Role Play vs. Reality: and the light bulb snaps on!

By Dionne Dixon

The act of performing yet another in-class activity as part requirement for my doctoral candidacy was at minimum, burdensome. I had to once again emerge from my comfortable seated position in the back-row, merge with a forming queue against the wall, then, listen to and follow the professor's instructions. From individual pieces of paper, we were instructed to assume the roles of specific individuals pertaining to the scope of disabilities, as described on our assigned pieces of paper.

My paper read, “You have no known disability, and you try to avoid anyone that does.” “I can do this,” I thought, I did not even have to leave my seat! I was not required to play any specific disabled role or assist anyone in a disabled role, “cool!” As the activity got underway, and my classmates hustled into their “roles” with excitement and apparent irreverence, I became shamefully drawn to the dynamics of the activity, despite my earlier position. In fact, both my position and role were the cause for the shame that I felt!

I thought that we should have known better! These portrayals are role playing to us, but they are actual realities to persons with disabilities. The mimicking of symptoms of persons with disabilities should not be done. However, if done, it should be done with more reverence and empathy. Light bulb!: Great words coming from the person who just moments ago rejoiced because her piece of paper allowed her to avoid being bothered with the issues surrounding people with disabilities.

The reality was not that there were millions of persons with disabilities, or even how we choose to acknowledge there growing presence. For me, it was my default disconnect with the issues of disabilities. Why did I do it? It was not like I did not know better, I did. I completed a master's degree in ESE and I am currently working on a plan associated with disabilities in children. The answer to that question holds true for many other persons as well; if we do not have to, we would prefer not to. Let someone else do it, let some else be bothered. The problem with that rhetoric however is; what happens when no one wants to be bothered? Or, when the person's with disabilities are not able to help themselves?

My reality light bulb clicked on as a result of role playing. It is bright, and it shines light on the fact that indeed, one, the population of persons with disabilities are on the rise 54 million to be exact; two, the default disconnect reaction of the general population, to persons with disabilities, is not uncommon, and three, people generally prefer not to be involved. Subsequently, our persons with disabilities need to be ensured that at worse, they will have the where-with-all to accommodate and achieve their desires when no one else wants to be bothered.

Fortunately for you and me, we are in the year of “the vote.” And for those of us who cannot be bothered, the least we can do is to lend ourselves to an action that is comfortably distant from being bothered, but one which can make a significant difference in the life of a person with a disability; vote. Unlike the classroom exercise, their disabilities are not roles that they play, but rather, permanent states of their reality.

And the light bulb snaps on.