Disabled Groups Not Happy With Beijing
This one is definitely going to get me into trouble. This story is already getting some play on the Internets and the Twitternets:
Disabled groups reacted with outrage yesterday to an official guide for assistants at the Beijing Olympic Games that describes them as unsocial, stubborn and defensive.
The guide for Chinese volunteers at the Games this summer explains that disabled people are a “special group” with “unique personalities and ways of thinking”.
The section of the manual entitled “Skills for helping the disabled” goes on to say: “Some physically disabled are isolated, unsocial, and introspective. They can be stubborn and controlling . . . defensive and have a strong sense of inferiority.
“Sometimes they are overly protective of themselves, especially when they are called crippled or paralysed. Do not use ‘cripple’ or ‘lame’ even if you are just joking.”
The guide, distributed to 100,000 volunteers before the Olympics in August and the Paralympics in September, sparked outrage in among disabled groups.
“I’m stunned,” said Simone Aspis, a parliamentary campaigner at the UK Disabled People’s Council. “It’s not just the language but the perception that in 2008 we are considered a race apart. Disabled people are introverted and stubborn the same way anyone else is.” The handbook notes that “often optically disabled people are introverted” and that physically disabled people can be mentally healthy.
“They show no differences in sensation, reaction, memorisation and thinking mechanism from other people, but they might have unusual personalities because of disfigurement and disability,” it said.
“Never stare at their disfigurement. A patronising or condescending attitude will be easily sensed by them, even for a brain-damaged patient.”
A few points:
1. Some of this probably language-related.
2. Seems like no one bothered to try and grasp the meaning behind a lot of that language and whether it was well-intentioned or not.
3. Most Westerners don’t even know what is/is not acceptable speech these days from a politically correct point of view. Do we really expect people from another country, particularly one that is developing and was completely closed off to the world only a few decades ago, to follow all those rules?
4. The booklet says not to use the words "crippled" or "lame". No one in China ever hesitated to call me "big nose" before, or explain with great sincerity that they admire Jews because of our prowess with money. I don’t recall being "stunned" by these comments.
5. Some of these complaints are non-denial denials. Is anyone going to really argue that this statement is wholly untrue: "Some physically disabled are isolated, unsocial, and introspective."???
I look forward to lots of warm, fuzzy and supportive comments.
Never underestimate the power of an “otherly abled” translator.
Setting aside any hair trigger response to inelegant, indeed clunky, language, most of advice, if you bore to the core of it, is sound, indeed kindly.
“Pretty and smooth” advice it may not be. Well-intentioned advice? Unquestionably.
he he he …… this makes me giggle a bit inside ….. the people who wrote the guide and the people who read / use the guide will be completely oblivious that someone else may get offended …. that feeling is just not understood … but then again why does the concept of ‘losing face’ not pertain to commenting upon someone’s physical features especially when it is in a disparaging way ??
Damn, beat me to this, saw it yesterday, but nobody ever posts on this stuff so I thought it would be ignored…Most likely the brunt of the blame can be placed on a bad translator, but the attempt at PC is nothing new, there have been attempts to change the terms that are used for certain disabilities for awhile.
In any case, the important thing is that this shows how generally ignorant Chinese people are about the disabled.
Funny how there is simple ignorance on both sides: the side of the disabled groups in “the west” (wherever that is) and – obviously, or this guide would not have had to be written in such a basic way – as well as the side of Chinese volunteers.
While the Chinese volunteers may lack a lot of what is considered basic knowledge regarding interaction with disabled people, it is obvious from the reactions of the disabled groups cited in the article, that they lack knowledge about Chinese society and how educated it is or is not about this topic.
Having lived here (Shanghai) for some time, I actually think it is useful to start with the basics – I just doubt the wisdom of making this public knowledge but then, it was most likely not intended to be.