Key Topics
As “the disabled kid,” I’ve faced various incidents of othering, in school especially, but the one that stands out to me the most is this:
I was in fifth grade when my homeroom teacher came up to me during morning assembly and asked, “Who is the student who’s been spending time with you the most?”
An odd question in hindsight, but my little ten-year-old self didn’t think of it much. When a teacher asked you a question, you gave an answer. Isn’t that how it works?
I gave her the name of the student who was pretty much my only friend at that point, and didn’t think much of it. Half an hour later, during homeroom, the teacher called up my friend, and in front of the entire class, gave her a small prize, and declared that it was for hanging out with me.
During break that day, a classmate who rarely acknowledged me came to walk with me, doing the undesired task in the hopes of getting a prize as well.
I’ve always been the disabled kid, the first disabled kid in most cases, at every school I’ve attended. And, quite frankly, my teachers had no clue what to do with me. In a society where disabled people weren’t very visible, it was hard to wrap your mind around someone being different. How did you treat them? How should you go about things? It’s hard to suddenly get used to difference. So I don’t blame my teachers for the less-than-ideal decisions that were made.
It is first and foremost a systemic issue. Where I live, schools were not equipped to accommodate disabled students because disabled students were a rare occurrence. We aren’t included in “normal” life. This leads to situations like the one I described above, and leads to othering.
How does othering happen?
Teachers knew I was struggling to make friends, but I fear that their efforts have had the opposite effect to what they were intending. Rewarding a ten-year-old for hanging out with the one disabled kid very clearly sends the message, “They are not like you, hanging out with them is not like hanging out with any of your other friends.”
You reward a child for doing their homework, not for being a decent person. What this did is relegate me to an unwanted task, something you didn’t want to do but you still did to make the grown-ups happy and get a prize or praise.
With that single gesture, I no longer became their classmate, but a chore, a mere task. They further othered the child that was already othered due to being the only obviously different one in the vicinity. The difference was highlighted, outlined with a bold black pen, and all the similarities we might have shared were scratched over. I became only the different kid and nothing more, which led to inevitable isolation and othering.
The issue with othering
What othering also does is place someone as less than. The disabled kid no longer is just another classmate, they’re your path to a prize. You don’t have to be their friend. You just have to act like it. Do the chore, and you’ll be rewarded. They’re not worth actual friendship. You’re a hero if you simply treat them as a human being.
I think it goes without saying that this is incredibly dehumanizing. I am fairly certain that I was the first disabled person most of those kids had ever met. And kids at that age are incredibly impressionable. I do believe that single gesture had cemented in them a certain image of disabled people that wouldn’t be easy to dislodge. And I could attest to that. I was in class with those kids for the next three years. Very rarely did they treat me like an equal during all that time.
Why does othering happen?
We have an issue of inclusion and diversity. I’ve been to three different schools. Statistically, how was I possibly the first visually impaired student to attend all of them.
This is what leads to othering. We no longer become people but objects. A prop in someone else’s story. A person is a hero for simply treating us as human, and we are heroes for simply existing. We can’t teach people to accept differences when they don’t see those differences around them.
People learn from experiences. If the teacher was used to having disabled students, she would’ve seen me as just another student. My classmates would’ve seen me as just another classmate. True, genuine inclusion and diversity is the solution to avoid othering.
When I am the only disabled person in a space, I am automatically placed as other, even without the actions of those around me amplifying that. If the world made it easier for us to engage with society, we wouldn’t be seen as outliers. We wouldn’t be seen as less than. And our friendship wouldn’t be reduced to merely means to a reward.
The bottom line is, disabled people exist in this world. We are in schools. We could be in your workplace. We could be walking down the street. We are not the other. We are not just our disability. We are people. And we should start taking down the social and physical barriers that make it harder for us to simply exist, the barriers that lead to othering.
So look around you and find those barriers. The wall that others us can only be broken down if we all disassemble it brick by brick, whether that be by educating about disability or making the world more accessible. It’s about time society embraces difference and variety.
