What is ableism?

In this podcast episode PhD Candidate Gagan Chhabra explains the term disablism. Discrimination against disabled people is a big problem, but not often talked about.



- Disabled people have been pushed back of the que and marginalized for too long, Gagan explains, it's time to start a dialogue.



Read more:



Aftenposten debatt - La oss snakke om "disablism"Minerva - Ableism – en blindgate i NorgeVårt Land Verdidebatt - Vi er ikke stakkarerDagsavisen debatt - "Ableism" i landet vi elskernewsinenglish.no - Battling "ableism" along with racismPodcast episode - Ask, don’t assume







Transcript of episode



GAGAN CHHABRA:



I'm not your inspirational porn, and I'm not your tragic victim. I'm just a regular disabled person who has similar hopes, desires, dreams, expectations, prejudices, who is at times fragile, who is flawed, who is frail, but at the same time is strong, resilient, hardworking, like you are.



(INTRO MUSIC):



HALLVARD:Du hører på Viten og Snakkis. En podcast fra OsloMet.Welcome back Gagan Chhabra.



GAGAN CHHABRA:



Hi Hallvard, nice to meet you again.



HALLVARD:



You're doing a PhD degree here at OsloMet, and you've also visited this podcast once before. We called the episode “Ask, Don't Assume”. And today we're going to follow up a little bit. Today you’re going to teach me and our listeners, I think for many, a new -ism word. You wrote a little oped in Aftenposten, where I discovered this word and it's abelism. And, it's really interesting that you brought this up now in these, what shall we say, strange times and everything going on, so that's why I thought it was really natural to invite you back and help us understand this in today's context. But first this word ablelism.



GAGAN CHHABRA:



I think that there are lots of words which describe this phenomena, ablelism, disablelism, funkofobi, whatever you want to call it, you know, like Shakespeare back in the day said, you know, that a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so this concept of ableism, call it by any other name it's, it's equally abhorent. So the idea of this ableism is that you treat disabled people with less work, less value, just because of the fact that they have a disability, it's based on your abilities, you have misconceptions or spurious assumptions, you other the disabled person, you treat them as a marginal category when you think that you are the norm. So it's all based on prejudices, your conscious and unconscious biases, which you operate in which you say that, OK, this person has a disability and he or she is of less value or perhaps more value than I am. I don't want to treat that person as an equal human being.



HALLVARD:



This smells a lot of what's going on in the US now with the racism debate.



GAGAN CHHABRA:



Oh, yes for sure like precisely. It's cut out from the same cloth as racism or sexism, because the idea is that you don't treat an individual on his or her characteristics, or his or her capabilities and potentiality, but you treat them on this immutable feature perhaps, you know, if you want to call it an immutable feature, if a person has an impairment,  then you instinctively think that, Oh, this person's life would be perhaps absolutely tragic, he or she might be childlike or dependent or might be asexual or how would he or she be living a fulfilling life. I should feel sorry for this person and all these attitudes, you know, which we harbor either explicitly or are implicitly, make us walk on the path of abelism, and we don't even know about it that's the issue.



As you rightly mentioned that I've been writing, like op-eds about this in Dagsavisen, Vårt Land, Aftenposten and also one in English. And, the idea is to bring this concept to the Norwegian vocabulary, to give the Norwegian civil society disabilities activists an opportunity to work with it, because we all encounter these attitudinal barriers, especially I'm talking about people with disabilities, there's a lot of stigma and stereotyping attached to it.



HALLVARD:



Is it important to have a word for this?



GAGAN CHHABRA:



Yes, I think so, because if you don't have a word, then perhaps it's so hard to describe the problem, because you need a word to mobilize the imagination, if you will. So for instance, you know, like the idea is that we have a very decatent cartesian way of looking at the world. We look at the world in binaries, good and evil, right, and wrong, black and white, abled and disabled. And the truth is that perhaps we all, what I would call it, like many people have referred in the past as, we all are temporarily able bodied individuals. We are TABBIES. If we live long enough, there's a high probability we become disabled. If we are just one step away from having an accident, for instance, or falling from ski or who knows like if a child is going to be born with an extra chromosome, we have to keep that in the back of the mind, we all are flawed, we all are frail, an we all share a common destiny.So, if we are keeping this in the backdrop, then perhaps we will not create these strong binaries of ableness and disablement. We would be OK, treating the other disabled person with dignity, thinking that the other person has equal worth as I have, and we will not be othering the disabled human being. And that's the crux of ableism.



HALLVARD:



So, give me some examples of a abelism. How does a person with a disability see this happening?



GAGAN CHHABRA:



I think that all of this happens in the backdrop mostly. People don't even know that they are having or harboring ablelist attitudes, because we all want to think that we are kind, generous, good people. Nobody wants to walk on the street and say, “Oh, I don't like this blind person walking on the street and I'm going to trip him”. You get my point.



HALLVARD:



I do.



GAGAN CHHABRA:



So the idea of something like this, that we all have this in the back burner in our heads, because it's been such a