Street ableism is perhaps one of the most prejudiced and pervasive forms of oppression disabled people face. These instances of discrimination range across all demographics and disabilities: young mobility aid users are questioned by nosy people if they even need the support they rely on to leave home; wheelchair users are pushed without consent by strangers down city sidewalks, often in the wrong direction; Deaf individuals are scolded, chastised for not answering questions they could not interpret; autistic teenagers flapping their arms in excitement are asked if they need medical attention. Street ableism is the simple intolerance and disbelief of a disabled person’s presence in a public space.
Most people “mean well!” when they mistreat a disabled person in public, but their actions can lead to embarrassment, exclusion, castigation, and at times, violence. An errand at the pharmacy can easily become an opportunity for a wheelchair user to receive unsolicited advice about vitamins and/or yoga from a self-aggrandizing biped (someone standing on two legs). These moments are often followed with an indignant “I was only trying to help!” and a heavy huff of disdain.
Moments of street ableism are demeaning, annoying, and at times, terrifying for the disabled person experiencing them, such as:
Telling a wheelchair user, “I understand, I get it” before walking off the train
Letting a disabled person know that they are “very lucky to have their boyfriend” while they wait for their coffee order
Speaking to a disabled person’s partner and ignoring the disabled person at their side
Interrupting a disabled person’s conversation with their caregiver to ask if they are okay and if they need any help
Clapping when a wheelchair user pushes themselves up a ramp
Following a cane user out of the grocery store and to their car to make sure they "don't fall on the way there"
Staring at a person with a limb difference on the subway platform
Speaking to a disabled adult as if they are a child
Calling someone “handicapped” or “the disabled” within earshot
Asking a blind person why they’re in an art museum
Telling someone on the bus that their tics are distracting and to please be quiet, thank you
Following a disabled person around a store, once again asking if they are okay and if they need any help
Telling a cane user at the post office that if they try acupuncture or focus on their gut health, they will get better
Street ableism is often disguised as an act of altruism. Too many people want to be innocent, upstanding citizens and overreact to a disabled person’s presence for this purpose. They want to help the less fortunate and/or feel gratified by their charitable behavior. They have done something good, and kind, and civic, and loved thy neighbor. In a way, I understand. Volunteerism makes us feel good about ourselves. Donating school supplies makes us feel like we can positively impact the youth. And when we give a wheelchair user a soup can from a high shelf, we feel closer to God. (I know I keep saying “we” and “us,” but it’s important to clarify that I am the wheelchair user asking for the soup can, not gifting it, so I don’t know how that satisfaction feels, although I imagine it to feel very satisfactory.)
There is a distinction between acts of kindness and the oppression of disabled people. Kindness benefits both parties; oppression benefits one party and takes from the other. While helping a wheelchair user gather soup cans in a grocery store is an act of kindness, pushing them down the aisle without consent is not. Holding open a door for a mobility aid user is encouraged; following it up by asking about their private medical history is not.
Often these acts of street ableism seem like acts of self-gratification; the stranger wants to leave the interaction feeling fulfilled, perhaps even chaste. I very often think about the time I rolled onto a subway car and parked near the disabled priority seating, which is not the same thing as wheelchair priority seating, seats that flip up to accommodate wheelchairs; the woman sitting there noticed me in my wheelchair and offered me the seat as if I would abandon my cushioned chair and sit like a plebian on rigid plastic. I assume it made her feel good about herself, but I just thought it made her look downright ignorant. Was she expecting to play musical chairs with me? Public displays of disability bring out the buffoonery in people. So often strangers have asked me odd questions that start with, “Can I be nosy?” or wanted to talk to me about their wheelchair-bound cousin who has such a hard life, and because I’m a polite person who hates conflict, I let them make a fool of themselves.
Some people genuinely believe that a disabled person would be grateful to be followed around a store or pushed willy-nilly without consent; others don’t see anything wrong with asking a disabled stranger invasive questions about their body or, worse, their sex life. When disabled people are seen as oddities, freaks, or poor little things, these moments of ableism come out. This belief that "being disabled is the worst thing a person can be" often stems from taught values and community beliefs, including institutional practices such as eugenics or the education system, one’s homelife, popular media, internet memes, subreddits, religious upbringings, or all of the above.
One man has influenced a lot of the ableism I face whenever I go outside: Christ Our Lord. Many Christians don’t believe I have prayed hard enough whenever they see me in my wheelchair. Very often I am blessed by strangers on street corners and in dairy aisles. One time in the Macy’s elevator, a middle-aged woman with a kind face asked me, “Have you embraced the love of Jesus Christ?” to which I replied, “Oh yeah, I love Jesus! I talk to him all the time!” which was a lie, and therefore, a sin.
(Personally, I am mid on Jesus, and far more into God. While I agree with a lot of Jesus’ teachings and would ask him to cure me of my leprosy just so I could say he touched me, I don’t believe he is Our Savior. As a Catholic, I am flawed, but as a wheelchair user, I am self-content, having only prayed for a formal diagnosis.)
To be pitied by an older Christian woman in an elevator is not an uncommon thing I experience, particularly in downtown Brooklyn. (Why does this always happen to me near Dekalb Avenue? I very often hear people proselytizing on the streets there. Is there something about those few city blocks that just brings out the most holy inclinations in people?) I believe I pose a conundrum to Christians and older generations alike in that I am too young to be this crippled, and it shouldn’t be this way. Elderly folks very often have misty eyes while looking down at me. (In my wheelchair, I am no taller than four feet, three inches.) I sometimes wonder what it must feel like to be an octogenarian with aching joints that are only getting worse, watching a twenty-something-year-old wheelchair user pick out some bananas in the Trader Joe’s fruit section. For a presumably able-bodied person, to see a disabled person is to see your future. And for older generations, that can be a hard pill to swallow, especially because most days, there are ten other pills they need to take on top of their vitamin supplements.
Simply put, disability is threatening. It threatens individuals with introspection and forces them to unlearn the biases they were taught since grade school; it threatens people’s perceptions of their own livelihood, bringing up their fears of illness, diminished quality of life, hospitals, and inevitably, death; it threatens anyone, disabled or not, with difficult emotions that conflict—remorse for someone’s condition, pride in watching someone survive great suffering, sadness over disability’s distinct capability to take and take and take, and hope that anyone can somehow overcome and find a cure. Non-disabled people are threatened by the simple notion that maybe not everything is in our control, and maybe disability is much more normal and commonplace than we are meant to believe.
Very often, I watch the busy Brooklyn street outside my apartment window. People walk their dogs, push their babies in strollers, and take pictures of their toddlers in front of the beautiful autumnal trees at the side of the road. Runners in their moisture-wicking shirts and old men in New Balance sneakers taunt me with their walkable city lifestyle. But when I am lucky, I see my disabled neighbors with their rollators, powerchairs, white canes, limps, and facial deformities venturing down the path, and within them, I see myself. In the most uninteresting and unexceptional way, alone or with a caregiver, spouse, or friend, they go about their day. We are not so different from everyone else in that we are simply trying to get to where we are going with pursuit and peace of mind, hoping to remain unbothered and safe in public.
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