Hope and peril at the dawn of a new epoch

Oh, the voice of Yolanda Adams singing Hallelujah!

My throat swelled and tears brimmed in the corners of my eyes. Yes, my lady, it has been a long, long night and that first pale light has come at last!

I had an extra reason to be choked up. The day of the inauguration was also the day my son started his new school. It’s still online, but it is functional. There are explanations. active teaching, smiles, help for those who struggle and clear goals—none of which were prevalent at his previous school. There is also a reasoned amount of work that he can finish without exhaustion, despair and tears.

Image via Pixabay

In mid-December our local schools opened for ten days and the bullying problem that had been growing in June roared back with a vengeance. I don’t know if it was just that the bullies were suffering from pent-up energy due to successive lockdowns or if it was because all the sports and after school clubs are still closed, but it was worse than ever before.

There were daily attacks. One day, a boy tricked my son into letting him “see” his phone and then he whacked it repeatedly against a tree, smashing it beyond all hope of repair. Four older boys lifted my son off the ground and slammed him down on his back, leaving bruises. Others threw rocks at him as he escaped on his bike. That was just one day.

He’s the only person of color in his school and he’s a softy—a kid who wouldn’t tell me about any of this because he hates confrontation more than anything.

But I found out from friends, and it turned out that a teacher had seen some of it, so I got my son’s permission to try to find out which teacher it was. The principal refused to let me seek out the teacher though, saying, “This was ten meters off school property. It is none of our concern.”

So yeah, I was researching schools after that.

It took weeks. I can’t drive and there is no other school within transportation range. There’s no specific bussing for schools here. And the US online public schools require physical presence in the right time zones. I searched and I searched and I searched.

For weeks on end, I ran across block after block, even with online schools. I’d think I had found a solution only to find out that it required documents I don’t have or cost more than my family’s entire monthly income. We had to have an actual online accredited school because getting approval for homeschooling in the Czech Republic is a bureaucratic nightmare of at least twelve months before you can start—and that’s IF you get approved.

Finally, I found a theoretical possibility and then I had to see if it would actually pass muster with Czech educational and social service authorities. A few days of nail biting, and it is looking good, so I yanked my son out of the endless drone of mandatory make-work without waiting for the end of the semester (or even the end of the day), and started the new program immediately.

He was watching his final required session from the old school while I worked out in front of the news. That’s when I heard Adams and I felt my spirit lift. Oh my, but there are moments that speak to the soul of a nation!

Then, I got my son set up on his first math class in the new school. The lesson was on place value, something he has always struggled with—despite knowing how to do most arithmetic. “Ah well, might as well start off with a bang,” I thought, and I hopped in the shower.

As I stepped out of the shower a few minutes later, I heard a sound even sweeter than Adam’s voice. (OK, possibly a mother might be biased.) My son yelled, “Oh, cool!”

Photo by Arie Farnam

In math class!

Over a place value lesson!

He wanted to show me, still dripping in a towel. “Mama, they explain it so much better!” In the evening, he did extra math problems “for fun,” because he was so elated to have finally conquered something that had plagued him for years.

That was his first class free from four years of tyranny.

Yup, dawn is breaking.

OK, even if you loved Yolanda Adams, you might find me a bit overly optimistic here. Surely, no one can stay excited about fourth grade math for long and the feeling of fresh air in politics isn’t likely to last much longer. Joe Biden isn’t exactly a progressive dreamboat and my son’s school science curriculum on climate and weather doesn’t even mention climate change. Their “social-emotional” course is so fake (not to mention weirdly cult-like) that we had to opt out.

And beyond that, the reasons so many Americans supported an egotistical, racist maniac remain and his supporters are still out there festering—and in some cases plotting violence and hate crimes. The bullies who found school such a convenient place to take out their frustrations on my son are still out in the parks and playgrounds, and they are particularly bored during Covid restrictions.

All is not perfect.

But gods, there is nothing like a few years of things being really bad to make one appreciate the imperfect and the halfway decent.

A few days later…

A lot of people in America are mulling the opportunities—and the perils—we now face. It isn’t that we’ve come down from the glorious hope of dawn after a long night. We’ve been thinking and talking about these things all along, but now is the time we need to really take a hard look.

My focus is on progressives and more broadly people who support the Democrats, because that’s who is in my circles, who I relate to, and the ball is now in our court.

So, here are the opportunities I see before us:

• Democrats in the federal government can now make policy. President Biden has begun it already. His initial moves about climate mitigation, immigration and Covid relief may have been partly a ploy to win the hearts of progressives, since he already got their fear-based ballots. But they were also much needed and they set a good tone.

• Those of us who value fairer voting systems, science-based public policy and education, fact-based discourse, compassion and empathy in society, broad inclusion, protection of the vulnerable, economic justice, equitable treatment for all, and the centering of marginalized voices have a chance to be heard in the current political and media climate. For at least some weeks and maybe even a couple of years, we have an opportunity to decide what concise and clear message we want large portions of the country to hear, because the media is primed for it and there is a theoretical way for political leaders to hear it.

• There are some who once supported Trump, who are disillusioned and are open to having civil conversation and possibly even changing their minds about a few things. OK, I make no claim to knowing how many of these there are, but I’ve seen some of them personally and seen evidence of more. Yes, some will hunker down and dig in, nursing hate and resentment. Some will just tune out and zone out. But some are open now. And IF they meet progressives who are kind, compassionate, open-minded, utterly factual, balanced and clear—some will change.

• As vaccines proliferate and the economy rebuilds, we have the opportunity of rebuilding in our lives and communities. And with that will come opportunities for healing. I think there will be a lot of scars from the traumas of the past several years, but healing is still healing, even when it leaves scars.

But as crucial to our consideration—if not more so—are the perils we are walking right straight into:

• We are pretty well aware that there is a danger that Biden and other mainline Democrats could squander the opportunities of this moment and either make deals where they give away the farm for a pittance or they could simply drift to the right over the next few months. This is something most progressives are pretty aware of and it appears from Biden’s early actions that he is aware we’re aware. It simply bears mention that vigilance will be necessary.

• Similarly, many of us are aware that Trump supporters, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and climate deniers are still out there. While some of them are disheartened and likely to zone out on beer, football and consumerism, many are stewing in their resentment and hate. If we don’t deal with the reasons why people turn to hate and conspiracy theories, as well as the reasons why people become so extreme that they are willing to participate in or tacitly support violence, this is going to come back to bite us—and very likely sooner rather than later. Some of the next few issues may exacerbate this one if those go unchecked.

• Much less discussed are the reactions to the coup attempt that could come back to haunt us even without the help of Trump supporters. The social media crackdown on Trump, his supporters and Covid-deniers in general is on a slippery slope.. I know. I get it. The rhetoric WAS harmful and it was also a serious source of stress in our lives. And as far as direct harm goes, social media companies are justified in banning repeat offenders. But banning a whole topic of discussion or some statements about scientific topics should be taken very seriously. Just because we are sure we understand what scientists are saying about Covid right at the moment doesn’t mean science doesn’t develop. Both in social media and in our off-line circles, we risk much by closing our minds to new information, contrary perspectives and questioning of authority.

• The ACLU has blown the whistle on policy discussions about how to further crack down on the right to protest and lift surveillance and privacy protections in order to combat right-wing extremism and domestic terrorism from white supremacists. And with good reason. I am NOT supporting neo-Nazis in any way and neither is the ACLU. But the fact is that the US government has all the policy and legal tools it needed to stop the attack on the Capitol. It just chose not to use them because the attackers were white and conservative. Any new policies in this area won’t just impact those groups. They will be general policies against public protest and against people outside the mainstream organizing. The next administration may well take those policies and use them against us. This goes back to the Geneva Convention. Whatever you do, remember that it can and will be done to you.

• Similarly, the so-called “liberal media” isn’t all that liberal on a lot of issues, but there have been a couple moments, especially around Covid, where journalists have been stepping out of objectivity and openly (as well is covertly) pushing a particular agenda. It’s all in the name of “supporting science,” but there was at least one time this past year when science didn’t support that agenda and the more progressive-friendly media actually did what Trump and his supporters accused them of doing. They bulldozed right through, using the words of scientists out of context and linking “children and super-spreaders” together again and again, despite the fact that even the most alarming studies of the pandemic show that children have a 0.5 spread ratio. By contrast, the flu has 1.2 and Covid among adults has more than 2.5. That 0.5 spread ratio is actually very low. When scientists said children CAN spread Covid, they meant just that. It is possible, though not likely. They did not mean that schools are super spreader hotbeds which should be closed while the real hotbeds, like meat packing plants, remain open. Keeping schools closed (and countless low-income parents out of work as a result) hurt the real small-people economy far more than closing certain types of workplaces, shuttering shopping beyond food and medicine and turning vegetarian for a while would have. But mostly schools have been the first to go and the last to reopen, due in no small part to the “children and super-spreaders” media ploy. Women, who bore the brunt of the home-teaching policy, were 40 percent more likely to have to give up their jobs due to Covid than men, and equity experts say women’s economic equality has been set back by decades. If this was truly the best way to fight Covid, the sacrifice may have been better accepted, but it wasn’t. In situations like this, we are at peril of using “supporting science” as a slogan without remembering that to support science means adopting a total openness to change your mind based on the evidence at hand, even if it means changing tack a few months into a crisis once the numbers are in.

