Cindy McCain Refutes Ethnicity as a Disability

As readers of the blog know, I’m African.

I’ve had my detractors, since moving to the US, about whether I can even make that claim.

Most bizarre, perhaps, were the charges by people, who should know better, that I couldn’t possibly identify myself as African because, as my photo attests, I’m white. I’ll note for the record that these detractors were not of my ethnic identity, not of my culture. They were American, and had never graced the shores of my beloved African continent.

I’ll note further, that in sharing this bizarre state of affairs, my African brethren, informed of my American colleagues’ epithets, were, above all, amused.

I told my story to a prominent national community leader in Zambia. He listened quietly and respectfully, as is the African way. When I was done, he asked me a question that healed my heart: “If you are white, and cannot be African, is it also the case that that, if you are black, you cannot be American?”

In a Johannesburg craft market, I shared the same story with a Congolese trader. He looked at me for many, quite uncomfortable seconds, eyes growing ever wider. Then, as is the African wont, he burst out laughing, shook his head, and told me that my story was so implausible that I must surely be making it up. Assured that I wasn’t, he shook his head and said, “I am sorry, my brother.”

Enough said.

I was reminded of this issue listening to Cindy McCain a few minutes ago, because she talked about Rwanda, and about Rwanda’s suffering in the genocide of 1994.

In 1994’s Rwanda, tribal identity was a lethal, and official disability: Hutu, you live. Tutsi, you die.

Cindy McCain acknowledged a guest in the audience, Ernestine, of Rwanda, a woman who had survived the genocide, and who works for healing and reconciliation, in spite of her painful past.

Making difference a disability is never right. Making disability a difference is no better.

When Disability is a Death Sentence - Literally

In the most accurate sense of what disability means, skin color is not often an issue that jumps out at us from the news media. While we still live, unfortunately, in a world where skin color can often lead to prejudice, oppression, and even abuse, these evils are rarely provoked because of "skin color disability."

However, there is at least one instance where skin color does mean disability in the medical sense: Albinism. People with albinism inherit a genetic disorder characterized by the presence of little, if any, melanin and other skin pigmentation in their skin. They are especially susceptible to severe skin damage; most often skin cancer from exposure to the sun. Many have characteristic vision problems.

A medical disability, no question.

However, albinism is often also a difficult social disability in societies where physical appearance can mean the difference between being included or excluded based on a person’s physical characteristics.

Such is the case in Africa and many other developing countries, where people with albinism are seen, depending on who you are talking to, as either a curse or a blessing. Either way, Africans with albinism lose.

Yesterdays New York Times carried a heartbreaking story from Tanzania documenting the increased murder of Tanzanians with albinism because their body parts are prized for witchcraft potions.

Disability as death sentence.

Literally.

Difficult enough that you live in a part of the world where your life expectancy is pitifully short (even by African standards) because there’s no money for sunscreen lotion (to say nothing of no education on how to manage the condition).

Difficult enough that your very visible medical condition marks you not as a human being, but often as the ingredient of some allegedly magic brew.

Difficult enough that you are an economic prize – but only after you have been mutilated or killed for your precious body parts.

Hats off to the Tanzanian Government, which has acknowledged the problem. They’ve taken some very aggressive steps to combat this horror – police protection, and the appointment of a person with albinism to the national government, for example.

The Tanzanians could go much further, though. 

How about the Tanzanian Government continues its good-faith efforts by signing the newly ratified UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities? This ground-breaking international human rights agreement was meant to address exactly this kind of disregard for human dignity.

Let's hope it does so.

This sad and horrific story, at the very least, reminds us that we obviously have much work to do wherever disability prejudice is found.

Not a Good Time to Have a Disability in South Africa

I know South Africa very well – I’m a South African. My father’s family arrived in South Africa generations before the US became an independent country.

Today, I weep for my homeland, because South Africa is drenched in African blood. If you can stomach it, it's not difficult to find photos of the unspeakable violence all over the web.

Long-simmering ethnic animosity has seen dozens of people beaten, stoned, burned, shot, and stabbed to death. Thousands are seriously injured. Tens of thousands more are displaced, fleeing their homes ahead of marauding gangs whose chief aim is murder, followed by the usual accoutrements of looting and rape.

Why?

Because the murderers are stoning, beating, burning, shooting, and stabbing people they see as different.

Here’s how it works: If you’re a South African African, no problem. Not a South African African? Watch out.

This horrific thuggery is being aimed at refugees who have fled other parts of Africa in the hopes of making a life for themselves in “the New South Africa” as its often fondly called. Now, they are paying a terrible, unjust price for that hope of a better life.

My birthplace, Johannesburg, has been scene of most of the carnage. Thousands are flocking to churches and police stations for protection.

As the bloodlust rises to fever pitch, the most vulnerable are among the first to succumb to rock, flame, gun, or machete—especially Africans with disabilities. They’re easy prey to satisfy that bloodlust of difference, you see.

Read on.

South Africa’s Mail and Guardian reported that:

A marquee tent had been set up at the police station for mothers and children, but the children were complaining of hunger and cold. At about 2pm, a team from the Methodist Church arrived with boxes of apples and loaves of sliced bread and almost sparked a stampede. 

Scores of blind Zimbabwean beggars who had been brutalised and robbed by the mobs were being pushed aside by the hungry crowds.

The Times reported what happened to an African with severe communication impairments:

One victim was a deaf mute who was attacked outside the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg. Known only as “Tarro,” the young man suffered a gash to his forehead at the hands of a mob. 

Medical student Herbert Nedi tended to him and said the bewildered Tarro, who could only write his name and could not provide a surname, did not know what was happening around him.“

It was clear he did not have a clue what they [the mob] were talking about. He doesn’t understand what is going on,” said Nedi, as Tarro held a cloth to his head.

Make no mistake. There are, and will be, many others.

Unable to walk.

Unable to run.

Unable to see.

Unable to hear.

Unable to comprehend the deadly blow of a rock.

Unable to stop the body blow of a bullet.

Unable to douse the searing heat of being burned alive.

Unable to understand the swish of the machete.

 

Pray for South Africa. Pray more for South Africans with disabilities.