Disclosure & the Intersectionality of Multiple Identities
What Trump described as anti-American propaganda about “white privilege,” I began in May with a lot of content for organizations in Denver to enhance and/or legitimize their diversity inclusion efforts by looking at hiring, interviewing, onboarding, mentoring, and accommodations and cultural inclusion of people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.
Since we started this around the time of George Floyd, I included research which talks about this event and the role of media, free speech on campuses, speech codes and title IX as it relates to people who are Nuerodiverse or have autism, and other intersectional topics on identity like Pro-Israel/ Pro-Palestine controversy and stories that tie back to Community Survival.
“Instead of being intellectually dissociated from the rest of society, academic inquiry needs to be communicating with, learning from, teaching and arguing with the rest of society – in such a way as to promote cooperative rationality and social wisdom.
“Social movements based on a single identity politics have historically conflated or ignored differences and this has sometimes resulted in growing tensions between the social movements themselves.”
“It is easy to dismiss eugenics as a relic of a bygone era, but the continued Association of race and disability in debilitating ways necessitates that we examine how eugenic practices to continue to reconstitute social hierarchies in contemporary context via the deployment of hegemonic ideology of disability have real material effects on people located at the intersection of difference.
I talk about critically engaging, problems of binary thinking, economic inclusion, and quantitative inclusion contrasted to the qualitative approach which can get muddied with over medicalization of a disability, deficit thinking, implicit bias and othering. So as I don’t talk about white privilege, I do talk about disproportionality and inequities in education with people of color being labeled as mentally retarded or learning disabled and overdeterminism and make linkage to the institutionalization of people with disabilities.
So we even talking about Entitlement theory and peaceful anarchy, communities and the coercion via taxation, increasing self-awareness, finding your people, socially corrective and healing experiences, social nimbleness, and updating your views with new information which may have social consequences and involve leaving others behind..
Moral Capital, virtue signaling, social media, and the arms-race which upholds classism. These socially constructed theories on race and disability and validity vs reliability, stereotypes, self advocacy, social capital, self determination, self directed learning and understanding someone’s interests and preferences as indicators of a high quality of life for people with disabilities.
I include a quote of Toni Morrison talking about racism as a distraction from the bigger issue like economic inclusion. I attempt to not have over assurance because it impacts learning, and because truth is subjective at times, and it need to include all of the other topics on race to not minimize things down to one issue with minimizing and labeling.
What’s interesting that I point out is free speech and its relation to social capital. In one case study looks at the dis-inviting of a guest speaker who is anti-Israel, and UCLA’s conferring of an administrator who identified as Jewish and the potential of “slippage” or conflating anti-Israel with anti-semitism.
I reflect on incitement of violence and Trump’s tweets, how the media plays a role by putting the heat on universities, not balancing the message with community survival by shaming, and a news presentation counterintuitive with critical reflection and changing minds.
Universities have been a hotbed for debate on safe space and ask if this is segregation. They’re celebrated for enhancing the learning as people aren’t actively defending or explaining their identities which some professors still ask of students, and it’s important to recognize how this is emotional exhausting for many.
On the other hand, on policing language and views, a commentary by a Jewish advocate explains there is no difference to her from anti-Israel to anti-Semitism and likewise, people of color may feel the same with the critiques of the BLM protests happening nationwide, and community trumps free speech. The concept of free speech and one’s ability to access that type of social capital is privileged so to speak; however, that does not discount its place in universities and the US Constitution.
Likewise, the balance of quality and quantity in regards to inclusion and being sensitive to issues as argument rhetoric can do damage to an identity. I find this especially true of youth in colleges who are still developing their independent views and identities post high school. There is always this potential for another kind of “slippage” too, where anti-Israel can give way to anti-semitism.
This the inherent bias that is not conscious that keeps our numbers down considering quantitative inclusion.
So what can we can we do to educate people about these potential gateway views that can contribute to systemic racism, classism, sexism and ableism? Without talking about this, I don’t think we will bridge the divide.
