Holly Pearson Disability & Intersectionality Summit.
11/5/16
Sandy: So this is Dr. Holly Pearson.
Dr. Holly Pearson, recently earned her doctorate in education with disability studies emphasis:
In higher education.
From a -- experimental and [inaudible] [applause]
>> Hello, testing if it's working?
... >> OK, can everybody hear me?
OK.
Ask if the volume is OK.
>> Is the volume OK for you guys?
Good?
Thumbs up?
Let's go ahead and get started.
So today I'm here to talk about higher education institutional diversity and.
But I would like to kind of hear something that sets the tone of what I'm going to talk
about.
So I work every day in an ordinary disability services office.
So you walk in and.
Someone says, I'm [inaudible] Holly, please follow me.
So I go ahead and follow the person into the office, imagine this is -- the person gestures,
I go OK, I'll sit right down here.
The person herself continues to walk and walk and walk to the -- [inaudible] so I'm sitting
all the way back here and the person passes by me.
The person asks me, what kind of [inaudible] do you need?
Like what am I?
I'm just sitting here by the door?
What's that supposed to mean?
So this is a sense of this -- it was like I was really invisible.
In a way, a sense of disembodiment, because I'm no longer a person with a face.
So in a way I'm just my disability and a lot of times I feel when I need to talk about
my disability, so my disability is significant hearing loss, I wear hearing aids, so I feel
in a way that someone has knocked off my ear and taken away my hearing aids.
I can't just stand here.
Can I come join you?
The person responds like, oh, can never even occurred to that person.
So eventually I get to that point, but there's that whole awkward energy to it where all
I am is reduced to my disability and I hate to say it, but of course it happens over and
over and over, through whatever I have to do, I feel like in a way I'm not there's this
door where I go in and talk about disability, this is the door where I go in and talk about
gender and you get the picture.
When I go into the realm of disability, I get questions, questions of what kind of accommodations
do you need.
What do you mean, you can't hear me?
You're obviously hearing me, or have you seen that show?
You know that show -- [inaudible] that's what you're all about.
Or you obviously sign, right?
Or hey, I know someone else who's deaf or what do you mean you didn't get your headset?
What's wrong with you?
But when I'm in this core, this space, surrounded by there's no intersection, and it's
the same thing when I go through the door and make the -- I get something like questions
like where are you from?
No, where are you really from?
To wow, your English is really good, to what do you mean English is your first language?
Don't you mean it's Japanese?
It's Korean, Japanese, whatever you are, to what's that?
Tell me what that says.
I don't know.
I didn't grow up talking in that language.
So I am a person, I am someone who identifies as hard of hearing, Korean adopted, female,
I grew up in Alaska.
So no, I get reduced to a checkmark to I need to fill a box, to I'm a number, that's it.
But the thing I've come to realize through my own personal experience is that disability
is diversity.
And we really need to change again.
When I talk about institutional diversity in higher education.
If we need to think about space.
So what do I mean by space?
This is the space -- this is a face, this is a face, this is a face.
So take a moment, think about temperature, how does temperature affect you?
You're cold, you feel hot?
Think about how does navigating to your office, how does that impact your day, think about
how an identity of a campus, how does that impocket the experience to when you walk into
a room, do you feel claustrophobic?
Do you feel like this is a happy place?
Do you feel like it's a -- [inaudible] what does it bother you when you hear whistling?
So basically the kinds of questions that I'm asking you to think about is think about where,
when, and who.
When is it that you're comfortable?
Why is that the case?
And it's the same with identity or identity -- when is it when it comes to your attention?
When are you aware of certain identities?
So that kind of facial awareness is a beautiful language of speciality, what I've come to
learn is that that by having a facial awareness, you come to see how we intersect not within
ourself, not with different people, but with the environment that we're in.
That has ideologies to it, that has meaning to it.
So the recent ideas of what came out -- [inaudible] so on imagine someone with PTSD to who is
adjusting to civilian life who feels that her identity is so much more relevant than
her other identities, because she's trying to adjust.
