TO STEM THE TIDE by Laura Younkin Disability Rag September/October 1989 Sometimes it feels like building a dam out of toothpicks, but writing letters to the editor is one way the disability rights movement has of stemming the tide of repeated, ridiculous cliches about disability. It's a tiny noise, to be sure, but the protest raised by writing letters, by telling writers and editors that we're not "wheelchair-bound" or "victims" or "special" is being heard. Take the Toledo Blade, for instance. Rag reader Jon Sarra, a persistent letterwriter, has helped changed policy at The Blade. Due in part to his repeated notes about offensive language, the paper's creating an in-house stylebook to warn writers and editors about incorrect disability terminology--although a Blade copyeditor seemed upset The Rag knew about it. One of Sarra's salvos was printed in The Blade in early January. Recent articles, he wrote, had used "outdated, demeaning language to describe people with disabilities." Sarra referred to "wheelchair-bound" and "confined to a wheelchair"--something he'd done often in letters to The Blade. "It only seems right that 'One of America's Great Newspapers' join the 20th century and stop using demeaning terms to describe one of this nation's largest minority groups," he told them. Less than a month later, The Blade gave the topic full-page coverage, complete with sections on words the movement considers offensive. Reporter Ann Fisher quoted Sarra extensively: "'I really dislike it when people say 'a victim of spina bifida' . . . I don't see myself as a victim of an amoral condition. I do see us (people who are disabled) as victims of a society that doesn't let us participate.'" Someone at The Blade was paying attention to Sarra's missives. That's not always the case, though. Be forewarned: writing letters is risky. Editors get huffy. Writers don't like being told what to do. Readers may not understand the point at all. One copyeditor at The Blade admitted letters about terminology made her defensive. "We have been assaulted with documents," she complained. They'd received written reprimands, she said, and added that "we try to steer clear" of offensive language--"we have virtually expunged the word 'cripple' from our vocabulary, unless it's a direct quote." "We don't like the constant pressure," she griped. Yet she obstinately maintained Sarra's letters had no effect on the paper's copyediting style. A movie reviewed by Richard Freedman of the Newhouse News Service got New Yorker Eli Gable started on his prolific letter-writing career. Freedman said a movie was so bad it would appeal only to the "brain-damaged." Gable was not amused. He wrote a letter of complaint to Freedman, who wrote back to tell Gable his spelling was "lousy." Gable didn't let the matter stop there. "I talked to him on the phone," Gable told The Rag. "And he thought I was crazy." Gabel said he doubts his letters make a difference. "When they print it, they don't read it" and return to old ways, he said. "It's frustrating. Very frustrating." Despite the frustration, Gable says he sends one or two letters a month. Gable's convinced the key to effecting change is to get the author of the offending article on the phone. Otherwise the letter has no effect "in the long run," he believes. "It may be different in small towns," he conceded. But "New York is New York. People write in opinions on everything." He's found it surprisingly easy to get reporters and editors on the phone, though. "You can get on the phone and talk to about any writer and editor in New York City." *** From The New York Times to small local papers, from Playboy Magazine to Travel Agent Magazine, letters have been appearing from disability activists speaking out. The writers cover many subjects--pitfalls of special education, discrimination by airlines, the validity of handicapped parking--but an overriding concern of letter writers is terminology. Words that reinforce negative stereotypes are a major prickly point with letterwriters. In her letter printed last year, Sanda Aronson took the New York Times to task for referring to author Andre Dubus as "confined to a wheelchair." "None of us are tied in," she wrote. "Mr. Dubus, as well as others of us who use wheelchairs for mobility, actually sleep in beds, so we are not 'confined to wheelchairs.'" Two months earlier, Aronson had written the New York Post to tell them, "You win 'Sickest Headline in a Long Time' award for the headline 'A Disabling Blow' on June 9 for the story about the new housing law." After In Moment Magazine printed an article referring to a "wheelchair-bound" man, they heard from Charles A. Salkin. "While this term may elicit the intended emotional response, it is not an appropriate description for an individual who simply requires a wheelchair for mobility." Ginny Vaughan tried to introduce the idea of disability pride to The Buffalo News this past June. "My having a disability is an integral part of my whole self. I do not feel I am a victim of this disability or sentenced to imprisonment. Cerebral palsy is a vital part of me." When the local Shopper's Guide ran an offensive movie review last fall, Cheryl N. Boyd of Sioux Falls, S.D. wrote a letter of complaint. Reviewer Cindy Adams had referred to Hollywood stars playing "little miserables"--Adams's term for a man with autism, an illiterate, a man with brain damage and a hypochondriac. "As an advocate in the area of developmental disabilities, I am horrified and angered," Boyd wrote. Diana DeSloover wrote The Toledo Blade shortly after the Gallaudet protest to say that, while she liked the coverage, she didn't care for expressions "deaf-mute" or "deaf and dumb." DeSloover told The Blade the terms were "common misnomers which promote negative images of the deaf community" and came from the "old and mistaken notion that deaf persons cannot speak." "Deaf and