Ignorance

I feel sick about some people's negative comments about Karen's experience in the Steak 'n Shake Fiasco. In about 4 of her blog posts about her experiences and she received a combined of almost 200 comments. Most of the comments are positive and supportive while others are downright mean and ignorant. Some of the "anonymous posters' sarcasms were sneering, jesting and mocking her situation. They are very insensitive to what disabled people are going through. A deaf person have as much rights to use a drive-thru service as much as a person who can't work able to use self-serve gasoline for their vehicles. Laws requires gas stations to treat disable people as normal people who gets the same benefits despite of their disabilities. They have the same right to use self-serve prices without paying full-service price gasoline.

I am going to repeat what I have said in her blog but changed some wordings for this post.

What Karen did was one of the examples of "disabiliies movement history". In the past, people with disabilties have spoken up as she did and there were some people who were very critical of their outspoken mission. But, they didn't give up because they believed what was right and wrong as Martin Luther King did. In the United States, we have wonderful laws that protects the disabilities however those laws have not changed those "able" people's (without disabilties) attitudes towards those who have disabilities.

Karen is making history as part of the disability rights movements that are still educating people about the structural and attitudinal barriers in the United States that are the fundamental cause for the discrimination and oppression faced by disabled people.

I for one fellow blogger support Karen and I say, ignore those who disagree with her simply because they are still ignorant of the issues.

Discrimination is a problem faced by disabled (not just deaf people) people and their families around the world. We have come a long way since the Disability rights movement started in the 1970s which were led by individuals with disabilities. Life does not discriminate but people with attitudes discriminates people. There are times when our honest expression of an opinion will be misinterpreted, our motive and heart misread. I truly believe this poster is discriminating Karen of how she speaks and how deaf people express themselves. Maybe they are not aware of how deaf culture express and communicate.

You can see ignorance in some of their posts.