• When any group is on a roll, there is a danger of confirmation bias. We have been clamoring for a return to facts for years now, and rightly so. But now that we have the ability to spread messages and make waves, we must be extra vigilant about our own truthfulness. Some of those who spread that factually flimsy “children and super-spreaders” slogan, admitted privately that it was “an exaggeration” but justified it by saying that too many people were bucking desperately needed public-health measures—like masks and social distancing—and anything that helped scare people into compliance was justified. But here’s the rub. Eventually, a lot of people will see through an exaggeration. And many will lose trust in media outlets, in all public health advice and in science-based policy in general. Public trust is severely shaken right now. In many places, even those who were initially very compliant with Covid restrictions are now flaunting them at a time when the pandemic is at its worst, not because of exhaustion but because they have come to assume restrictions are overstated and that officials who publicly tout them will privately flaunt them. It happened. The only way to win trust back in public discourse is through extreme truthfulness that is willing to admit mistakes, explain nuance and trust that MOST people will not be idiots when something like public health advice is carefully balanced. Check the facts before you repeat what you’ve heard, don’t exaggerate and admit mistakes. The next pandemic could easily be worse. The trust and voluntary compliance of vast numbers of people is the best defense.

• Finally, we face peril within the progressive movement itself from the demon of division and judgement. Our patience has been strained in so many ways and it shows. I’ve witnessed firsthand several (and heard of many more) examples of close friendships and family relationships broken up, not just because of the Trump versus Democrat divide, but also because of micro-differences among progressives. You think racial justice is more important than justice for LGBTQ+ people! Relationship cut. You think poor, white disabled people are underprivileged in any way comparable to black people! Not speaking anymore. You cite stats that school closures have exacerbated wealth and race inequality and have caused a surge in youth suicide instead of holding to the line that all costs are worth even one life saved from Covid! You’re worse than a Trumper! It sounds silly in black and white, but these are real divides, real relationships ruptured and deep rifts in a movement that has a tenuous chance to make some progress.

I am not a leader of anything. And I’m rather glad of that at the moment. This is a rugged time to be a progressive leader or even a Democratic elected official. There is a lot of pressure, some opportunities crying not to be missed and a whole lot of pitfalls. I’m just a scribe pointing them out.

Here’s a poem to close with.

Divide and conquer 

“We find our strength in open minds.
Always did. But always will?
We could stand side by side on the line,
Democrat and progressive, leftist and anarchist.
How many times did we hammer out agreements
In late night meetings with bleary eyes?
And yet when it came to the poll booth,
Our strength became our weakness.
Spoilers and small factions kept us down,
Against the rah rah juggernaut.
If the pulpit said it, they voted it. 
End of story. End of our hopes. 
Yet the few times we tried the strong arm,
It was terrible, much too bad to think on.
So, we say our strength is in open minds.
Today the tables have turned somewhat.
For once the juggernaut has been shaken.
Is there a line of insurrection some won’t cross?
Evangelicals in bed with old-style conservatives
And Nazis riding their coattails.
We might be able to use this,
Break the juggernaut, divide and conquer.
But our strength is in open minds.
If we take up their old tools of forced unity,
The half-truths and pressure tactics,
We might get victory and still lose everything
That mattered to us at the core.
If we divide from our body those who disagree,
Or cut away the wild ones and the rebels,
We will one day find that this more than anything
Was what made us who we are.
Our strength is ever in open minds.”

Compassion and politics in the time of coronavirus

This is not the post I want to write today. I feel like I’m watching my country disintegrate. Throughout all the crises in the past thirty years, the situation in the United States has never felt more desperate, and I wish I could write only words of encouragement and hope.

In these days of coronavirus, racist violence, political tyranny and thoughtless posturing, we wish we had a president like Theodore Rosevelt or Abraham Lincoln, one who would call the country to courage and mutual aid. My home town was recently hit with a massive spike in COVID-19 infection because of the unwise and politically motivated actions of church leaders, including laying on of hands to heal the sick and large group events.

Among most people I know, there is so much fear. Fear of the virus. Fear about the election. Fear over lost jobs and economic collapse. Fear of the police. Fear of rioters. Fear of people with guns. Fear of people reacting to fear.

And yet the thing that makes me most afraid isn’t coming from strangers or Republicans or a virus. It’s the desperation and anger numbing those people I identify with most to suffering other than that specifically sanctioned by the cause. And that’s why this isn’t just an encouraging post about banishing fear.

Creative Commons image by Matthew Kenwrick

I can’t speak for American conservatives and Republicans, but those of us who are in the US called “liberals” or “progressives” like to think of ourselves as the good guys. I mean we really REALLY like to think of ourselves as the compassionate, nicer side of the political divide.

I don’t mean that we just think that we’re right. I assume everyone thinks they’re right. But we also think we’re nice and empathetic too. It comes with the political territory.

And I am not above this hubris. I not only think that being anti-racist, pro-universal health care, proactive on climate change, anti-corporate and so forth are all factually and morally correct. I also think these positions are more compassionate than the alternatives available.

Those who call themselves “conservatives” often make noises about how compassion is good and all, but sacrifices must be made for some other greater good, usually economic prosperity, and that it is more important to ensure that people who work hard get what they deserve than it is to be compassionate for those seen as being less hard working.

Every issue that comes up in America is supposed to be drawn between these lines. So, when Trump belittled the threat of COVID-19 and delayed the US response to it, liberals and progressives were quick to raise the flags of compassion for those most vulnerable to the virus.

In Europe the political sides haven’t been so clearly drawn on COVID-19. Many liberals cautioned against draconian lockdown measures that were likely to harm the most vulnerable and conservative goverments enforced lockdowns, workplace and school closures as well as masks. Europe has a culture in which listening to doctors and scientists is the default, regardless of one’s political stance—at least in theory.

Large scale lockdowns were enforced for more than two months in most places and they proved effective, even in places like Sweden where personal social distancing wasn’t mandated for those at low risk. Except for parts of Italy and Spain where the virus struck before it was even remotely understood, Europe has avoided chaos and massive death tolls.

Over time, European doctors have determined which measures are most effective and which are unnecessary or have harmful side effects, and some measures have been phased out. In the US media and blogosphere there is a lot of discussion about how masks and social distancing are likely here to stay, even beyond a specific vaccine for COVID-19.

But Europeans have loosened up interpersonal interaction already in favor of large scale-social distancing in shopping centers, public transportation, mass events, crowded factories and other hotbeds of contagion. Interpersonal interaction was relaxed a month ago where I live and no spike in COVID-19 cases has resulted.

The Atlantic divide has meant that I get some flak from American friends for discussing which measures have been phased out locally due to nasty side effects or ineffectiveness. I find myself with a sudden, uncomfortable insight into why conservatives often scoff at liberal claims to compassion because of our vehement (and yeah, sometimes self-righteous) insistence on particular social norms.

In American liberal circles, it is mandatory to be compassionate about the two to four percent of the population (depending on the strength of your healthcare system), who could die from COVID-19. It is not so encouraged to be compassionate about people with anemia and other blood-oxygen conditions who are at risk while wearing masks or about the relatively young and healthy people who have experienced cardiac arrest due to attempting to run or cycle wearing a mask or about the countless people pushed into psychological instability and suicide risk due to extreme isolation.

It is not okay in liberal circles to voice compassionate concern over the people hit by the economic crisis, if that entails any criticism of COVID-prevention measures. Voicing compassionate concern for people who cannot stay home with their children and survive at the same time is not much encouraged.

It isn’t good to mention that social distancing, which we blithely predict will be permanent, is devastating people who are already socially isolated due to mental illness or disability. It is definitely not okay to talk about the rising tide of suicide figures or to compare any of this to the number of COVID-19 deaths, which while equally terrible, are still a small fraction of the preventable deaths in our society. (And I’ll get flak for that statement alone, despite the facts.)