dumb" also offended Tom Willard. "I think the people who are really dumb are those who continue to use outdated and offensive expressions such as 'deaf and dumb' to describe those of us who cannot hear," ran his complaint, which appeared the New York Daily News last August. Sometimes a newspaper's reporting offends not only in the rhetorical sense, but in the personal. Joan C. and Richard G. Fitzgerald complained to The Buffalo News in June that the reporter who'd done article on their disabled son had "taken liberties" with the truth. The article had referred to their son as "a holy terror," which "is not true," they wrote. "He does not beat us up like the article stated" either, nor, they said, was he "a ticking time bomb." The News admitted its mistake. "News errs calling son a 'ticking time bomb,'" ran the headline over the Fitzgeralds' letter. Every now and then, a letter-writer will clearly point out that disability rights is a civil rights issue. On June 7 Rami Rabby's letter ran in the New York Times. A Times editorial supporting the Federal Aviation Administration's proposed ban on blind people sitting in exit-row seats had prompted it. "For the blind, this bears the marks of a classic civil rights struggle, and the common sense you would have us see in the FAA's position is the same 'common sense' white Southerners in the 1950's claimed in arbitrarily assigning Rosa Parks to her 'logical' seat in the back of the bus," he wrote. There, in black and white, was the crux of the disability rights issue, said Rabby. Whether readers and editors really believe it remains to be seen. Sometimes a letterwriter will get a personal response--but whether the editor understands the issues is an iffy proposition. When Carolyn Schwebel of Leonardo, N.J. wrote to her local Asbury Park Press about incorrect terminology, Associate Editor Lawrence Benjamin wrote back to tell her "Proper use of these terms will be addressed in The Press' monthly journal that will be distributed to all staff members next month." That was last January. By March, though, they clearly hadn't learned. On March 2 the paper ran a cartoon about the inefficiency of the local building inspection department, depicting the building inspector as a blind man--complete with can and black glasses--to symbolize the inefficiency. Hollis Zelinsky of State College, Penn. seems to be having more success with Parade Publications' managing editor, Larry Smith. Zelinsky wrote to Parade to complain about a story that had used "wheelchair-bound" and "confined." Smith soon wrote, thanking her. "You make a good point, and we will alert our editors accordingly." The letter exchange didn't end there, however. Later that year, when Zelinsky noticed in Parade a picture of a woman in a wheelchair--without the offensive phrases--she wrote to commend Smith. "Can I assume that this is a harbinger of things to come?" "Thank you again for being responsive to the concerns of those of us in the disabled community throughout the country," she wrote, "who understand the power of words in shaping society's images of us." What does the news media itself say about getting our letters? Approximately eight million people write letters to the editor of U.S. newspapers annually, according to an article in the June issue of the in-house magazine for employees of the Gannett news chain. "Studies show that most daily newspapers receive at least 100 letters a year; more than half of them get 500 or more," says the article. "Larger metro newspapers use about 10 percent of the letters they receive; most others use about 70 percent." If you're in a small town, then, you have a better shot than Eli Gable of being heard. If you're writing Time Magazine specifically about "bias"--in coverage, in language--you might have a surprisingly good chance of being noticed. Time Magazine's recent tabulation showed that, of the 50,000 letters it gets each year, only 300 or so were about things other than specific stories--and of those, only 26 were letters complaining of bias in coverage. What might happen if more than a handful of disability-rights oriented letterwriters told Time Magazine what they thought of its insistence on "wheelchair bound" and "afflicted?" It may be tedious; at times it may seem hopeless. But letters to the editor do have an effect. There is hope that writers and editors will become aware of disability rights--whether they want to or not. THE OPPOSITION WRITES, TOO People interested in disability rights may be writing letters to the editor--but so's the other side. In response to last November's Staten Island Advance story on curb cuts in the St. George neighborhood, Robert J. Cahn wrote to the paper that "St. George was turned into a bedlam for days so that steeply sloping ramps could be installed on the street corners of this quiet residential neighborhood exclusively to accommodate, not garment district hand trucks, but people in wheelchairs (and not even people who use crutches and canes), under the insane mandate of some Federal court, at a cost of almost $600,000." "What a stupid waste of money!" Cahn ranted. Other letterwriters were outraged at Cahn and told him so. But it didn't deter him. A month later, he was at it again. This time he didn't like the fact that wheelchair users called themselves "handicapped": That's "as absurd and grotesque as if redheads from South Dakota, all 37 of them, began referring to themselves alone as 'the' human race." "Wheelchair-users have written the book on 'me first' and seek to remake the world for their convenience," Cahn bellowed. And so the ruckus ended, right? Wrong. But as far as we can tell, disabled people got in the last word. Thomas J. Dengler wrote that he resented "being called selfish simply because I desire access." "Mr. Cahn impresses me as the type of person who parks in the handicapped areas and blocks the access ramps with his car.