KimberleyB
Community?
By Kimberley Barreda
Jul 30, 2002, 13:37

Did you know that the disabled community mkaes up over 15 percent of the population, spends over $770 billion dollars a year and is the largest visible minority consumer group in North America? We're pretty powerful as a community don't you think? I used the word "community" twice in this paragraph, three times actually. Usually a bad move when I write; it makes it seem like I've run out of words, which is not phsically or cosmically possible, but "community: is a word I have been hearing a lot lately.

In fact, it seems like it has been used so often recently that I kind of forgot the real meaning of the word. (YOU try it, say the same word 20 times and then try to think of what it means.) So I decided to go and look it up. This is what I found.

com-mu-ni-ty
n. pl. com-mu-ni-ties
1.a) A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government.
1.b) The district or locality in which such a group lives.
2.a) A group of people having common interests; the scientific community; the international business community.
2.b) A group viewed as forming a distinct segment of society; the gay community; the community of color.
3.a) Similarity or identity; a community of interests.
3.b) Sharing, participation, and fellowship.
4. Society as a whole.

Don't they all sound so grand? So much better than what we really are? Sharing, participation and fellowship. WOW! I feel giddy just thinking about it. I find myself fascinated by the shining mental images of making a difference, adding my voice to the thousands of others who are working for the same goal as I am - a dynamic, effective group of people coming together to affect a change. What a rush.

That thud was just me, crashing back into reality, because on closer inspection, one of these things really is NOT like the others. One of these things really doesn't belong. While most of the defined "community groupings" are based on a comunity formed by choice (one of my favorite words), our community, the disabled community, by definition is one that only exists due to the lifeview of other people.

Holy Star Trek Batman, an entire population of invisible disabled people! What will they think of next?

Seriously though. When you choose to move to an area, or you choose to join a cause, or you choose to pursue your interests, a community is formed. Your energy and participation is the power; it's what makes it work,

But since none of us chose to have a disability (well most of us anyway), it stands to reason that our main common link to other "disableds" is that "disabledness", which none of us chose, so the camaraderie and common vision doesn't exist in that context. It can't exist because our participation in the community is not by our own choice. It was imparted upon us. Our community is one of perception, and by default, instead of being a definition, it has become a label.

This acknowledgement explains EVERYTHING - why we're so fractured as a group and why we work against each other more often than not; we don't really have a community. And that's the truth when you come right down to it.

The disabled community doesn't seem so powerful anymore does it.. Almost seems shabby in an abandoned, rusty junkyard kind of way.

Instead of being a welcoming thought, one that makes me feel all gushy inside (like puppues do), it makes me feel shut into a world that I don't want to be in. One that doesn't fit me. One that I didn't choose. Oops, there's that pesky word again. Maybe that's my problem. I really think that I have teh right to choose how people perceive me and whether or not I choose to be defined by my disability.

And I've found that when you isolate and identify the problem, often the solution is right there with it, and so it is in this situation as well.

It's my choice. The disabled community exists if we CHOOSE for it to exists. If we choose to become involved, we make it happen by the input of our energy and efforts, by our presence and by our interest. I can change the label to a definition by simple action.

Or, if all else fails, I can ignore 1, 2 and 3 and just be part of group number 4. I wonder where their next meeting is?

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