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Kim E. Nielsen Quotes (2012-)
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About Kim E. Nielsen
Kim E. Nielsen is a historian and author who lives in the USA and specializes in disability studies. Since 2012, Nielsen has been a professor of history, disability studies, and women's studies at the University of Toledo. Nielsen originally trained as historian of women and politics, and came to disability history and studies via her discovery of Helen Keller's political life.
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“...disability is often elusive and changing. Not only do people with disabilities have a history, but the concept of disability has a history as well.”
“we see today how caretakers are some of the poorest paid people in society, and at this point they’re who we’re all relying on right here for caretaking”
“All of us go in and out of the category of disabled throughout our lives, some of us more permanently, others of us not, but, this is the story of what it simply means to be human.”
“This book will make clear that people with disabilities have lived and continue to live with disproportionately higher rates of poverty because of specific social structures, ideologies, and practices that hinder their social advancement.”
“[being a historian of disability is] interesting and exciting, but it’s also an amazing analytical tool. To me, it’s the best way to bring together questions about race, class, gender, sexuality, all together into, into the same conversation.”
“I think the big irony is that industrial labor was really disabling, whether that was coal mines or shoemaking or farm work, industrial farm work. Those are really hard on bodies and often on minds, and it was very disabling. So even while it excluded disability at the beginning, it created a lot of disability.”
“Although people with disabilities share social stigmatization, and sometimes are brought together by common experiences and common goals, their lives and interests have varied widely according to race, class, sexuality, gender, age, ideology, region, and type of disability-physical, cognitive, sensory, and/or psychological.”
“abolitionists often talked about the way that slavery was disabling both of body and mind, and thus used that argument to argue against slavery, and saying that African Americans needed to be rescued from slavery. So, you know, both the pros and cons of slavery are the people who were argued against and the people who argued for it used disability to talk about slavery.”
“I never want to present the disability rights movement as a movement that was free of racism or sexism or homophobia, or even ageism or ableism. The movement has really struggled, but I think like all social change, groups and waves discovered that all of this stuff is highly intersectional, and the more people we can include and the more broadly we can make these analysis of power, the more effective we can be.”
“I've learned that disability pushes us to examine ourselves and the difficult questions about the American past. Which peoples and which bodies have been considered fit and appropriate for public life and active citizenship? How have people with disabilities forged their own lives, their own communities, and shaped the United States? How has disability affected law, policy, economics, play, national identity, and daily life? The answers to these questions reveal a tremendous amount about us as a nation.”
“Human variability is immense. We see and hear in varying degrees, our limbs are of different lengths and strengths, our minds process information differently, we communicate using different methods and speeds, we move from place to place via diverse methods, and our eye colors are not the same. Some of us can soothe children, some have spiritual insight, and some discern the emotions of others with astounding skill. Which bodily and mental variabilities are considered inconsequential, which are charming, and which are stigmatized, changes over time-and that is the history of disability.”
“As an author I'm careful about the words that I use. Words matter. For example, characterizing someone as "wheelchair bound" or "confined to a wheelchair" is profoundly different than characterizing them as a "wheelchair user" or "wheelchair rider." The differentiation is not political correctness: it is an entirely different ideological and intellectual framework of comprehension. The contemporary disability-rights movement has understood that redefining and reclaiming language is central to self-direction, just as it has been for feminist; lesbian, gay, queer, and transgender; and racial freedom movements.”
“I think this is one way in which we see disability operating as a concept really forcefully in U.S. history where slave owners and those embracing racism could categorize an entire group of people as disabled inherently in body and mind, which they did regarding Africans and African Americans, and thus justify slavery. They combined ableism and racism to do that really inseparably, and said these human beings are inferior, they’re, they’re inherently deficient, inherently disabled of body and mind, and thus need slavery...and I think that’s one of the real ironies here, right, is that slave owners and slave traders valued very highly the physical abilities and reproductive abilities of enslaved peoples, and obviously enslaved peoples produced economically and were, and they were forced to produce economically, and their labor was valued, and yet they were defined in racist and ablest terms as unable to contribute and needing slavery.”
“I think the difficulty that has come with that is that today we understand disability as almost exclusively a medical situation, and thus stress cure, and when cure doesn’t happen, folks are considered failures, and folks with disabilities tend to be only understood in this very medical framework, and that, you know, the reality that folks with disabilities have lives far outside of, you know, their medical diagnoses is often ignored. The medical diagnoses are often considered to be permanent, and that diagnosis has come to have great power, particularly with stigmatized diagnoses, of devaluing people economically, socially, and people...have become simply less integrated into the communities after diagnosis...under the medical model, there’s nothing to be learned or gained from disability, and I would argue instead that human variability is really quite immense and can be a great blessing, and it’s something we rely on as a society, but when we categorize people with disabilities, you know, as inherently deficient and in need of cure, always in need of change and never good enough, that really does folks a disservice and it damages all of us.”
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Kim E. Nielsen on Helen Keller
“Southern legislatures tended to place African American deaf and blind students together: for example, the North Carolina State School for the Colored Deaf and Blind; Texas's Institute for Deaf, Dumb and Blind Colored Youth; the Alabama School for the Negro Deaf and Blind; or the Virginia State School for Colored Deaf and Blind. When deafblind activist Helen Keller testified before Congress about the importance of expanding the Social Security Act in 1944, she emphasized discriminatory state funding and the ways in which racism and ableism intersected to limit opportunities. "In my travels up and down the continent," she testified, "I have visited their shabby school buildings and witnessed their pathetic struggles against want. I have been shocked by the meagerness of their education, lack of proper medical care and the discrimination which limits their employment chances." It was a disgrace, she went on, "that in this great wealthy land such injustice should exist to men and women of a different race-and blind at that! It is imperative that colored people without sight be granted financial aid worthy of their human dignity and courage in the face of fearful obstacles."”
About Kim E. Nielsen
Kim E. Nielsen is a historian and author who lives in the USA and specializes in disability studies. Since 2012, Nielsen has been a professor of history, disability studies, and women's studies at the University of Toledo. Nielsen originally trained as historian of women and politics, and came to disability history and studies via her discovery of Helen Keller's political life.