3 Ways Disability Culture Has Been Changing

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Sep 23, 2021,01:10pm EDT|

3 Ways Disability Culture Has Been Changing

Andrew Pulrang
Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Exploring disability practices, policy, politics, and culture.

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Community Change

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All communities and social movements change. If they don’t, they stagnate, lose relevance, and die. The process of change is almost always uncomfortable, sometimes painful, but usually valuable in the end. This is notably true for disability communities.

There are substantial differences among us. Our disabilities, social backgrounds, and degrees of underlying privilege vary a great deal, even as we are united by the common experience of disability itself. We sometimes disagree not just on strategy, but over which goals we should be working towards, or the meaning of disability itself.

But a lot of the disability community’s squabbling and disunity seems to boil down to the difficult transition between one era of our history and self-perception, and the next. The movements for disability rights and justice may seem brand new to some, including both non-disabled and disabled people learning about disability culture for the first time. But modern disability culture is old enough now that we can easily [...]