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The crazy part is it doesn’t matter who you voted for, everyone on both sides would generally love to help their neighbor and would offer a hand. It’s just when people get involved in the macro sense that they get filled with hate and anger. Makes me sad. Let’s just all move couches.
Conservatives are often nice to people they know. The in-group. The problem is when it’s a scary other. So they’ll let Jose couch surf for a week while he sorts out his housing situation, because he’s a good guy down on his luck, but they’ll rage against Those People getting anything.
That’s my understanding too. It’s like empathy just ends at one’s own line of sight. If I can’t see it or touch it, there may be something wrong with it. It’s infuriating.
Can we do that without the latent ableism that comes along with it, like the idea that if you can’t help people move couches then you don’t deserve anyone else’s help either?
This especially effects people with invisible disabilities, who are already viewed as lazy, but who also might be the most helpless when it comes to moving their own furniture.
I think it’s kind of ablist to assume a disabled person has nothing of value to offer, like if they can’t move a couch then they are excluded. “Moving a couch” could be anything, it could be filing taxes or cooking a meal. Disabled people are good at stuff too. I think it’s really weird for you to make this assumption.
Honestly it’s both. Plenty of people with disabilities have plenty to offer. A lot actually don’t though, and they still deserve that helping hand.
A family aquatintance has some mental and physical disabilities. They’re just not going to be able to help in any way that isn’t superficial. And that’s okay. Their worth isn’t defined by their utility.
Attaching how worthwhile it is to help someone to their ability to provide a service inherently says the person who can’t isn’t worthy of help.
We should be good to people because it’s the right thing to do, not out of the expectation of a future repayment. More pragmatically, we should help based on the assumption that the other person would, and that if everyone acted like that the world would be better.
I think the other person read a bit much into it, but their base point isn’t wrong.
I find it wild that most people here can’t see through their own assumptions. Like, everyone else needs to examine their own biases. Not them though, they could never be biased. It shows such a lack of self-awareness on their part.
My dad had a prosthetic leg, and he bristled at some of the polite or accepting ways that people would talk about disability in a way that stuck with me because he explained it. Basically a dislike of “handicapable” or the notion that you “make up for it” in other ways. To paraphrase: “getting my foot cut off in a car accident didn’t come with some perk that balanced things out”.
I think a lot of the pushback you got came not from a place of rejecting that they could have a bias, but from the topic being broached as a confrontation of bias instead of an explanation of ignorance.
People, like the poster above, who are being conscientious according to their understanding will get indignant or frustrated when that’s met with an unmatched response.
Assuming positive intent colors implicit “positive abelism”, or other “positive -isms” that I’m personally less knowledgeable about, as unfamiliarity or ignorance rather than callousness or rudeness.
In those cases, the person is very unlikely to disagree or pushback if informed about their blind spot. The key part in their head was “disabled people are just as important”, sitting right next to “good people chip in and contribute”. So they respond to “disabled people can’t always contribute” with “disabled people are important!” phrased as "disabled people can contribute!”.
Addressing it as a bias against disabled people doesn’t fit because that part is correct. Need to address it at where the problem is: a misconception about the relationship between human worth, labor and utility.
Kevin and Tony would definitely move a sofa for a person with disabilities. No doubt in my mind. They’d still expect pizza and beer tho, that’s non-negotiable.
Okay well what about when they ask that person later if they’ll help move Tony’s fridge? Like this un-negotiated yet obligatory repayment. If you say “sorry, I can’t” then they’ll immediately lose respect for you, and probably tell everyone they know not to help you in the future. Even if you explain that you have a condition that prevents you, if that condition isn’t visible to them they’ll think you’re just selfish and making excuses.
Also, are you willing to guarantee that Kevin and Tony aren’t racist or homophobic? Are you willing to guarantee they would help move a sofa for someone who’s gay or black? This is about more than just disabilities.
This is about “good ole boy” culture and relying on the benevolence and altruism of people who likely as not only care about helping people they view as a part of their in-group. And if you think that’s not a real problem in america, then you must not live here because it’s literally all over the place here.
