Julia's Musings: A Conversation with Drew Westen

Drew Westen has written a ground breaking book that focuses on building an emotional message that can drive a political agenda. Creating a new message for the disability community’s policy agenda has been a hot topic recently. Well, at least in my corner of the community.

Westen admitted that he has not done a ton of work on disability language, but he was willing to try to address the situation. I asked him how he would assess the use of language in the disability community today.

Westen stated, “the disability community seems to be making the same mistakes as the Left. We (people with disabilities) speak about our community euphemistically.” This turns people off. We should be looking at language that makes the larger community identify with us. Terms such as “differently abled” move the disability community into a place of “us vs. them.” To create a bigger tent, we need to have the larger community identify with our agenda and our stories. “There is nothing more powerful then getting people to identify. The otherness that comes along with disabilities needs to be disabled.”

Drew Westen’s book and numerous articles address the way our brain creates networks and how these networks are activated. The disability community needs to not active the connections that make people think “they are not like me.” Instead, we need the larger community to look at us and think “They are me.”

When asked how to re-message the disability policy agenda Westen offered this insight “There is nothing American’s admire more than those who face extreme adversity and come out the other end. Americans are willing to give a hand up, not a hand out.”

Westen closed our discussion with these simple words, “Humanize It!” We in the disability community need to create a message that humanizes our policy agenda. We need to move from demands of special to a discussion of equity. We want equity in education, in employment, in housing, in the economy. We need to explain to anyone willing to listen that disability is not an illness but a state of being. We need to, in Drew Westen’s words, “speak to the better angels of our consciousness and moralize our message.” Disability can happen to your child, your spouse, your family member, or your friend. Do they not deserve equality in this world? The answer is “Yes!”