“The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal”, by Jonathan Mooney

Pg. 16-17

What the hell was I doing waiting for an ex-stripper to bring me the keys to a short school bus?

On the most obvious level, the bus represented a path set in motion when I was eight years old and labeled learning disabled. I was drawn to the short bus because it was a public symbol of disablity and special education. The bus emerged out of federal legislation, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975, which mandated that children with disabilities be educated in a public school setting. It was a historic moment for my tribe, but there were problems: Schools were not required to fully integrate students with disabilities, and a segregated system of special education programs was created. Then along came segregated transportation: the short bus. Thrown together under the rubric of special education, these passengers included kids with physical disabilities, Down syndrome, learning disabilities, autism, as well as emotional problems. Special education and the short bus grouped together all these different students, expanding our culture’s definition of disabled. The short bus as a symbol of special education says as much (or more) about that culture–its values, beliefs, fears, aspirations, and injustices–as it ever did about people with disabilities.

“No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement”, by Joseph P. Shapiro

Pg. 3

Nondisabled Americans do not understand disabled ones.

That was clear at the memorial service for Timothy Cook, when longtime friends got up to pay him heartfelt tribute. “He never seemed disabled to me,” said one. “He was the least disabled person I ever met,” pronounced another. It was the highest praise these nondisabled friends could think to give a disabled attorney who, at thirty-eight years old, had won landmark disability rights cases, including one to force public transit systems to equip their buses with wheelchair lifts. But more than a few heads in the crowded chapel bowed with an uneasy embarrassment at the supposed compliment. It was as if someone had tried to compliment a black man by saying, “You’re the least black person I ever met,” as false as telling a Jew, “I never think of you as Jewish,” as clumsy as seeking to flatter a woman with “You don’t act like a woman.”

Here in this memorial chapel was a small clash between the reality of disabled people and the understanding of their lives by others. It was the type of collision that disabled people experience daily. Yet any discordancy went unnoticed even to the well-meaning friends of a disability rights fighter like Cook. To be fair to the praise-givers, their sincere words were among the highest accolade that Americans routinely give those with disabilities. In fairness, too, most disabled people gladly would have accepted the compliment some fifteen years before, the time when the speakers’ friendships with Cook had begun. But most people with disabilities now think differently. It is not that disabled people are overly sensitive. But as a result of an ongoing revolution in self-perception, they (often along with their families) no longer see their physical or mental limitations as a source of shame or as something to overcome in order to inspire others. Today they proclaim that it is okay, even good, to be disabled. Cook’s childhood polio forced him to wear heavy corrective shoes, and he walked with difficulty. But taking pride in his disability was for Cook a celebration of the differences among people and gave him a respectful understanding that all share the same basic desires to be full participants in society.

“In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God”, by Gene Robinson

Pg. 11

God calls us to the hard work of compassion for our enemies. Some people may quarrel with that characterization, but we do have enemies. It’s a word that Jesus used. The hard part is following Jesus’ own command to love our enemies. Not to like them, not to be paralyzed by their opposition, not to give in to their outrageous demands, but to love them nonetheless. To treat them with infinite respect, listen to what drives them, try our best to understand the fear that causes them to reject us, to believe them when they say they only want the best for us. That’s hard work, and we can’t do it without God’s own Spirit blowing through us like wind, breaking down our walls, causing our assumptions to “come loose,” and reminding us all that our enemies are children of God, for whom Christ died and through whom they will be saved.

“A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility”, by Taner Akcam

Pg. 376

Despite the numerous historical examples that could be presented for both of these positions, what is important is how Turkish society perceived “human rights” and “democracy” in this context. Because the Great Powers used these terms to legitimize the most obvious colonial moves, Turks began to view both notions as “Western hypocrisy.” Beyond the specific historical reasons, the fundamental problems that lay behind the failure to bring the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide to justice persist to this day. If it is not possible to draw a clear line of division between humanitarian goals, on the one hand, and a state’s economic and political interests, on the other, then how are we to come to a consensus about ethical norms? And on what legal and theoretical grounds shall we justify international interventions? These questions remain unanswered.

“The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography”, by Sidney Poitier

Pg. 127

When you’re addressing power, don’t expect it to crumble willingly. If you’re going to say, “Hey now, look you guys, please look at what you did and look at yourselves and punish yourselves and at least try to square this thing, right?” — well, you’ll make even slower progress at that than you would expect. I mean, even the most modest expectations are going to be unfulfilled…

There are also people who say, “Hey, after thirty years of affirmative action, they’ve got it made. Black people — it’s their own fault if they can’t make it today.”

Yeah, well, of course they say that. And they say it not just about black people. They say it in every country. We did something for you people, whoever “you” are. And we think that’s quite enough now.

That’s the gist of it: we’ve done something, and we think it’s enough. It may not be perfect, but it damn sure comes close to being okay. Now let us hear you applaud that for a little while. And thank us. And you can take that hat off your head when you come in here thanking us.

That’s the way it is. But let’s not get stuck there. We have miles to go before we sleep. We have lots to do, and some things just aren’t going to get done, you know?

