Summary Of Harriet Mcbryde Johnson's Essay

Harriet McBryde Johnson is a person with disabilities. She writes of the things people have said to her on the street such as: “I admire you for being out; most people would give up…if I had to live like you I think I’d kill myself.” Reading those word leaves one with a feeling of outraged confusion. Those word do not seem like something a nice polite person would say to an other. And its hard to put oneself in the head space where you would think to say that. When people behave like that it makes one wonder if they see a person with disabilities as a person or a disability. If people repeatedly told told people with red hair that they are proud that they are out and about when they look like that or if they said “I rather die than have red hair” there would be …show more content…
Ryan Murphy writes about a young government worker, with cerebral palsy, after an incident saying, “after he calmed down, he told us that a man from another department said of him to a companion, ‘I’d rather be dead.’” Yet again people did not stop to think about the person behind the disability. Instead they say him and made the decision to treat the person as if his feelings about it did not matter. Their disability is the only thing that they can see. The man with cerebral palsy has a life outside of his disability but the able-bodied person could see that. He could not get past the disability.
The thought that people with disabilities as only a disability is so toxic not only to the person with the disability but also the able-bodied person. They see these capable, living human beings as a single trait. They see them in what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie would classify as a ‘single story’. They see them through the viewpoint of having a horrible disability. A disability that can not possibly allow them to have a normal life. Having such a narrow viewpoint on an other human being is harmful to how one interacts with many people in the