She was just going to the library, and all of a sudden to someone how people perceive
her and how she perceives herself.
To people that have to deal with the environment that isn't built for them.
Once disability becomes much more salient than others.
But then this little pocket of moment and places where that person might encounter anti-Muslim
attitudes, but she spent all of her time talking about the facility.
Think about it from a student who is an international student where she was the majority in her
home country and now she comes to America and now she's struggling with dual minority
status.
Where back home, her disability was what she was aware of but now she has to think about
her ethnicity, her disability, and constantly trying to negotiate between the two, and also
realizing at the same time I'm not like them.
I'm not the same.
I'm different.
To think about when you're on campus, whenever you're going somewhere, what class do you
get to take?
How is it different from other people?
>> Do you lose an opportunity to continue on the same path or does your path detour
somewhere else?
This is a classic example of this person has to adjust.
You have to sit on this desk while the rest of your peers sit behind you.
So that's what I'm talking about.
It's a sense of identity.
For me that it's a constant on and off switch.
I constantly have to turn it on depending on what environment I'm in.
If I'm around predominantly Asian people I kind of flick it on, OK, Asian culture, Asian
language, etc., how to pass, instead of saying when -- flip, flip, flip, flip, flip.
Part of the problem is when we incorporate sense of self, we start to see all these layers
and all the layers add to and all the layers affect the intersectionality within our lives.
They're not neutral, the physical features, the social features and the symbolic features.
And while on campus we're constantly negotiating with them and those faces are influencing
us, whether we're aware or not.
>> So what I'm hoping for is that I could talk about disability intersectionality, diversity,
we obviously need to incorporate space into the conversation, we need to develop a greater
spatial awareness.
Because it's not as simple as taking a disability and putting it into the conversation of diversity
itself.
But what we really need on campus itself is not just small diversity, but institutional
intersectionality is what we need.
Thank you.
[applause] >> Sandy: Thank you, Holly.
And again, if you if you have any questions we have time for two or three questions :
>> What was the most challenging experience from you in the face of -- you mentioned that
whenever you are in certain environments, in visuals, you either have to switch on or
switch off your identity, so if you could perhaps speak for the experience you had that
was the most challenging and how you went about dealing with that.
>> So one thing I forgot to mention is that -- no, I did mention it.
So growing up in a white community with a white family, I felt most of my life basically
didn't, so [inaudible] it was only when I went to college that I had to deal with my
Asian identity myself.
It was generally implied that that if you're a racial minority, you already know how to
speak race but for me it was such a struggle because I didn't have that racial language.
I didn't get what it meant to be an Asian female.
I didn't understand why I had -- a man, quoting, I don't know, white people all that stuff.
I didn't really get it.
Because there was really nobody to talk to, because people feel like, when I went to counselors,
they would say, well it's the natural part of going to college, you have an identity
crisis and that was it.
But it was like, but I need something to help articulate it.
And it wasn't until until -- so I spent years reading up on Asian Americans, reading up
on Asian literature and when I got questions like what is this, do you know the history,
do you know the language, so I spent like three years of my life brushing up on that,
to be like an expert, but then it wasn't really until I went to graduate school that I got
exposed to a language of intersectionality that I realized the silliness of that, that
I am my own person, being Korean adopted that is my identity, it's not necessarily Asian
American or Asian.
So I guess to answer your question, having that language and being able to articulate
it, visually, helped me.
>> Do you feel that gave you more confidence in kind of dealing with these different worlds?
>> I think it was -- >> Will you repeat the question.
>> What?
>> Can you repeat the question?
>> Oh, so he asked if it helps give me confidence.
So I think while having a language helped me articulate it, when it was really coming
to a group of people that understood kind of the value that way, that was when I started
getting a greater sense of confidence, because I had a community.
I had support.
I had love.
And so even though I'd go through the world that isn't really built for me across all
of my identities, but I have someone.
I have a group.
>> Thank you, Holly.
[applause] >> Holly, our next presenter will need the
microphone.
>> Oh.
[laughter]
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