Guest blogger Carrie returns this week with a timely blog post about the upcoming presidential election, abelism, and disability justice.

The July 4th cover of The Economist was a picture of a walker with the Presidential seal, accompanied by “No Way to Run a Country.” The article about why Biden must withdraw included a subheading: “The president and his party portray themselves as the saviours of democracy. Their actions say otherwise.”

Regardless if you feel as if the presidency is an underwhelming lifetime achievement award or pivotal to seeing the next generation exist, you have to take note that this move by The Economist is well-played and ableist. A walker symbolizes not only aging and decline, which will happen to all of us, but also feeblemindedness, vulnerability, incompetence, and dependence. On the cover, the walker is empty– there’s no picture of Biden, nothing happening, just a mobility device taking up space, while no work is performed.

As a disabled person, I cringed at the cover, but I was not surprised. The quickest way to undermine someone is to question their competence and professionalism. The Economist’s line about saviourism is apt, too. It reads to me as: Disabled people are so frail, such a suck on society, that they cannot even save themselves. They expect nondisabled people to take care of them and give them leadership positions? Who are they fooling?

Most disability organizations are not even led by disabled people because a charitable view of disability pervades society. Disabled people can be inspiring, can remind us of how grateful we are to not be like them, can be funny and self-effacing, and overachievers, but they cannot be full or flawed humans. They must understand their place, show gratitude, and understand their access to power can be easily taken away. Every leadership position I’ve occupied has felt like this dance between advancing disabled folks as leaders and not offending nondisabled folks who were kind enough to hire me or allow me to remain in place. I realize that perspective reflects an unhealthy dose of internalized ableism, but to go through the world as a leader with disabilities, especially one with mobility equipment, is to feel precarious. It isn’t the equipment that makes me precarious– it’s the nondisabled people.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe much of how nondisabled folks react to disabled people is not intentional, and sometimes, not even within their awareness. The reality is that becoming disabled is one of people’s greatest fears, along with aging and death. If people are grappling internally with their terror about becoming like me or having to stand behind a walker, then they can’t see me or others in my community as full people. 

Others in disability communities have altered The Economist image with a reminder that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had disabilities. My first reaction to this reclaiming of disability was President Roosevelt seemed to feel tremendous pressure to conceal his disabilities and mobility equipment. Early narratives that touched on his disability were focused on him “overcoming paralysis and polio”, which only further makes disability something to avoid, get rid of, or make palatable to others. The reality was FDR realized that too much sharing of his disability made him unelectable. I understand the community’s need to claim FDR as one of our own, but I also imagine he would not be leading the celebrations of July as Disability Pride Month. Similarly, I have no idea what President Biden’s sense of disability identity is, apart from his acknowledgment of his experiences with stuttering.

I’m not sad or enraged for Biden, but I am for anyone who sees that cover and thinks, “Well, that’s confirmation of something that I’ve always felt– no one sees me as fit to lead.” How long will it be before we have mainstream magazine covers where our most powerful leaders across sectors and at all levels of elected office are sporting their mobility equipment as a sign of strength, pride, and function? 

Carrie Basas (she/they) is a consultant with CoDesignWorks: carrie@codesignworks.com. While not working she can be found singing and talking loudly in her garden and doting on her two cats. Carrie has a MEd in Education Policy, Organizations and Leadership from the University of Washington. She earned a Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School and an Honors B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Sociology/Anthropology from Swarthmore College.

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