Breaking My Own Rule in Order to Speak Out

I am break­ing my own rule. I have to because I must speak out. I am com­pelled and con­victed to do so.Just the other day, I told some­one at the office, “Oh, yeah, I have a blog and it reveals what I do for a liv­ing, but I never talk about my work, my col­leagues … that is all off limits.”

Not today.

Why?

This is the reason:

After post­ing about my bless­ings, I set out to visit the other blog­gers who par­tic­i­pate in Blog Your Bless­ings Sun­day. I hap­pened upon a blog where the above photo of the late Ray Charles was posted.

I am not post­ing a link to or the name of that blog or its owner, in part, because I hope that by the time you read this the post in ques­tion will have been deleted.

Also, my goal in writ­ing this post is to edu­cate, not chas­tise or belit­tle a fel­low blog­ger because I have vis­ited that individual’s blog many times before and I truly do not believe that indi­vid­ual has ever posted any­thing mali­ciously or in an attempt to be inten­tion­ally cruel or hurtful.

The title of the post was “If You Laugh” and the cap­tion under the photo was: “If you laugh, you’re a very bad person.”

I called Big­Bob in to look at the photo and, at first, he did not see the prob­lem. You might not be see­ing it yet, either, so let me help you out: Take a good look at the micro­phone Mr. Charles is holding.

The blog­ger in ques­tion encour­aged read­ers to come to the con­clu­sion that, since he was blind from the time he was a young child, Mr. Charles was unaware, when the photo was snapped, that he was hold­ing the micro­phone the wrong way, thereby mak­ing fun of him because of the fact that he was a per­son with a disability.

Ladies and gen­tle­man, buy­ing into that con­clu­sion and, based upon it, laugh­ing at that photo doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily make an indi­vid­ual “a very bad per­son.” It does, how­ever, make that indi­vid­ual extremely igno­rant and disrespectful.

Iron­i­cally, I stum­bled upon that post just a few min­utes after post­ing about how liv­ing daily for the past six years with the ongo­ing threat of blind­ness as a result of full reti­nal detach­ments (for which I have under­gone four surg­eries and retain only use­ful periph­eral vision in my left eye), not to men­tion tears and lat­tice degen­er­a­tion in my right through which I see the world around a tan­gled mass of ever-present floaters, has changed my whole per­spec­tive on life and informs my daily com­mit­ment to my pro­fes­sional endeavors.

Grow­ing up, I used to think Helen Keller jokes were the fun­ni­est things I’d ever heard. And when I grad­u­ated from high school, we didn’t have awards for “most likely to” so one of my class­mates wrote a whole par­ody about what we were all going to do after grad­u­a­tion. Since I have played key­boards my whole life, he joked that I had a bril­liant future in front of me as Ray Charles’ page turner. Every­one thought that was so witty, clever, funny.

I look back at those days and cringe … with embar­rass­ment, shame, and revul­sion not just because I am a civil rights attor­ney employed by the largest state-run civil rights employ­ment agency in this coun­try, but because my duties include teach­ing and speak­ing about those top­ics, par­tic­u­larly teach­ing employ­ers and employ­ees about their rights and respon­si­bil­i­ties vis a vis per­sons with phys­i­cal or men­tal dis­abil­i­ties or med­ical con­di­tions. And I appre­ci­ate in a very per­sonal, tan­gi­ble man­ner just how hurt­ful and un-funny such inap­pro­pri­ate humor truly is.

To any­one read­ing this who is tempted to say “Oh, get over it … it’s just a joke. Don’t you have a sense of humor?” I respect­fully ask you to con­sider whether you would think it funny if the photo were posted in order to make fun of the color of Mr. Charles’ skin, his reli­gion, his gen­der, his sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion or any other immutable char­ac­ter­is­tic. There is no hier­ar­chy among the pro­tected cat­e­gories enu­mer­ated in the United States’ and California’s laws pro­hibit­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion, harass­ment or retal­i­a­tion. A per­son with a phys­i­cal or men­tal dis­abil­ity or med­ical con­di­tion is enti­tled to the same respect, dig­nity, tol­er­ance, under­stand­ing and oppor­tu­ni­ties accorded per­sons who are mem­bers of other pro­tected groups. Too often, that fact is unknown or, worse, ignored or overlooked.

Mak­ing fun of, degrad­ing, den­i­grat­ing or stereo­typ­ing an indi­vid­ual because he/she has a phys­i­cal or men­tal dis­abil­ity or med­ical con­di­tion is, under any cir­cum­stances, patently unac­cept­able behav­ior. Period. In the con­text of that individual’s search for, acqui­si­tion or enjoy­ment of employ­ment, hous­ing or ser­vice from a busi­ness estab­lish­ment, it is ille­gal. And were that photo posted, bear­ing the same cap­tion, in a Cal­i­for­nia work­place, it would be viola­tive of the appro­pri­ate work­place “zero tol­er­ance” pol­icy which every employer should draft, adopt, dis­sem­i­nate and enforce. Such post­ing would be deemed harass­ing. Repeated vio­la­tions can result is legal lia­bil­ity and an award of dam­ages to the person(s) affected by the unlaw­ful conduct.

Big­Bob, by virtue of liv­ing with me all these years, reacted to the photo this way when I asked him to look closely at the micro­phone: “It looks like he’s point­ing it toward the audi­ence to hear them singing ‘Hit the Road, Jack’ because peo­ple always sang along when he per­formed that song.” Right answer, Big­Bob. That’s exactly what I sus­pect might have been going on, espe­cially if you look at the expres­sion of hap­pi­ness on his face.