While I do think I’m personally compassionate, I have never felt that this requires tolerance and empathy for everyone. I am not tolerant toward intolerance and never have been. I am not even very compassionate toward people who are clearly suffering under a burden of too much privilege and too little introspection. But still the current compassion exclusivity is disturbing, even more so because it is fueled by feelings of desperation and political anger.

It has become more about politics than about compassion. Compassion is now rarely referenced unless it suits the cause. Do we truly care about protecting the vulnerable or just about combatting Trump and his supporters, because of everything else Trumpism has brought?

Each camp in the US wields the virus like a political weapon. The conservatives are suddenly into hugging strangers in crowds. (Just imagine explaining that to a time traveler from a year ago.) And liberals are into putting a cold hand in the face of anyone who doesn’t wear a mask, regardless of the circumstances.

It isn’t hard to generate empathy for my freaking-out liberal friends and family. This is a depressing year for American liberals and progressives. We are facing a grim election in which all we can hope for is the defeat of a horrible regime by a somewhat less horrible one and we won’t succeed even at that unless we can muster a lot of enthusiasm for it. That likely plays into the politicization of COVID-19 response.

But even so, the speed with which we began erecting walls on compassion leaves me cold. In some ways this is lonelier than all the months of coronavirus lockdown.

Given my vision impairment, social distancing and masks really do mean that I can’t interact with people in person. If people sit six feet away, I can no longer sense their mood or emotions. If people wear masks, their voices are usually so muffled that I can’t hear the non-verbal cues. I can pay for groceries, but I can’t have a real conversation.

Sitting close, an occasional hand on a shoulder, the subtle tones of voice—that’s my version of eye contact. Social distancing has taken that away entirely. And I’m told it will never be back.

I worry about the people with disabilities like mine who don’t have a spouse and kids at home. If social distancing is here to stay, will they never feel the touch of a human hand again? So many people with disabilities live alone without a lot of family or community support. People talk big about caring, but the truth is that mostly people only hang out with those they think are popular, successful and attractive enough.

A lot of people who are just as friend-worthy fall through the cracks even in normal times. And now… I don’t even want to contemplate it.

I am not saying we shouldn’t do social distancing or wear masks. In many places, particularly in the US right now, we have to. Listen to medical advice. Be careful particularly in areas hard hit by the virus. But let’s also sit a moment in stillness and think on what protecting the vulnerable really means.

I’m not saying you have to empathize with everyone. Compassion fatigue is a thing and likely part of the culprit here.

If someone is flaunting risky behavior—forcing people into hugs, breathing in people’s faces in public, intentionally creating large gatherings to make a political point—you’ll have to protect yourself first and save compassion for those who are just struggling. Still, a less biting reaction toward conservatives might just help them come down off of their very dangerous wall on COVID-prevention.

Most importantly, let’s think about compassion for those who fall through the cracks in these very troubled times. Let’s be gentle. Let’s include as much as we can. Let’s remember that human contact is a basic human need. Long-term denial of human contact has documented, medical effects and can eventually lead to death, and not just through suicide.

My class of mostly elderly women studying English as a foreign language met just once last month. I offered my veranda, which has a table and chairs and a canopy of lush grape leaves. Attendance was definitely voluntary, given that several students are over seventy and one over eighty. But everybody came. They seemed very much in need of the in-person connection.

One of the students has a husband who has had a bone-marrow transplant and is at substantial immunological risk. She sat an extra distance from the rest of the group and we all wore masks at first. But then several students are hard of hearing and they rely on watching my mouth for English pronunciation. I was also having a lot of difficulty hearing the students and reading their level of comprehension with the masks and the distance.

In the end, the one with the vulnerable husband and the one who is a nurse decided we could do without the masks but remain at a distance. Everyone was gentle and considerate.

As the teacher, I am able to set the tone in these classes and I have always set a standard in which everyone’s needs are heard and cared for. If compromise is made, it is initiated by those most vulnerable and not imposed upon them. I think it is part of why the same students come back year after year.

Most of my European students would likely identify themselves as conservatives, though they take universal health care for granted and are serious about COVID-19. I wish their culture of consideration was more widespread in all political camps.

We are living with terrible risks every day. COVID-19 is just one more factor. It isn’t a small one, but it isn’t the only one by far. Saying “we are all in this together” should mean more than just thoughts and prayers. It should mean real care for those hit hard by the virus and by our attempts to combat the virus.

Measuring disadvantage: A well-intentioned concept gone horribly wrong

A few days ago, a blind woman with a white cane and a guide dog ordered a taxi in the city close to where I live. When the taxi arrived she got into the back and her guide dog was about to get in as well, but the taxi driver insisted that the dog was not allowed in his vehicle, despite national laws that bar discrimination against licensed guide dogs and their owners.

The woman argued with the driver and insisted that she had already paid for the taxi through her mobile app. The driver first shut the door, separating her from the guide dog and insisted that she would either go without her guide dog or she would lose the price of her fare because he would report that she hadn’t shown up.

The woman protested and the driver ordered her out of the cab and threatened to call the police.

The woman then began to voice-dial the police herself, due to the driver’s threatening tone and her knowledge of the law. The driver attempted to grab her phone. Then, cursing her with profanity, according to a witness, he opened the door and violently dragged the woman out of the vehicle. The witness’s video shows the woman roughly hauled from the taxi, so that she fell and was left lying in the open roadway where vehicles passed as the taxi drove away from the scene.

At the last second, the driver tossed the woman’s white cane out of a window and onto the road. In the video, the woman is seen slowly getting to her feet. Despite the presence of moving cars and a major hotel, the only person who came to her aid was the witness with the phone who had to run down several flights of stairs to reach her.

I haven’t been on social media much in the past six months. I used to try to keep up with Facebook for the connections to old friends and for the ostensible positive effect on marketing books.

But first activism and then family crisis interfered until I found myself popping onto Facebook only every week or so, to go through notifications and then get off. I used to get pretty worked up about some of the hideous things on social media, and now it is more like an intellectual dismay over the state of the world. I rarely have the impulse to get into a big argument or defend my position on social media these days.

Today for the first time in many months I commented on a post that got under my skin. And it wasn’t even about that incident with the woman and the taxi driver, which painfully reminds me of a time a few years ago when I was physically assaulted and threatened with police while asking a driver illegally parked across a sidewalk to either move or assist me because I couldn’t step out into traffic with my two toddlers to get around his vehicle, given that I can’t see.

The post that got at me this time was worse than just a single incident. I ended up doing some extra research and found my stomach boiling with frustration and even anger. And no, it wasn’t Trump supporters, neo-Nazis out to get my brown kids or white supremacists parasiting off of my spiritual symbols either (though those are things that have lit a fire in me in the past).

No. This time it is allies, just allies being knee-jerk and thoughtless in a way that leaves me sick with sadness.

Creative Commons image by Oregon Department of Transportation

The post was an online tool for measuring the intersectionality of oppression, called the Intersectionality Score. The theory of intersectionality is one I am well acquainted with and I’m not even particularly adverse to attempts to roughly measure it the way this tool does. It is a reasonably effective way to portray intersectionality both visually and kinesthetically and to allow people who may not have a lot of life experience with the issues to understand the interplay of factors in oppression and marginalization.

I guess the thing that really gets to me is when something reasonable and hopeful is finally done, but done so badly that it perpetuates harm.

Most progressive people who understand intersectionality have always insisted that it cannot be measured and that privilege cannot be compared. We don’t have any objective way of knowing if a Black person in Detroit faces more barriers than a disabled person in a small town in Nevada or visa versa, and most attempts to make a direct comparison are rightly shot down. But this Intersectionality Score tool makes an attempt to do just that, though it makes no vehement claims to accuracy.

But whether it claims accuracy or not, it does reflect the common attitudes of most woke progressive folks and for the past several months those attitudes have been one of the factors driving me away from social media and activism.

The Intersectionality Score tool isn’t the problem, only a symptom of attitudes that I have seen widespread and possibly increasing in recent years.

You see, the tool weights the various factors involved in marginalization—disability, economic class, gender, migration status, native language, race, sexual orientation and so forth (consciously listed alphabetically by me, not by them)—and you get a score based on where you fall on separate spectrums of each of these categories. It is reasonably complex and the fact that there are spectrums—rather than on/off switches—reflects an attempt at nuance and accuracy.

Most of the weighting is reasonable—judging from statistics of discrimination, hate crimes and life expectancy of various groups as well as broad experience of individuals known to me—with one glaring exception.