“Why So Slow?, The Advancement of Women”, by Virginia Valian

Pg. 180

Since the unrealistic nature of white men’s expectations has not been acknowledged,  and since the implications of gender and race schemas have not been appreciated, many white men are unable to understand or come to terms with their failures. They perceive that they are losing out to some women and minority men, but they cannot see the loss as justified because they are in the grip of race and gender schemas portraying non-whites and women as professionally inferior to white men. For many white men, losing out to a minority person or a woman engenders shame and anger and also compromises their masculine identity. some then invoke the explanation of “reverse discrimination” to claim that those were less able and qualified receive unfair advantages…

Gender schemas do men a disservice. They prevent men from being realistic and objective and require men to be successful in order to maintain an essential part of their self-concept — their masculine identity. They lead men to think that they are more capable than they are and encourage them to have overly high aspirations.

Pg. 183

To the extent that women see success as due to random or uncontrollable factors, they will profit from it less. Seeing success in those terms is particularly disadvantageous because it leaves women with nothing to analyze, nothing to learn from success. People cannot build on an experience they attribute to luck. To benefit cognitively from a success and increase the chances for the next one, a person must figure out what was causally relevant. Successes are linked to each other. Each success teaches a lesson that can be used to advantage for the next attempt. There is a causal chain from one success to another, even if that chain is harder for women to construct.

I have said that it is rational for women to attribute more of a role to luck than men do, because cause-and-effect relations hold less strongly in their world. But it is even more rational for women to understand how the inaccurate evaluations of their success weekend the causal chain between ability and success. That understanding will, in turn, allow women to perform a more sophisticated analysis of their situation and develop a more sophisticated strategy to deal with it. Perhaps the single most important factor in success is flexible perseverance — “flexible” because simply doing more work in the same way may not be enough. Long-term success requires having a strategy and refining it in the light of short-term successes and failures.

“Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out”, edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaahumanu

Pg. 306

Why is the possibility of “passing” so insistently viewed as a great privilege… and not understood as a terrible degradation and denial?

– Evelyn Torton Beck, Nice Jewish Girls

…

pg. 320

When I share
my racial and cultural roots
people scoff
“you can’t be!”
“you’re kidding!”
“no you’re not!”
then proceed to tell me
then proceed to define me
then proceed to invalidate
what is really real for me.

What gives anyone
the right
to tell me who and what I am?

I never want to hear
that I don’t look Hawaiian
that I don’t look Japanese
that I’m lucky I don’t look my age
that I can’t be, that I couldn’t be
Why make such a big deal about it?
Why is it so important?

I never want to hear
that I am not a bisexual
that there is no such thing
that if I haven’t been with a man for a while,
I should call myself a lesbian
that I am hurting lesbians
that I am confusing
an already confusing situation for heterosexual society

Why make such a fuss?
Why don’t I just keep it quiet?
Why is it so important?

Don’t tell me who I am
Don’t tell me what my experience is or has been
Don’t tell me my personal is not political
Don’t ask me why it is important or what’s the big deal

I won’t be silenced
I will make a fuss
and I will tell you why it is so important…

I claim it all and have no shame for it is the truth.

“Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics”, by Jennifer Baumgardner

Pg. 225

For me, this fight for inclusion is linked to feminism. Inclusion is one of the reasons I am a feminist and one of the ways I define equality. Women have the right and responsibility to go where men go, be it to strip clubs, to war, to work, or to the bank. Men have those same rights and responsibilities with regard to women’s spaces. When I apply this desire to trump exclusion to sexuality, it means that gay people deserve to get married and have kids and receive social approbation for their relationships, just like straight people. Moreover, straight people deserve what gay people tend to have: the privilege of equality in their relationships and freedom from rigid gender roles.

“Lifting the White Veil: An Exploration of White American Culture in a Multiracial Context”, by Jeff Hitchcock

Pg. 201

The main point of this book is that we who are white Americans should be a little more aware of our race and our culture, that is to say, our whiteness. We need to understand how we presently fit within the racial structure of the United States. When Robert Terry, in 1981, said, “To be white in America is not to have to think about it,” he was describing a situation as it was, not as he thought he should be. We do have to think about it. True, even today many white people can blissfully ignore their racial and cultural background and identity. But as the country becomes increasingly multiracial in composition, the space in which we can wear racial blinders is diminishing.

“Lifting the White Veil: An Exploration of White American Culture in a Multiracial Context”, by Jeff Hitchcock

Pg. 45

It is a common finding that white Americans as a group score significantly higher on IQ tests than do black Americans. Does this prove that white Americans are more intelligent?…

Consider a simple experiment. Take a group of 200 infants. During their childhood, call half of them low-IQ, tell them no one from their group has even been President of the United States, chronically underfund their schools, and to keep it interesting, give them a daily sprinkling of lead paint chips in their diet. When they reach age 18, give both groups the same IQ test under identical conditions. Would you expect the high-IQ group to actually score higher? Probably so. Would it prove the high-IQ group has an innate genetic superiority? Probably not.