Not So Different?

[chaoticidealism]

A strategy that some people want to take when they try to increase acceptance is to emphasize the similarities between a minority individual and the "norm"; to try to explain to people that, "He's a lot like you. There's no need to reject him for being different because he's not really that different." It works pretty well with racial minorities,

Comments

[catana1]

You're absolutely right. Developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan said the same thing. He was discussing introversion, which the majority of people have difficulty understanding Iand it's not even a disability or a mental illness, just a difference in temperatment), and generalizd from that to any significant difference in consciousness. The crux is that if you don't understand another person's form of consciousness, you don't know how they're going to think or act, and that can be dangerous.

Does anyone ever really know what goes on in someone else's mind?

[ext_103710]

If you don't understand another person's culture, life experience, and so forth, you won't necessarily be able to predict how that person will think or act, either. I wouldn't put neurological differences in an entirely separate category from other differences; as to both, there's a need for greater understanding, and the concept of "the norm" often gives rise to misleading assumptions.

differences.

[anonymous]

I've wondered about that. I was a bit involved in the ADAPT exercise for raising awareness of the Community Choice act now in Congress to free young handicapped people from having to live in nursing homes. I'm thinking...in some ways, this doesn't compare to autism. We are trying to keep the mental institutions free of our people and in some ways, it's a more insidious form of disabilism. But freedom from institutionalization is a similar cause