Perceived racial identity is the factor weighted heaviest, due to widespread discrimination, racist attitudes, police violence, social marginalization and a host of other pervasive adversities. Gender is given a bit more weight than sexual orientation and gender identity, probably because of wage inequality, endemic sexual harassment, domestic violence, social dismissal and other problems faced by women on a daily basis. Sexual orientation and gender identity do get more weight than say economic class, which could be debated, though given the number of fatal hate crimes against gay, lesbian and trans folks, a case can be made.

But the one factor that stands out as being dismissed and belittled in the Intersectionality Score tool is disability.

One can determine the weight given to any specific factor by leaving all other sliders neutral and sliding the bar for one factor all the way to each extreme. Out of 100 points, race is weighted at 27 points. That means that if you have a completely and utterly white person steeped in white culture and a completely and utterly black person steeped in black culture, but in all other respects they are somehow miraculously average, the black person is apparently disadvantaged in our society by 27 out of 100 points.

I am definitely on the far white end of that scale myself, but after years of study and watching my children who are not white grow up in a racist society, I have to conclude that this is a conservative estimate of the difference white privilege makes.

Gender is given a weight of 15 points, which again seems reasonable though conservative, to me as a woman, though I encounter irritating micro-aggressions daily and humiliation every now and then due to my gender. Sexual orientation is given 10 points, which I can imagine may well be justified.

But disability, even the most severe types of disability, is given just seven points out of a hundred.

Don’t get me wrong. I can imagine how a person without a disability, who has not researched the issue or had any significant experience with disabilities might think that although having a disability disadvantages a person because they actually lack some crucial abilities that isn’t what the Intersectionality Score is measuring. The uninformed able-bodied person can easily think that most of the issues concerning disability are unavoidable physical, neurological or biochemical problems, rather than socially constructed barriers, and thus not covered by the concept of intersectionality.

The problem is that this understandable able-bodied person would be wrong. And an uninformed person has no business designing and putting out a tool like this in public with links to major initiatives like Teaching Tolerance, while dismissing the social exclusion faced by people with disabilities as less than half as impactful as modern gender discrimination, for instance.

On any average day, the physical trouble being blind and somewhat mobility impaired causes me is a nuisance, something to be taken into account and worked around. The social impact, however, is overwhelming and has shaped my entire life from employment to social circles, from physical and intense psychological assaults to the necessity of emigrating to another country to achieve a basic level of freedom. Dealing with patriarchy as a woman is a pain and sometimes dangerous, but it doesn’t even come close to the impact of oppression and marginalization due to disability. And my disability is far from the most marginalizing possible.

It is hard to imagine that the designers of the Intersectionality Score tool were entirely uninformed about this. Here are some basic statistics that can be found with a 10 minute Google search:

• 47 percent of people with disabilities live in poverty.

• Internationally 90 percent of children who have a disability still don’t attend school today.

• People with disabilities are 70 percent more likely to be the victim of a violent crime.

• A third of all employers openly state that they do not hire people with disabilities because they assume people with disabilities cannot perform required job tasks, regardless of their track record.

• Only 35 percent of people with a disability, who are of age and able to work, actually have a job. About 80 percent of non-disabled individuals, in comparison, have a job.

• 6 percent of women with a disability in the UK have been forcibly sterilized.

• Only 45 countries in the world today have anti-discrimination laws that aim to protect people with disabilities.

• A quarter of people with disabilities face at least one incident of discrimination every single day.

• 40 percent of people with a disability in the UK encounter discrimination or socially constructed barriers when accessing basic goods and services like grocery shopping, medical services, housing and education.

• 38 percent of able-bodied people admit to pollsters that they believe anyone with a disability is a burden on society.

• 28 percentage of able-bodied people say they resent any extra attention that someone with a disability receives.

• Nearly 70 percent of able-bodied people say they actively avoid people with disabilities in social situations out of discomfort or irritation.

• Official estimates say that in the UK alone over 100 hate crimes are committed against individuals with disabilities every single day. An OSCE report states that hate crimes against people with disabilities, including assaults with more than one attacker, are critically under-reported, widespread and continuous, although they are much less discussed, studied or recognized by police than hate crimes based on race or religion.

• The FBI reported that serious hate crimes of national interest against people with disabilities rose by 70 percent between 2016 and 2017 and mentioned that hate crimes against people with disabilities are still vastly under-reported.

• The Harvard Implicit Association Test shows that out of a sample of more than 300,000 people, including people with disabilities themselves, nearly 80 percent of those who voluntarily took a psychological test have an automatic, if often subconscious, preference for able-bodied people over people with disabilities.

The designers of the Intersectionality Score tool might well argue that these problems are primarily about people with “severe disabilities” only. However, their tool uses a slider precisely for this reason. Only at the far end of the scale is an individual considered completely able bodied and without disability. And yet, their assumption is that the most extreme end of the disability scale implies only very minor social marginalization.

The designers of the tool may also be assuming that severe disabilities are rare. Again, it is a wrong assumption arrived at precisely because people with significant disabilities are so marginalized in society that they are often not present where able-bodied people are present. Nineteen percent of the US population is categorized as having a disability, while ten percent qualify as having a severe disability.

The designers of this tool may also argue with my anecdote in the beginning of this post, saying that the problem the woman faced was not based on prejudice related to her disability but related to something (the guide dog) which is only an accessory to the disability. Yet these same woke progressives have no trouble dissecting this same logic when police officers insist they shot a young black teen because he was wearing a hoodie, not because he was black, or when an employer insists he was not discriminating against a black woman in hiring but objecting to her “unprofessional” hairstyle.

I am going to mention here another possible explanation for the way the Intersectionality Score tool is designed, because it is inevitable that the argument will be used. Some will say that people with minor disabilities or health issues (peanut allergies are specifically belittled as insignificant on the site) will inevitably rank themselves as having a severe disability. The designers of the tool may claim this is the reason for the low weight given to the whole issue of disability.

The problem here is inherent to the attitudes toward people with disabilities. The designers of the Intersectionality Score tool trust people of color to rate their level of color versus whiteness. They trust the honesty of LGBTQ+ people to rate their own experience. But they don’t trust people with disabilities to be intelligent, fair-minded and understanding of nuance. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Disability is the least studied and the least mentioned marginalization factor among progressives and the general population alike. Often as not, diversity lists that insist on inclusion of people regardless of race, gender and so forth, don’t include disability or include it only under “other” categories.

Until recently, even I believed prejudice against people with disabilities was minor compared to other types of prejudice. I assumed this was an established fact because of the way my woke friends and colleagues only tacked it on at the end if at all when discussing prejudice or oppression. I believed it was minor, despite living through it personally day after day, personally experiencing hate-based assaults, hiring discrimination and community shunning.

I figured, along with most other woke progressives, that while people with disabilities experience some discrimination, people are much more likely to pity us than hate us. I assumed that my own experiences of hate and social marginalization in a wide variety of situations had as much to do with being a non-conformist as it did with having a disability.

That was until I encountered the Harvard Implicit Association Test. The results of this test are primarily offered only AFTER one has taken each test, so I have constructed bar graphs to show you the results more easily. The test is the same for each category. The respondent has to categorize images and words at high speed, depending on specific instructions given.

The test goes too fast to consciously manipulate. If you try, you will simply get a result saying your test couldn’t be processed or you made too many mistakes. But if you just do your best and have a minutely harder time categorizing one group of people with positive terms, the test will score you as being subconsciously biased against that group.

You might think that these split-second differences would be pretty random, but when distributed over hundreds of thousands of test respondents, they aren’t. The results show us what we already know about prejudice based on race and sexual orientation. There is a lot of bias out there, even among those who consciously want to be unbiased and anti-racist.

The Implicit Association Test doesn’t necessarily mean that a given individual will discriminate or even agree with their own test results. The official website of the Harvard Implicit Association Test states that, “While a single IAT is unlikely to be a good predictor of a single person’s behavior at a single time point, across many people the IAT does predict behavior in areas such as discrimination in hiring and promotion, medical treatment, and decisions related to criminal justice.”

That is to say that while you can’t take someone’s test score and know whether or not they will discriminate personally tomorrow, if a group has high scores of implicit bias against another group, discrimination and prejudice will rise accordingly. Groups that demonstrate higher implicit bias discriminate more and behave in more prejudiced ways over all. Groups that are less preferred in the test, experience more discrimination and social marginalization.

And as the charts of results show, 68 percent of respondents, representing more than 800,000 tests between 2004 and 2015, demonstrated an automatic preference for light skin over dark skin. The results are nearly identical on a similar test featuring photographs of European Americans versus African Americans, which was taken by over 3 million people. The test results are anything but random.