The crazy part is it doesn’t matter who you voted for, everyone on both sides would generally love to help their neighbor and would offer a hand. It’s just when people get involved in the macro sense that they get filled with hate and anger. Makes me sad. Let’s just all move couches.
Conservatives are often nice to people they know. The in-group. The problem is when it’s a scary other. So they’ll let Jose couch surf for a week while he sorts out his housing situation, because he’s a good guy down on his luck, but they’ll rage against Those People getting anything.
That’s my understanding too. It’s like empathy just ends at one’s own line of sight. If I can’t see it or touch it, there may be something wrong with it. It’s infuriating.
Can we do that without the latent ableism that comes along with it, like the idea that if you can’t help people move couches then you don’t deserve anyone else’s help either?
This especially effects people with invisible disabilities, who are already viewed as lazy, but who also might be the most helpless when it comes to moving their own furniture.
I think it’s kind of ablist to assume a disabled person has nothing of value to offer, like if they can’t move a couch then they are excluded. “Moving a couch” could be anything, it could be filing taxes or cooking a meal. Disabled people are good at stuff too. I think it’s really weird for you to make this assumption.
Honestly it’s both. Plenty of people with disabilities have plenty to offer. A lot actually don’t though, and they still deserve that helping hand.
A family aquatintance has some mental and physical disabilities. They’re just not going to be able to help in any way that isn’t superficial. And that’s okay. Their worth isn’t defined by their utility.
Attaching how worthwhile it is to help someone to their ability to provide a service inherently says the person who can’t isn’t worthy of help.
We should be good to people because it’s the right thing to do, not out of the expectation of a future repayment. More pragmatically, we should help based on the assumption that the other person would, and that if everyone acted like that the world would be better.
I think the other person read a bit much into it, but their base point isn’t wrong.
Thank you! You phrased it better than I could.
I find it wild that most people here can’t see through their own assumptions. Like, everyone else needs to examine their own biases. Not them though, they could never be biased. It shows such a lack of self-awareness on their part.
My dad had a prosthetic leg, and he bristled at some of the polite or accepting ways that people would talk about disability in a way that stuck with me because he explained it. Basically a dislike of “handicapable” or the notion that you “make up for it” in other ways. To paraphrase: “getting my foot cut off in a car accident didn’t come with some perk that balanced things out”.
I think a lot of the pushback you got came not from a place of rejecting that they could have a bias, but from the topic being broached as a confrontation of bias instead of an explanation of ignorance.
People, like the poster above, who are being conscientious according to their understanding will get indignant or frustrated when that’s met with an unmatched response.
Assuming positive intent colors implicit “positive abelism”, or other “positive -isms” that I’m personally less knowledgeable about, as unfamiliarity or ignorance rather than callousness or rudeness.
In those cases, the person is very unlikely to disagree or pushback if informed about their blind spot. The key part in their head was “disabled people are just as important”, sitting right next to “good people chip in and contribute”. So they respond to “disabled people can’t always contribute” with “disabled people are important!” phrased as "disabled people can contribute!”.
Addressing it as a bias against disabled people doesn’t fit because that part is correct. Need to address it at where the problem is: a misconception about the relationship between human worth, labor and utility.
Kevin and Tony would definitely move a sofa for a person with disabilities. No doubt in my mind. They’d still expect pizza and beer tho, that’s non-negotiable.
Okay well what about when they ask that person later if they’ll help move Tony’s fridge? Like this un-negotiated yet obligatory repayment. If you say “sorry, I can’t” then they’ll immediately lose respect for you, and probably tell everyone they know not to help you in the future. Even if you explain that you have a condition that prevents you, if that condition isn’t visible to them they’ll think you’re just selfish and making excuses.
Also, are you willing to guarantee that Kevin and Tony aren’t racist or homophobic? Are you willing to guarantee they would help move a sofa for someone who’s gay or black? This is about more than just disabilities.
This is about “good ole boy” culture and relying on the benevolence and altruism of people who likely as not only care about helping people they view as a part of their in-group. And if you think that’s not a real problem in america, then you must not live here because it’s literally all over the place here.