Another plau­si­ble expla­na­tion? He may have picked up the micro­phone and then real­ized it was in the wrong posi­tion, but the photo was snapped before he had a chance to jug­gle that task with play­ing. I have spent many years play­ing keys and singing in rock bands … some­times the micro­phone or its stand does not coop­er­ate and requires adjust­ment which can be a tricky maneu­ver when you are using both hands to play. Given Mr. Charles’ breadth of stage expe­ri­ence, I find it highly unlikely that he did not know which direc­tion the micro­phone was facing.

It is indeed ironic that inap­pro­pri­ate humor was directed at one of the icons of both the music indus­try and civil rights move­ment. Not only was Mr. Charles one of the first African-American artists to suc­cess­fully cross over to other gen­res, includ­ing country-western music, thereby paving the way for other artists fol­low suit, he qui­etly per­formed exten­sive char­i­ta­ble work and fought for equal­ity, refus­ing to play venues where audi­ences were seg­re­gated. About that, he said:

“A pro­moter insisted that a date we were about to play be seg­re­gated: the blacks upstairs and the whites down­stairs. I told the pro­moter that I didn’t mind seg­re­ga­tion, except that he had it back­wards.… After all, I was black and it only made sense to have the black folk close to me . . . Let him sue. I wasn’t going to play. And I didn’t. And he sued. And I lost.”

This was the inci­dent that pro­pelled Ray Charles into an active role in the quest for racial jus­tice, the devel­op­ment of social con­scious­ness that led him to friend­ship with and moral and finan­cial sup­port of the Rev. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960’s.

“…[E]arly on, I decided that if I was going to shoot craps on anyone’s phi­los­o­phy, I was putting my money on Mar­tin Luther King Jr.

I fig­ured if I was going to pick up my cross and fol­low some­one, it could only be Martin.”

Despite his deep com­mit­ment to King and the cause of black Amer­i­cans, Charles came to the log­i­cal con­clu­sion that there was no place for him phys­i­cally in the front lines:

“First, I wouldn’t have known when to duck when they started throw­ing bro­ken bot­tles at my head. And I told that to Mar­tin personally.

When he inten­tion­ally broke the law, he was hauled off to jail. And when you go to jail, you need money for lawyers, for legal research, for court fees, for food for the marchers. I saw that as my func­tion; I helped raise money.” His aware­ness of racial injus­tice was not lim­ited to the home front: The same years he fought the war against racial injus­tice in the Amer­i­can South found in Charles a grow­ing aware­ness of racial injus­tice abroad, par­tic­u­larly the noto­ri­ous pol­icy of apartheid in South Africa.

Mod­est to the point of mum about his human­i­tar­ian and char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ties, Ray Charles made an excep­tion for the State of Israel and world Jewry.

Among the many, the world leader Charles most enjoyed meet­ing was David Ben-Gurion, with whom he had a con­ver­sa­tion of many hours dur­ing a con­cert tour of Israel not long before Ben-Gurion’s death.

And the award among the hun­dreds he claimed touched him the most was the Bev­erly Hills Lodge of B’nai Brith’s trib­ute to its “Man of the Year” in 1976. Even though I’m not Jew­ish,” he explained, “and even though I’m stingy with my bread, Israel is one of the few causes I feel good about supporting.

Blacks and Jews are hooked up and bound together by a com­mon his­tory of persecution…

If some­one besides a black ever sings the real gut bucket blues, it’ll be a Jew. We both know what it’s like to be some­one else’s footstool.”

Ray Charles was a phe­nom­e­nal musi­cian and human­i­tar­ian who, merely inci­den­tally, had a phys­i­cal dis­abil­ity. That is how we should honor his memory.

When I teach, I stress that we are all human beings who have dif­fer­ent attrib­utes. I train employ­ers to look at job appli­cants’ and employ­ees’ abil­i­ties, not dis­abil­i­ties, and refrain from mak­ing assump­tions about or stereo­typ­ing other peo­ple when inter­view­ing and select­ing can­di­dates or eval­u­at­ing employ­ees’ performances.

When blog­ging, I strive to adhere to those prin­ci­ples and chal­lenge all other blog­gers to do the same. After all, your audi­ence is vast and var­ied. If one of your posts ridicules or reviles another human being because of his/her immutable characteristic(s), you could do a great deal of dam­age to that per­son with­out even real­iz­ing it. After all, you could join the ranks of Amer­i­cans with a phys­i­cal or men­tal dis­abil­ity or med­ical con­di­tion in the blink of … well … my dam­aged left eye! So, as the com­mer­cial says, “please drink post responsibly.”

Track­posted to Out­side the Belt­way, Perri Nelson’s Web­site, Is It Just Me?, Big Dog’s Weblog, Lean­ing Straight Up, The Amboy Times, Pur­su­ing Holi­ness, third world county, Right Celebrity, Woman Honor Thy­self, Wake Up Amer­ica, Stageleft, , stikN­stein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, Nuke’s news and views, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Ran­dom Yak, A Blog For All, DeMe­di­a­cratic Nation, Adam’s Blog, Weblog­gin, Cao’s Blog, Phastidio.net, The Bull­win­kle Blog, , Jo’s Cafe, Con­ser­v­a­tive Cat, The Crazy Rants of Saman­tha Burns, The World Accord­ing to Carl, Walls of the City, Blue Star Chron­i­cles, High Desert Wan­derer, and The Yan­kee Sailor, thanks to Link­fest Haven Deluxe.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Com­mu­nity

On the Same Topic:

• Social Media Mega Project: Blog­gers Unite
• What Were They Thinking?
• Blog Day 2007
• Mon­day Can­dle Moment: The W Mag­i­cal List of Women Blog­gers Goes Wiki
• Pro­mote Your Site at Blogsonar