While around eighteen percent of people were neutral when it came to both race and sexual orientation questions, the bias was somewhat less on sexual orientation. For some of us, this is surprising information. If you grew up in a conservative Christian area, like I did, you get the impression that racism may exist but it is repressed, while homophobia is often loud and proud. But that loudness is confined to its homophobic specific group. Among those with anti-gay bias, there is a significant block—about 40 percent—where that bias is severe.

The same goes for bias against people with disabilities though, only more so. Of the 78 percent of people, who demonstrated bias against people with disabilities, half showed severe bias. The severe bias group here is larger and more extreme. The types of words associated with this negative bias against people with disabilities are not merely about pity or dismissal, but rather terms like “hatred,” “dishonest,” “ugly,” “terrible,” “poison,” “annoying,” and “disgust.”

I am left with this striking discrepancy. While the Harvard study, which is based on a scientific and measurable indicator, shows that people with disabilities face significantly greater potential prejudice and negative bias in society even than people of color, the tool designed by woke, progressive allies dismisses disability as a significant factor in the intersectionality of oppression and social marginalization.

It is difficult to avoid the obvious conclusion that the negative bias against people with disabilities discovered in the more objective Harvard study played a role in the design of the Intersectionality Score tool, and it continues to play a role in progressive and activist communities, which we have looked to as our best and only hope for equity and inclusion.

My experiences in progressive and activist organizations—too often being silenced and marginalized over ostensibly “interpersonal” problems with people I actually had no quarrel with—begin to take on new connotations.

Though I doubt the designers of the Intersectionality Score tool set out to perpetuate harmful dismissive and belittling attitudes toward people with disabilities in progressive communities, their site has that effect. Comments and responses on the site don’t appear to be up-to-date, so it is unlikely that they will listen, but I hope at least this one site will be changed to better reflect the realities we live with.

In the end, after getting it all down in words, I find that the burning anger, which aggravating social media posts so often kindle, has cooled. I’m left instead with aching grief and dread of a world in which my child, who is vulnerable both in terms of race/ethnicity and disability, has few true allies indeed.

Putting hope back into the holidays

It has been a particularly rough week here and a particularly rough year everywhere. Looking through my records I notice that last year at the winter solstice (a month and a half after the election of Donald Trump), the image I led my post with was that of a dying, red sun in a gray and gloomy forest.

We knew we were headed for hard times then, and now hard times have come. Wild fires raged across dry areas all autumn and areas that are not usually dry were parched with unusual thirst. More innocent people were shot down. Racism became more brazen and public. Several countries started violently fending off waves of refugees from worse-hit regions. 

The state of the outer world mirrors my intimate life this week. As many of my readers know, one of my children struggles with neuro-diversity that takes a toll on the health of the whole household. This week was particularly difficult--a lot of screaming, meltdowns multiple times per day, extreme stress and a lot of glass shards.

I feel like I'm fighting for my life and the only thing I can fight is a person even more vulnerable than myself, who is not to blame. If that is not a mirror of the outside world, I don't know what it is. 

I hear the stealthy "scritch!" of a match struck across the table while I'm getting dinner and my hand automatically lashes out, ready to grab, knock something out of her hand if necessary, defend the home...

My hand freezes with inches to spare. The tiny flame catches on the wick of first candle in the Yule wreath. Anxiety wars with guilt within me and nearly drowns my little sigh of gladness. I am so tired of fighting disasters moment by moment and of being on guard every second in between.

I stifle the yell in my throat and say, my voice shaking a bit, "Thank you for lighting the candles, honey. Please be gentle." 

And for once she is. I watch closely, pausing in the midst of loading plates. There are moments like this. That's one reason I have to be on guard. I never know what to expect. I can no more relax in my home than we can let our guard down in the world beyond these four snow-proof walls.

It is trite to take such a small, glowing thing--a literal candle flame moment--and expound upon it to fabricate a message of hope. "Don't despair for even a struggling child lit a candle." 

But it does bring me a moment of gladness. It is more in the noticing that there are such moments, not the act itself. 

After a morning of getting the kids to school for one of the last days before break, I walk up the hill to let the chickens out. Snow crunches under my boots and I have to give the door an extra tug against the frost.

I turn back to the trail down the ridge and take a long breath of crisp, cold air. The solstice sun is still below the horizon but pink and gold light sparkles on the ice crystals that adorn the bare branches of the fruit trees. A moment of beauty.

I give thanks for the cold. It will help a bit to beat back the climate-change-exacerbated invasive pests that plague our region. And I hope against hope that this is a good and natural cold snap, not one created by melting ice and shifting currents. I pray for more snow, ballast against another summer of drought. 

In dark times, you never know when the next moment of beauty or respite will come again. It's about noticing--taking that breath and noticing. 

The winter solstice is about hope. It always has been in northern lands. Here on the 50th parallel where we get only seven short hours of real daylight at this time of year, the return of the light is a big deal. 

But we won't see much difference for weeks yet. The hope of this season is symbolic and a bit forced.

That's okay. We hope because we must. 

My friends, many of you write that you are certain that climate change has already passed the crucial tipping points. Many of you are aghast at how bigotry and hate have sprouted like mushrooms after rain, proving that the relative civility of years past was a result of suppression rather than deep social change. Many of you despair of finding common ground, even with those you love, let alone with people in other regions of the country or the world. 

And there is no denying this darkness. I will not try to tell you it is not real or that I can promise some sort of supernatural hope. I do not know for sure that the light will return in these areas, as it does in the sky. 

I know only that without hope, you fall and die or become so angry or jaded that you feed the roots of pain and suffering. 

The winter solstice and essentially every holiday modeled after it by various religions--Yule, Christmas, Hanukkah, Dong Zhi et al--they are all at the core about hope--not because it is real, but because it is necessary.

Hope because the alternatives are not feasible. 

Embrace those near you who are willing to embrace. May the holidays you hold dear bring you joy and peace and some much needed comfort. 

But above all may they strengthen your most necessary capacity for hope.

The first reason for outrage: Living with climate change

Your grown children scrape at the rock-hard ground with salvaged hand tools, trying to turn the baked mud. They have realized their dreams and they have professional careers but today—in 2050—everyone has to keep a garden to supplement the limited food they can buy at exorbitant prices.

A torrential flood came through last winter and took away what was left of the homes built in better times. But the water didn’t stay.

When the three-day storm was spent, all that was left was stinking mud on everything—tainted with the bodies of people and animals and with chemical spills. Now the drought has returned with a vengeance. It hasn’t rained in weeks and early spring looks like late summer used to look, at least in the sky.

Creative Commons by Asia Development Bank

There are no trees left. Those were cut long ago for fires and to build makeshift shelters when houses were destroyed by winter floods and summer brush fires. What is left are mostly the hardier sort of weeds. Even if they can plant the seeds they have left, your children won’t see much of a harvest. Just like last year, the insects are the only life that is flourishing and they swarm in clouds that can make breathing difficult on some days.

Even with their career jobs, they need this garden. Your youngest grandchildren—which you may well not be alive to meet, if you were in your twenties in 2018—sit listlessly in the dust beside the garden. The low-nutrient diet and grinding stress of survival takes its toll on both mind and body, especially for the youngest ones. They can barely muster the energy to cry, let alone play. They are wracked by sicknesses that your generation believed banished from your wealthy country forever.

They are still better off than the wretches your children see along the road outside, refugees from the south. Long lines of refugees were something you saw on the news. They are now something your children and grandchildren see on their doorstep and all along the high fences your children built to protect their scrubby garden.

The lines of people trudging by never end and they look like walking skeletons. They don’t beg as much as they used to. By now they know that your children don’t have enough for their own and they go on, hoping against all the facts to find a place with some rain… but not too much rain.

This is what famine and drought look like and it’s what life will likely resemble in 2050 in the US Midwest and Southern Europe, if carbon emissions from coal, gas or oil burning and factory farming continue apace. According to the recent report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this is the kind of impact we can expect from a 2°C rise in global average temperature, a level we’ll reach by around 2050 if we continue as we are and by 2100 even if we implement the more widely accepted agreements on emissions reduction.

Creative Commons image by Tim J. Keegan

A 2°C temperature rise doesn’t sound bad to many people in northern climates. The problem is that it is an average and it isn’t equally distributed. It also is a lot more drastic than it sounds for the earth’s climate. Even such a small-sounding temperature change would mean widespread drought.

Extreme weather events would hit temperate areas the way they are now hitting desert areas such as the Middle East. The areas hit today will become uninhabitable.

