1 week Ago
The Paralympics wrapped up on Sunday and I did not watch any of the Games. People are shocked when they excitedly ask me if I am ‘glued to the TV to watch the Paralympics’ and I reply with a firm and quick ‘no’. I have never watched it in the past and have no intention of ever doing so.
In fact, I am pleased it is over and the entire population can go back to their default setting of ignoring disabled people’s needs and their very existence. Everyone thinks I am being negative, but the reality of the Paralympic is a far cry from what mainstream media have been drilling into people’s minds. I am a massive football fan, a devoted Chelsea FC follower, and I do like other sports — but it's funny how no one asks me if I am excited for the start of the football season.
Instead, there is this assumption that I would get all hyped up about the Paralympics. Is this society’s idea of equality? Isn’t it a further example of segregation or discrimination? This feeling was not born recently but is far more deep-rooted from when I was a child at a special needs school; the one place where I truly believed that we (disabled people) were all equal and accepted as we are. I soon discovered the reality of the hierarchy that is present within the disabled community, which is a very common practice.
The realisation that your ‘worth’ is dependent on the severity of your disability came into force when I witnessed first-hand how some students were picked to train for various sports so they could eventually compete at national and international levels. At the time, I wasn’t too bothered because if you weren’t chosen, you got a whole hour for lunch break — plus, I didn’t fancy being outside in the rain and cold weather. After a year or so though, I noticed that a disabled person’s value is attached to their achievements — which, most of the time, was reliant on their physical ability.
This caused the students to split into those who believed they were ‘better’ because they had the strength to compete and others who felt worthless because they had no (visible) achievements. Even though I was top of the class academically, no one — apart from my teachers — saw this, and there were certainly no awards or trophies to show for it. Raya Al-Jadir is an Iraqi-British freelance writer.
She holds an English degree and Masters from Queen Mary, University of London. Her interests range from culture, TV, social projects and initiatives to literature and art, but her main focus is disability rights issues. She is the co-founder of Disability Horizons Arabic, the first disability lifestyle e-magazine in the Arab region.
She also runs her own site, Careless. Raya is a 2020-22 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism fellow in the UAE..
