react. In case you haven’t gotten the memo, yet, one of the many stereotypes about disabled folks is that we’re a risk or litigious, or angry, or unproductive.

Do I feel like I have to make people comfortable often? Yes. Is it exhausting? Yes? Is it always productive toward people changing their behavior? No. Could I also spend every day burning everything down that was wrong or annoying? No. I think my righteous rage would consume me and I’d lose my general orientation toward joy and humor.

When you feel a fire rising within you, take a moment and ask yourself some questions:

  • Is this smoky heap of ableism a good place to roast a marshmallow and make a s’more, instead? If so, grab some friends– preferably cross-movement, cross-disability– and just have a tasty snack. Talk strategy. Who else is impacted? Is this where we need to spend our time right now? Should I take this on so someone else doesn’t have to who has less privilege and energy than me right now?
  • Do I have positional power to make a difference here? Don’t give yourself an easy out, either. You went to Harvard. You might not be the person in charge and you might feel vulnerable, but you could have less at stake than someone else who is just trying to survive a system.
  • And finally: a question that my husband (not disabled, but a man of color) has always asked me: Would you be fired (insert whatever verb here makes sense for your situation?) for the right reasons? By “right”—right to me.

Find mentors and friends who will support you when your heart is telling you it’s time to forget the s’mores and light a match. Or to quote one of my former colleagues: “I’m feeling the need to negotiate like a terrorist.” So, now I ask my cat if he is feeling the need to negotiate like a terrorist. That phrase brought me joy. I’ll hold her s’more while she does that.

Finally, I have paid labor to offer you: Now that you’ve made my Harvard dreams come true of gathering students with disabilities, I need you to be in charge of many things. I don’t care if it’s practicing tax law, becoming a plastic surgeon, building a family, or becoming an art history professor. I want our people everywhere making decisions because we’re creative problem-solvers who understand that access and belonging go beyond steepness of ramps and captioning. I want us to lead within disability rights and justice, too, because the reality is that so much of this work continues to be led by nondisabled people– which I hope will become unacceptable in my lifetime. I believe that systems change when the people making the decisions change, and so I’d ask you to take your ambassador skills, doula or foot analysis techniques, and matches wherever brings you joy.

Create spaces where you feel loved and seen. Realize that not all the work is yours or ours to do, and that we, too, have a responsibility to work in solidarity with other movements and dream for collective liberation. Our main duty is to live such that we honor our bodies, minds, disability and Deaf culture, and not wait for permission. Thank you.  

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