Still many people don’t register the realities of such impacts. Scientists often call out people who predict the collapse of civilization due to climate change. A 2°C temperature rise may be bad but it would probably not mean the complete destruction of modern industrial and consumer society. And most people in wealthy countries will still live, just poorer and shorter lives.

Scientists deal in probabilities and theories. They aren't supposed to look at impacts personally or allow emotion in. That prevents them from extrapolating out what their data would actually mean for their own family as I have done here. And even so, many climate scientists are suffering from clinical levels of anxiety and depression due to their understanding of what is coming and the lack of response from the wider population or the outright denial of many in positions with the power to change it.

If you are over thirty and your children are already half grown, this may be the fate in store for your grandchildren and great grandchildren instead. But he fact still remains, that this is the life we are creating. On paper the predictions don’t sound that bad for people in temperate climates. Most predictions focus on the fact that some more vulnerable areas which are already very hot will become uninhabitable either by flooding or extreme drought. Many people in the equatorial countries may die outright.

But those countries are far from the English-speaking world. And the predictions scientists put forward about us sound dry and theoretical. “Decreases in crop yields, increases in pest infestations and extreme weather events, increases in disease, spreading drought in certain areas and increases in coastal flooding.”

If you have never been bothered by any of these things and do not currently raise food from the land, it all sounds distant and like someone else’s problem. Many people assume it will simply mean that food is more expensive. But I have spent a fair amount of time in countries where this type of weather is common today, the countries likely to be hit hardest and earliest by climate change, such as Bangladesh. The weather that scientists predict for much of the American west and the Midwest and for large parts of Central Europe is the weather these vulnerable places already have and their dismal economic realities may be a crystal ball in which we can see our own future.

Creative Commons image by Tavis Ford

Food is likely to become so expensive that many more people will have to be engaged in growing or attempting to grow food, even if it is only to supplement what they can buy.

The lackadaisical view of climate change so common in society today isn’t really surprising. On the one hand, we have dry predictions which give little indication of the wrenching realities they factually describe.

On the other hand, there are the more fictionalized predictions of the collapse of civilization as we know it and the death of whole swaths of the population.

One sounds incremental and abstract. The other is easy to dismiss as unrealistic and if it were actually likely, many people would decide it’s better to live with all comforts now than struggle to be one of the few miserable survivors in such a world. Better to die quickly is the trendy, distanced logic, so why try to fight it if we’re doomed anyway?

But neither of these is a real depiction of what climate change means for us and our families. The reality isn’t total annihilation and neither is it merely a matter of higher prices. It means a lot of real hardship and heartbreak. Life will go on unless global average temperatures reach the 4°-5°C-above-pre-industrial-temperatures range. But it will be a much harder life than it needs to be.

Climate change is currently the umpteenth reason for outrage. Many of us are so exhausted by poverty, discrimination, racism, sexual assault, war, ableism, denial of health care, general bullying and immediate environmental pollution that climate change gets put on the back burner or at least low on the activist’s list of grievances.

It should be the first reason for outrage and the rallying cry. Climate change effects everyone and it is the thing that across all underprivileged groups we have contributed to least but which harms us most. It is caused only slightly by individual actions and more by corporations and heavy industry. It is the most essential injustice and those who will suffer most from it are those who have no voice at all—small children and those not yet born.

At the new moon, I will paint another word picture about climate change—this time about the sort of effort and lifestyle it would take to prevent this level of climate change. Outrage is necessary and so is hope.

Exclusion: The abled-privilege knapsack

Shutting down "the privilege Olympics"  should not be code for "screw the disabled"

You too are wearing an invisible knapsack. 

In 1988, Peggy McIntosh explained white privilege in terms of an invisible knapsack filled with unearned benefits and assets that white people carry with them almost entirely regardless of class, economic status, citizenship or other conditions.

It's a good analogy. I am now much more aware of my knapsack of white privilege and I can observe the effects of its contents on a daily basis. 

I have never seen a similar analogy used to describe abled privilege, but it is time someone did. In the last few years the necessity of acknowledging abled privilege has been shoved in my face ever more frequently. Even in social justice circles where such things are typically read, people with disabilities are continually being marginalized and silenced.

Creative Commons image by Woodleywonderworks

It is worth noting from the beginning that people carrying the white-privilege knapsack but not the abled-privilege knapsack or visa versa might well enjoy some of the benefits of the one they do hold, but there are assets in both of these knapsacks that are very difficult to enjoy if you don't have the corresponding assets in the other knapsack.

So, as a white woman brought up to be aware of white privilege, I can pick out instances of white privilege that I enjoy. These are not so much unearned privileges as they are privileges earned by every human but accorded only to those who are white--the privilege of driving or walking without a well-founded fear of being accosted by law enforcement for trivial or non-existant reasons or the privilege of relaxing into a social situation in which my race and culture is in the majority most of the time.

Having children who are not white has taught me even more about my own privilege and a few privileges I gave up by being part of a racially mixed family, such as losing the ability to shelter my children from the societal realities of racism and the very real dangers they face because of it. 

However, there are some assets in the white knapsack that I have pulled out broken or severely dented because of my disability. Unlike most white people, I am beset daily by the assumptions and prejudices of others, both unconscious and conscious. I rarely to through a day without being yelled at in public and someone pushes my "difference" in my face at every turn. 

I was once told explicitly that I was denied a job that I was qualified for because of my disability and I have wondered about the reasons behind many other rejections. I have faced social isolation, rejecting neighbors and hostile school teachers as well as accusations of stealing in stores.

I do not claim that it is the same as what people of color face. In fact, I know it is not the same. But people of color who are not disabled do also enjoy privileges that I cannot.

Please note that this inventory has very little to do with the actual health problems people with disabilities may have. It has everything to do with society’s reaction to and ultimate rejection of us. The benefits of privilege represent the minimum of respect earned by every human being from birth and this is true of abled privilege as well. It is our right to be treated with respect and dignity, to have opportunities and to be judged by our actions rather than by attributes we cannot choose.

So, here is an inventory of the abled-privilege knapsack with some prompts drawn from McIntosh's essay and the writings of Emestine Hayes.

Creative Commons image by Honza Soukup

If you are temporarily abled, you are wearing an invisible knapsack and in it you will find:

• You can, if you wish, arrange to be in the company of people who view your physical body and neurological setup as normal and acceptable pretty much all the time.

• You can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper or open a random Google search and see people of your shape or appearance widely represented.

• You can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people that look vaguely like you.

• Your body shape is reflected in media, movies, books, magazines, online and in most people's imagination as good and capable, even if sometimes not perfect. As a result, while you may have insecurities or anxieties about your looks, they are not a barrier to social interaction.

• Beauty, handsomeness, masculinity and femininity are personified by people of your general appearance and body shape. 

• You can be fairly sure of having your voice heard in a group, even if most of the group has different abilities, body shape and speech from yours.

• Authority most often rests in people who look like, speak like and perceive the world like you.

• You do not need to make an in-depth study of the social habits and customary communication methods of your immediate neighbors in order to avoid daily conflicts of misunderstanding and unintended offense. 

• You can criticize the government and talk about how difficult it is to access basic services without being seen as a moocher, a whiner, ungrateful or a burden. 

• You can go home from most meetings of organizations you belong to and social gatherings you attend feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, rejected, unwanted, unheard, barred at a distance, or dismissed.

• You can attire yourself, if you choose, in a way that most people in your community seeing you and hearing you speak will assume that you are capable, responsible and trustworthy until proven otherwise. If you happen to belong to a group where this is not always true, a community of people who do look and sound like you and where you would be respected and trusted does exist somewhere in the world. Even if you don't live there, the knowledge that such a community exists bolsters your courage and self-confidence and in most cases you could move to such a community if outside pressure became too intense.

• People make eye-contact with you and you are able to make eye contact with them. People make small-talk with you and you are able to make small talk with them. This initial social contact often leads to social connections, builds bridges and defuses potential conflicts. 

• While you may have been teased at school, your chances of suffering from extreme bullying or complete social isolation in childhood are dramatically reduced. Your chances of suffering from PTSD and other acquired barriers to communication with others are significantly reduced.

• Teachers at schools and universities almost always look like, speak like and perceive the world like you do.

• The vast majority of students and teachers all through the education system sense the world, communicate and access textual materials in the same way that you do.

• The entire education system is custom made and designed with scientific precision to benefit your type of brain and calibrated to meet the needs of your particular senses.

• The language and writing system of your culture was designed by and for people who communicate and perceive language in the same ways that you do.

