Dadu Shin
by | The New York Times Opinion Column
“Not long ago, a good friend of mine said something revealing to me: ‘I don’t think of you as disabled,’ she confessed.
“I knew exactly what she meant; I didn’t think of myself as disabled until a few decades ago, either, even though my two arms have been pretty significantly asymmetrical and different from most everybody else’s my whole life.
“My friend’s comment was meant as a compliment, but followed a familiar logic — one that African-Americans have noted when their well-meaning white friends have tried to erase the complications of racial identity by saying, ‘I don’t think of you as black,’ or when a man compliments a woman by saying that he thinks of her as ‘just one of the guys.’
“This impulse to rescue people with disabilities from a discredited identity, … “
Read this column in its entirety at The New York Times, click here.
