It's called "Created Equal."
I cried when I got home and skimmed over it. Why? Because I thought the book was going to talk about how the different people in America have had to fight and secure our civil rights. I thought the book was going to talk about how we are, in fact, all created equal, just like the book's title would suggest. I looked in it. I wanted to see what the book had to say about Disabled Americans. Do you know what I found?
This is the extent of my textbook's discussion of disabled civil rights:
Other groups also organized and entered the political arena. Indians, disabled Americans, California farm workers, and gay men and lesbians all formed organizations to counter discrimination and advance their civil rights. [Goes on to talk about womens' rights.]
That is the extent of it. The fact that the men and women who came before me fought, struggled, and died to secure my legal right to be an equal in society is reduced to not even a sentence. My history, and my rights as a human being are reduced to nothing more than a mention in a list in an afterthought. Who I am, my rights, and my history aren't even afforded a paragraph thrown in as filler.
The Americans with Disabilities Act isn't even in the bloody index!
So here I am, having shelled out seventy dollars for a textbook which I had to buy as part of a class which I am permitted to attend because I have civil rights which were secured for me by my forebears during our civil rights movement. It's almost ironic and if it weren't for the fact that society sees people like myself as being so, so far from having been created equal it might even be funny.
It's not funny.
Jokes don't bring tears to your eyes.
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