• Public buildings, including schools, were built using models of your body, to make them comfortable and easily accessible to you.

• You have probably not been called a burden. You were not called a burden to your school while you pursued your education.

• If you are denied employment for which you are qualified, you can be pretty sure it isn't because of an attribute you did not choose and which does not affect your job performance.

• If you are given an award, you can be pretty sure it is something you deserved rather than a publicity stunt by the patron of the award. 

• You can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that you got it because of disability hiring incentives.

• If your day, week, or year is going badly, you need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it is disability related.

• You can choose public accommodations without fearing that you cannot enter or will be treated with disrespect in the places you have chosen.

• When you plan social engagements, your way of getting to and into the venue is the same as that of most of your friends and you don't need to strategize, beg for assistance from friends or go to extreme expense to get to or enter the social venues your peers take for granted. 

• You can always ensure that your living, schooling, work and or social environment will be among people you can communicate with and among which you will be considered "normal" if you desire.

• You can always find a living, schooling, work or social venue that you can physically access and fully participate in locally if you desire. 

• If you should need to move, you can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing which you can afford and which you can personally enter and use fully and from which you can get to schools and places of employment.

• You can be pretty sure that your neighbors in such a location will view you as a full adult, if you are over 18 years old. .

• You can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that you will be able to access merchandise and that a reasonable portion of it will fit you and be usable by you.

• Whether you use checks, credit cards or cash, you can count on not being infantilized, shamed or dismissed by cashiers and other people you interact with in public..

• You can arrange to protect yourself from harm most of the time.

• You are twenty percent more likely to finish high school than a person with a disability who has similar intelligence. You are twice as likely to finish college.

• You are at least three times as likely to have any sort of job than a person with a disability and much more likely to have a job that is of some interest to you, that provides some social prestige, that pays your bills and in which you can progress for a career.

• You are half as likely to be hungry as a disabled person. 

• You are a third as likely to be a victim of sexual assault and half as likely to be a victim of violent crime as a person with a disability from a similar social or economic group and geographical area. You are half as likely to be a victim of domestic violence.

• You are twice as likely to have family and friends nearby or who you can contact in an emergency. You are likely to have a circle of friends to enjoy leisure time with and to network with for mutual benefit.

• You are twice as likely to have a long-term relationship. You are many times more likely to have children.

• You can swear or dress in second-hand clothes or not answer letters without having people automatically assume these choices indicate low intelligence, shaky mental state or poverty.

• You can be temporarily out of work or sick without being called a burden or assumed to be unemployable.

• You can do well in a challenging situation without being called "an inspiration" or used to further the religious or social agendas of others without your consent.

• With education and credentials, you could become an an acknowledged expert on people who look, speak and perceive the world differently from you and you would not be asked why you did not choose to study your own group.

I am sure I have missed some. It's a large knapsack after all. 

This is one of those posts that will inevitably draw flack. It isn't that I don't care. I have simply decided that the amount of verbal shrapnel I'm getting in "progressive" circles these days for being an uppity person with a disability has reached a point where the potential flack from this post won't be a significant change. 

So let me lay it out there. I am sick of the dismissal of people with disabilities in activist circles. I am sick of being told, "you are white so you need to practice being silent for a while," when I have been silenced, dismissed and sidelined my entire life.

I am sick to exhaustion of being excluded, rejected and sidelined in supposedly progressive groups because I didn't take an insult or bullying in silence and answered back withotu profanity, without insults but nonetheless with unpalatable truth. . 

I get what people of color, indigenous people, speakers of languages other than English and people living in absolute poverty are talking about when it comes to wanting those with privilege to stop yammering about their perspective on society, their perspective on history, their perspective on underrepresented people and their perspective on social justice long enough to listen to the perspectives of those less heard.

I get it because while I have the privileges in the white-privilege knapsack, the English-speaker's knapsack and the resources-beyond-bare-survival knapsack, these are usually not enough to be heard without abled privilege. 

This is not "the Privilege Olympics." It is not a matter of whose usurped privilege is worse. It is almost always so different that it cannot be compared. Still mentioning "the Privilege Olympics" or equivalent is routinely used to dismiss and marginalize people with disabilities in activist circles.

We have huge, life-threatening threats to people of color. The crises for people of color are so extreme in some places that there can be no other priorities or even distractions.

Many of us, myself included, have agreed to this, stepped back and ceded precedence because while there are life-threatening and devastating issues for people with disabilities as well, the numbers seem to indicate that our problems are at least statistically less severe. We activists with disabilities have often felt that we can wait a little while and trust that our progressive activist communities would do their best to include us in the meantime. 

But that trust has been misplaced. 

Not once but again and again. Not only do people with disabilities encounter a lot of social exclusion, bullying and discrimination in society at large, we encounter much the same atmosphere inside social justice organizations and groups claiming to be against bigotry and hate. 

My experiences and the experiences of those I have spoken with are clear. People with disabilities are welcome in these groups primarily as mascots or symbols. We are not respected for in our fields of expertise and study. We are often silenced and rarely given a voice. 

I've been told that my voice and experience are not welcome in progressive and social justice groups on multiple occasions. Usually this was not specifically because of my disability but rather because of my race. I was told that as a white person I am privileged and my role is not to speak. As a blind person, however, given that no other people with disabilities were present or given a voice, I felt that our voice was needed. 

I have been rejected quickly from several groups when my politely phrased protestations against being silenced were regarded as going against group authority. I never used profanity or insults against others in my responses. I did not talk over others but only refused to be entirely silent.

For that reason, this inventory of the abled-privilege backpack is necessary. I welcome any additions that others may find while rummaging through it. 

The front lines in the war against fascism

Ten days ago I was snapping beans at the kitchen table with an old friend. It was a pleasant evening and the kids were in bed. We often talk politics at this table, bantering back and forth, bemoaning the state of the world, society and prejudice. 

But this evening, my friend turned down a different path. "I heard on the radio that there's new scientific evidence that we really are different from Africans. We didn't all come from one woman after all."

I question carefully. There is a lot of racially loaded misinformation in our local media, and while this old friend and I almost always agree on social and political issues, there is one way in which we are different. He has more time to listen to the local media and he eventually believes what is repeated enough times. 

Creative Commons image by Joanna Bourne

This time it turns out that radio commentators had taken recent studies of the human genome that have found traces of Neanderthal DNA only in non-African human genes and extrapolated a new form of scientific racism.

The real science first appeared in the journal Nature in 2014. That was a study showing that once very long ago some humans interbred with Neanderthals. This occurred during the migration of some humans away from Africa about 60,000 years ago. The traces are now very faint, but they may have initially helped the ancestors of Europeans and East Asians to survive in colder climates at a time when shelter was scarce. Less helpful traits, such as a decline in fertility and differences in speech centers of the brain, were weeded out by natural selection and are no longer part of our DNA. 

The amount of different DNA in Europeans and Asians thanks to the interbreeding with Neanderthals is now minuscule. No, it does not make us fundamentally different from Africans. No, race is still not something genetically significant. And yes, we did all still come from some long ago ancestress in Africa. (And why exactly do some people have a problem with that?)

But of course, there are those in today's political landscape who will jump at any chance to play tug-o-war with people's minds. I researched the science and then explained it. My friend nominally accepted it and backed down from the racial separatist interpretation. Yet I still felt troubled at how pervasive the propaganda has become.

Ten days later at the dark of the moon and after the white supremacist terrorist attack in the United States, I'm more than unsettled. I am a wordsmith and I know the craft. I know about motivation, targeting and persuasion. I see all the signs here. This misinformation is being targeted specifically at communities, nations and people who are white yet not white supremacists.

It's a classic fascist tactic. 

I have studied and written about extremist groups, inter-ethnic conflict and racial violence for twenty years, starting in the ethnic cleansing of the Balkans and following similar troubles around the world. 

And when rooting out fascism it isn't the rabid hatred of the other that is the best clue. The first battle lines are amid those who could be considered part of the in-group but who are not radicalized.

Today if you follow the mainstream media, you are told that racism is wrong and mainly a thing of the past. But you are also told many negative things about people of color, whether refugees, immigrants or people in your own community. Eventually you also hear how white people should believe that they are different and they should hold themselves apart from non-whites. 

Creative Commons image by  Alper Çuğun

Across North America and Europe civil rights organizations have documented a rise in white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in the past five years. Since the election of Donald Trump in the US, the membership rolls of the Klu Klux Klan have exploded with thousands of new recruits. Through social media, racist hate groups have pushed past the reactionary fringe and become a force that poses a clear danger to average citizens.

