Freddie’s PGCERT Blog

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Confronting the whitewashing of disability

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This article made me sad and disappointed. Growing up in Italy as a Lesbian in the 80s/early 90s (I hope it’s ok to draw this comparison), I had hardly any reference in the media. If you sum this with the rampant homophobia in the country and on my doorstep, I felt quite lonely, outcast. Even to this day many lesbian characters, are played by heterosexual women, which I find inaccurate, insensitive and disempowering. So, I can only imagine how insulting and frustrating this must be for disabled people of colour not to be represented in the media.

As Thompson (2017) explains: “lack of representation really affects one’s self esteem, one’s ability to connect with all of their identities”. It makes people feel excluded from their ”disabled identity” or ”of colour identity”, within the other identities they have.

Thompson also poses the question about whether it is better to have accurate representation or to have more representation. I vote for accurate representation, campaigning toward having more of it. We already live in a media world that misrepresents us, e.g. see also how women are misrepresented in the media: if we keep letting the media do this to us, we will never be able to gain a true understanding of who we are, we will be erased and replaced by idealistic avatars that no one can relate to.

In my practice as a teacher, I would appeal to the course leader to meet some disabled people of colour to look at our curriculum together to see whether there is anything that fundamentally prevents them from wanting to apply. I would see if there are any fundamental changes we could make to our infrastructures and as Production Manager I would aim to put those in place.

I would see if there are ways to encourage disabled students of colour to come forward and tell their stories, perhaps teaming up with other students to put their skills together. Failing that I would try to reach out to disabled people of colour outside the university and ask them to come forward to tell their stories, teaming up with our students.

References

Siebel Newsom, J. (2011) Miss Representation – The Representation Project. At https://therepproject.org/films/miss-representation/ (Accessed on 5.05.22)

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