Belief and free will have to be based on something. When can understand more the temporality of our existence and relativism in truth, we begin to care more about the relationships among people, and subcultures, where we may see the most effective forms of unconditioned altruism which can have a big impact not only on how we engage with others, and how to serve which takes human agency and will. If we can understand the mastering of the will we can respond better to those we meet along the way, by seeing that their life and cause has meaning and how the relationship and interaction has meaningful value to both.
“Society has morphed into a national security state, so the mental health system has become more repressive and the legal safeguards of patients’ right to liberty have been razed. In the 1990s, states enacted involuntary outpatient commitment laws — the main purpose of these laws was to force “non-compliant” former mental patients to take neuro-toxic “anti-psychotic” drugs on an outpatient basis.
“The Murphy Bill (HR 2646, which passed the House in 2015) met resistance in the Senate, some of its worst provisions were incorporated into HR 34, the 21st Century Cures Act – a boondoggle for the pharmaceutical industry which lowers FDA safety standards (see Dr. Mercola, July 13, 2016, 21st-Century Cures or Corruption?) — which passed overwhelmingly in the Senate on December 7, 2016.
This revised bill incorporates many of the worst provisions of the Murphy bill, including the one at the top of Psychiatry’s wish-list: The ability to force psychiatric treatment (psychiatric drugs) on anyone psychiatrists deem too mentally ill to realize drugs are “good” for them. In other words, a history of violence is no longer a criterion for forcing toxic drugs on “non-compliant” patients.
“The limits placed on advocates, Cretsinger says, “shows clearly that Murphy’s bill does not (want) anyone refusing treatment [‘medication’], or even talking about refusing treatment.” The Bill increases funding for involuntary out-patient commitment and for Assertive Community Treatment. Phelan describes ACT, “This enables teams of mental health workers to troll the streets, looking for homeless or other individuals to ‘treat’ in situ.” Of course typically ACT leads to involuntary treatment.
“Adequately funding such services through operational grants that extend beyond the duration of the pandemic is crucial to ensuring continuity of care. Furthermore, increased federal funding for peer support training is essential to bolstering existing state and local peer certification programs and facilitating outreach efforts that target the most affected populations during and in the aftermath of the pandemic.
“Reports suggest that this pandemic has caused a surge in the number of people with lived experience seeking to complete their peer support certifications. Many peer-led support groups and services have transitioned to online models in order to maintain continuity of care.
“Furthermore, peer support promotes an affirming and equitable model of healing that equalizes the inherent power imbalance in traditional clinical relationships. There are several types of peer support programs and modalities, including peer-led respite crisis centers, one-on-one recovery and virtual meal support for people with eating disorders, and the Alternatives to Suicide approach, which creates spaces for people to safely share their experiences with suicidality and acute emotional distress. However, program disruptions caused by the pandemic have threatened the continuity of some of these services.
“In the first place “mental illness” is not an objective biological fact–there are no biological referents to which the construct corresponds. This is why psychiatrists, in order to maintain their facade of legitimacy substitute reliability for validity.
““Reliability” is a scientific term that refers to agreement — in the above case, the agreement among mental health professionals, almost always with financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry — who invent the psychiatric diagnoses, whereas validity refers to a correspondence to reality.
“The bill also authorizes grants for “programs for infants and children at significant risk of developing, showing early signs of, or having been diagnosed with mental illness including serious emotional disturbance.” Those eligible for these services are defined as “a child from birth to not more than 5 years of age.”
“Laing had reversed the premise of the psychiatric meta-narrative by defining adjustment as pathological, “Social adjustment to a dysfunctional society may be very dangerous.
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The resignation letter from the NYT writer today shows they don’t just cancel it, they edit what you see. Imagine a HP article saying the first 3 years of Trump presidency the Economy was booming. Most of their reader would lose their minds and call for that writers head.
Fearful of different ideas
Meanwhile, Weiss says, her views have gotten her nonstop harassment within the newspaper, harassment that her bosses deplored but did nothing to stop:
“My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again.’ Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by co-workers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on companywide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some co-workers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly ‘inclusive’ one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are. There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.”
Further:
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