And right now, although incidents like the one in Charlottesville pose the most obvious danger, the front lines are a lot closer to home than you might think. In far too many cases, the front lines of this conflict run right across your kitchen table, your bar counter or your social media feed. 

You may feel that I'm being overly dramatic. But consider the other recent fascist uprising and its devastating effects. I mean the one in Syria. 

The Islamic State has all the hallmarks of fascism. It may seem odd to compare a brown-skinned Muslim group to neo-Nazis but they are close ideological cousins. They just happen to have a different home-group as their central focus.

ISIS stands for an authoritarian, supremacist ideology rooted in fascist tactics and social media was crucial to its rise. ISIS has also made it clear in public statements, organized attacks and internal documents that while they feel they are superior to non-Muslims, the brunt of their violence and hatred is directed at Muslims who do not fully accept their twisted version of that faith. In ISIS territory, Christians, Jews and even Pagans are allowed to live, if with curtailed rights. But Muslims who do not adhere exactly and pledge their allegiance to ISIS are executed and make up the majority of mass graves uncovered in places ISIS has retreated from.

Statements and documents uncovered by western intelligence agencies indicate orders by top ISIS leaders to fuel European fear and hatred of moderate Muslims. That has been the open goal of recent Islamic terror attacks in Europe. Far from championing the Muslim cause, ISIS would like Europeans and Americans to do their work for them, isolating Muslims in their communities and denying entry to Muslim refugees fleeing ISIS terror. 

It should come as no surprise that the same tactics are used by white supremacists and neo-Nazis. They often call themselves "race realists" and claim that they are not primarily motivated by hatred of others but simply want to further the interests and ensure the survival of their own people, which they conceive of as the white race, minus those who are nominally white but deemed undesirable and ostensibly genetically different, such as Jews. 

And just as ISIS was built with social media and on the backs of moderate Muslims, white supremacists are focusing much of their energy on misinformation directed at average white people and hatred of "race traitors."

White supremacist groups are now in the stage in which they use social media and misinformation to grow their power. They set average white people against African Americans, against Muslim refugees and against all immigrants of color. And yes, they'll do the reverse too, whenever they get the chance. They draw harsh lines and attack white people who stand against them viciously. And they will very likely manufacture reasons for people of color to hate average white people as well, to ensure that we don't stand together.

Those--like that friend at my kitchen table--who don't want to be racist but also don't want to be bothered with the struggle against racism are key pawns in this game. Fascism has always fed on the discomfort people naturally feel for conflict and poisonous rhetoric. Most of the great atrocities of the world were not committed because of great hatred, but because of apathy and avoidance by large masses of people.

Those radio programs twisting science and claiming that Europeans are genetically distinct from other races and thus must be protected are not a random, weird-science occurence. This is the front line of fascism's war on us. Don't let racist pseudoscience go unanswered. 

Don't become what you resist

As a journalist in the war-torn Balkans, one of my closest relationships was with a "fixer." That's an all-around term for driver, interpreter, cultural consultant and impromptu investigator. 

My fixer was a 50-something Albanian taxi-driver with mild manners and a pleasant grandfatherly face. We went through plenty of scrapes together, walking in single file to avoid landmines, driving fast down sniper-seeded roads, crossing the front-lines from one warring camp to another.

My fixer's sympathies could have been with the Albanian rebels and against the Macedonian home guard they were fighting at the time. He agreed that Albanians faced discrimination.

But he refused to take a side and felt that the rebels' violent radicalism would only harm his people. He could speak fluent Macedonian and often passed as Macedonian to keep us safe when we encountered pro-government patrols.

I recall how we once narrowly made it across the front, only to find that the first rebel sentry was a boy from my fixer's old neighborhood. Joy at meeting a good neighbor kid wrestled in his tone and expression with shock that someone he knew well had taken up violence. 

But after only six months of war with a few hundred dead on both sides, I sat in a baklava shop with the old man and he told me that he was now ready to support the rebels. Too much hurt had been done. He was depressed, having been pushed beyond some limit that allowed him to contemplate acting in a way he once saw as wrong.

Three years later, I too had been pushed, though not that far. My journalism job had evaporated with most others of my  generation. I was on the streets of Prague holding a hand-drawn sign to protest the invasion of Iraq.

By my side, was another man in the process of being pushed--an Iraqi refugee who had helped our international peace group on several occasions. His younger brother had been shot and killed by American soldiers in Iraq a few days earlier and I was one of the first people he called, an honor I wasn't sure I deserved.

These are the memories that come back to me when I watch clashes in American streets, neighborhoods universities and town hall meetings today.

Two lines of demonstrators facing off, spitting curse words at each other, fists clenched. One group has t-shirts with the name of Trump emblazoned on them and stars and stripes across their shoulders. The other group has a motley array of colorful clothing and scarves over their mouths. 

One of the Trump supporters gets particularly excited, yelling insults and inching ahead of his fellows. Faster than thought, a silver snake lashes out from the rank of colorful protesters and blood wells from a lash on the man's head. He cuts off a howl of pain and curls in on himself retreating back behind the lines.

The cell phone camera follows and his friends cry out for an ambulance. The buzz of anger is at fever pitch. In the camp of the Trump supporters there is injured solidarity and iron conviction. 

How many times have I seen this animosity play out? in different cultures and contexts, in different languages, and yet it's all the same. Hate on both sides.

I'm not a saint myself. I can hate if pushed far enough. I can feel it surge up inside me. And then I force myself to stop and to ask who is really doing the pushing. Those I am pushed against, are they really the ones I should hate?

In the days after the election I caught the brunt of just such hate. A friend from my days as a journalist covering inter-ethnic conflict in Eastern Europe turned on me on social media, ripping me for being "white" and declaring "You have been told your voice is not welcome here! Do not speak to me." 

We were both devastated by the election of Donald Trump. My friend had been pushed hard and long. I saw that and I didn't strike back. But the pushers of hate won anyway because the divide between us is still there.

I can't blame others because I have been there. As a child with a somewhat visible disability, I was heavily ostracized in public schools. Most of my friends had to pretend not to be my friends in school to avoid the same physical and verbal abuse that I endured. 

I remember one day in seventh grade with painful clarity. I had found a place where I could withdraw into myself during the lunch period. I would huddle on the steps of a stage set up in the cafeteria and draw with my treasured set of colored pencils. It may seem pitiful to describe, but to me it was solace and a delightful respite from the rest of the day. 

I sat there most days, ignoring the saliva, random kicks and insults hurled my way by other kids who had been ingrained with the idea that what is different or outside the herd is both disgusting and threatening. But on this particular day, my drawing was interrupted abruptly when someone came flying down the steps above me and landed on top of me, scattering and breaking my expensive colored pencils. 

I had ignored it. I had let the insults roll off my shoulders. All year I had kept my head down. And then I snapped. I was a tough kid, brought up with hard physical work and most days outdoors in the mountains. I grabbed the skinny town kid by the collar and hit him and hit him and hit him. 

It was the first and the last time I ever did such a thing and I pummeled his bent back, until a teacher hauled me away. The kid, a quiet, physically weak nerd, was bruised on his back. He had been seized by several bullies and thrown down the steps onto me. 

I don't know the boy's name. What I know is that we should have been friends. We were natural allies, set against one another by those who push hate. 

In the wider world today, I see this happening all the time. One group of the defrauded and abused is thrown against another group of the oppressed and beaten. And it is hard to stop and think. Very hard. You've been ignoring it and letting it roll off your shoulders for decades, not just one day. 

It is very hard to stop.

But what if I had been paying better attention in seventh grade? What if I had stopped to find out what happened and offered friendship instead of retaliation?

What if supporters of Bernie Sanders listened to Trump-voting coal miners the way Bernie did at one town hall that ended with both sides agreeing that single-payer health care is in their common interest? What if white women who desperately wanted a female president took the time to see how similar their needs are to women and even men of color? 

No matter which examples I give, someone is likely to feel put upon. Both sides have a choice but the biggest opportunity for resisting bullies lies with the one who is about to strike back, the one who currently feels most wronged. If you feel pushed around, silenced and beaten down, then it is likely that you are currently the one with the greatest chance to reach out a hand in friendship to someone who has been pushed on top of you by a bully. 

Resist the burning desire to strike back. Yes, resist. Stop and make sure you are not striking a potential ally--someone who is not winning in today's system, even if they appear better off then you. 

The bullies are pushing us around and as much as we talk about resistance, we are still striking at each other as often as we strike at the bullies.

First, we must know what is our core need, that which goes beyond politics. We need a way to live and relieve suffering. Second, we must avoid becoming like the bullies at all cost.