Experience With People With Disabilities

 

Experience With People With Disabilities

Kyle Jones

I have had a lot of experience with people with disabilities throughout my life. I grew up around Galloway, not far from the Absecon Field of Dreams. Being an avid baseball player this is somewhere the teams I played on would volunteer at. Volunteering at the Field of Dreams at a younger age helped prepare for the club I would become the President of at Stockton University. The fall semester of my Sophomore year I joined Stockton University's Unified Sports Club. Unified Sports is a Special Olympics program, where Special Olympic athletes play on teams with people without disabilities. I was the only partner in the club that was not a senior, so after one year of participating in the club I was gifted the title and responsibility of being the President.

    Because of participating in the Field of Dreams, and Unified Sports I have much more experience with people with disabilities than the average person. All of this experience gives me a different outlook on the idea of people with disabilities being viewed as "inspiration porn". I believe all too often people with disabilities are seen as inspiration solely because they are disabled, and not because they are athletes. I believe when people with disabilities are labeled as an inspiration most of the time it's for the wrong reason. I believe this takes away from their worth as a person, and in a way outcasts them. It is important to acknowledge the differences in daily struggles each person has in a respectful way, it's also important to treat people like people above all else.

Although people may not purposefully do it, people with less experience do view people with disabilities differently. They might feel sorry for them, and act differently around them, more likely than not it is probably due to their lack of understanding, and not having spent time around these people. I have seen this plenty of times. When some of my friends have started coming out to Unified Sports or, or when my fraternity is volunteering at the Field of Dreams, they aren’t quite sure what to say, or do. All it takes is a little nudge and a quick introduction and everyone is joking, smiling, and playing. But metaphorically breaking that ice can be difficult for someone with a lack of experience. This lack of experience is what I believe leads to people creating the “inspiration porn”, people do not understand that they are people with a different kind of lifestyle.








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