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Time to Grow Up

Julie Shaw Cole and Mary Johnson

Julie Shaw Cole is an art therapist
who has been involved in disability issues
since she worked at an independent living center
and got into springing people from nursing homes.

Mary Johnson was co-fonder and for 14 years editor
of The Disability Rag. She's presently editor
of The Ragged Edge and The Electric Edge.

ABRIDGED FROM
The Ragged Edge:
The Disability Experience from the Pages
of The Disability Rag
Edited by Barrett Shaw

The line protesters use so frequently – "Jerry, we’re not kids anymore!" – is truer than intended. When protesters use it, they’re generally thinking of chronological age: they’re adults. But where it’s really most true is in a psychological sense. It pertains not just to disabled people but to the disability rights movement. To a psychologist looking at this issue, it’s clear why the telethon issue was destined to be the next "burning" issue that would command the soul of the community that fought successfully to pass a major civil rights law.

During the 1980s, activists in disability rights grew tired of serving as the collective recipient of society’s negative projections. The activism was a sign of our collective growing up; the accomplishments of that activism – from lifts on buses to passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act – hastened the change in self image that had begun in us because of the activist actions we were taking. Pride and self-awareness were growing. We were growing up, not just chronologically, but psychologically. We have been maturing as a movement. And today, as a result, of that activism, many disability activists are different psychologically than we were just a decade ago. We are less likely to incorporate those projections; we are less likely to accept the identities others wish to thrust upon us...

Whenever a projection is discarded, there’s great resistance. Anyone who’s been in therapy knows this. Here the psychology of an entire nation is undergoing change. Resistance is fierce. Whenever a set of society’s "Others" makes a movement to move out from under society’s projection, it stirs up all kinds of energy as the culture looks around for some other group they can foist their projections onto – and they highly resent those who refuse to serve that role any longer. They’re also angry at having to cope with the strengths of the newly-emerged group they’ve wanted to ignore – in this case, people with disabilities.

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