Should Mentally Disabled People ‘mix’ with Normal People?

If you haven’t already – I would strongly advise you to watch this TED talk. It’s about a woman who was told her entire life that she would never amount to more than a person with a mental disability…

So she fixed her brain.

TED Talk:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0td5aw1KXA

Let me first start by saying that a mental disability is a very broad term. It describes a person who lacks something mentally that others in their society have. There are many different types and it ranges from mild to severe, however some people can go their entire lives not ever knowing or ever being diagnosed.

The reason for this is that we use comparative methods to diagnose mental disability. In a society where learning to read and write is not necessary, a person with numerical or verbal difficulties would never be identified, however as the world becomes more and more advanced it seems that more and more people are becoming marginalized because they are different.

The other day I was teaching my cousin for her sociology exam and we covered ‘school and education’ as a module. It was very interesting to me because I was learning as well as teaching – I didn’t realize that as well as learning subjects we were actually being taught behavioral lessons such as discipline, respecting those who know more than us (people in authority) and social skills such as patience and tolerance.  This was a strong part of the non-examined curriculum which I had never really acknowledged. Although in principle this would mean that children with mental disabilities would be treated well by other children, this is not usually the case.

When we think about these things from the viewpoint of someone like my sister, someone who has mild Williams Syndrome, the entire institution of a normal school will just highlight her weaknesses and never find her strengths – and that’s exactly what it did.

Going to schools for people with special needs where teachers are qualified and empathetic is a much better environment for someone who has a mental disability – it shows them that they are different, not disadvantaged. I feel that now that we have these institutions, we need to take it to the next step and find out through personality tests and psychological experiments what it is that these people excel at individually.

When someone cannot walk, staircases make them feel disabled – however if we make ramps available they will no longer ‘be’ disabled. I believe that everyone has a strength, and it is time for us to stop focusing on what they cannot do, and find out what they excel at – simply placing them in an environment where they will most definitely be ‘inadequate’ is the first thing we need to stop doing.  

How on earth did Amal get George Clooney to Commit?

It seems like ever since George Clooney decided to get engaged, a royal schism has fallen upon the blogospheres – with half of bloggers praising the oh so wonderfully tactful (not to mention gorgeous)‘Amal’ on how she managed to 'convince' the notorious bachelor to marry her. While the other half (who had noted him as a commitment-phobe previously) wrote skeptically about the authenticity of this ‘engagement’.

Yaaaaaaaaaawn

Seriously, as much as I would like to say who cares, the internet (10 steps to find a man, 12 signs he’s marriage material, 15 ways to get him on one knee) and major advertisers who sponsor the websites with these articles would beg to differ.

So let me tell you a little story. Once upon a time, there was Disney. Then, there was the economy. Disney said that prince charming would come along, and he would have a palace (house), a horse and carriage (some kind of vehicle) and lots of gold (Money). All you had to do to get the prince, was wear a dress (be pretty) and have some kind of sob story (be a 'good' girl), and he would find you.

Then men went to war, women started working, women liked working, the ‘shame’ on men who couldn’t provide for ‘their’ wives was lifted, and just like that, chivalry was dead.

Lol. Ok it wasn’t that extreme but you know what I mean.

Then the economy said ‘Hail THE MIGHTY recession!’

And pretty good girls found that their wait was starting to take too long… so instead of realizing that the reason that the prince wasn't coming was because he could no longer afford to be the only working spouse and therefore getting a job, they tried to chase the men themselves and thus swapped their title of being the ‘shy rose cheeked maiden’ for the ‘clingy, needy and dependant woman.’

Basically, its Disney’s fault.

The reason George Clooney refused to commit before Amal isn’t something I can tell you because I have never asked him. But what I can say is this, there is nothing more liberating than being single – you do what you want, when you want, how you want, you can pick up and leave, start over, integrate with new people without ever watching what you do/say, and afford to blow money without batting an eyelid or ever feeling guilt/being nagged. Even in your single state you will still have some things you will have to consider like family, friends, your place of work etc – but even with all of those considerations, it remains the state in which you are most free.

So if you are accomplished, free and happy – why on earth would you want to tie yourself down to someone who is just going to depend on you?

Chances are, unless the person shares your interests, work ethics, understands that sometimes you are busy, and is overall adding to your life – you are not going to give up your single life for them. Period.

I like to think of it as a swap – I would swap my single life for a relationship if that relationship is worth the swap, so for everything I lose, I will gain something and overall the relationship is better than being single.

Amal is a very accomplished human rights lawyer, she speaks 3 languages fluently and is from a different race to George…George is a well accomplished A-lister who made it big in Hollywood – being an A-lister means he got the top ranking for his industry – they are both highly and equally successful people and therefore have a lot to talk about/in common - if there is one thing we can be sure of, it’s that neither of them need one another, they just did the equation and found it worked out with a profit.

Mastering Sudan Part I

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve written in you blogger.

Remember the time you threatened to close down, and I went to tumblr and then tumblr and I didn’t understand each other and then you didn’t close down after all and then we got back together. *sigh*

Yes, well, I’m back. I quit my old job, and now I work on the radio – closer to my field and it’s kind of a nice post. So a quick recap for those who are not familiar with my blog – I am a random British raised, Sudanese woman describing my encounters since moving to Sudan in September 2012.

I am not treated as a Sudanese, but neither am I treated as a foreigner because even though I was never raised here, I am technically Sudanese, which makes it much more difficult for people to forgive my mistakes when I don’t greet them properly or say the correct line when someone dies… at first it was really upsetting… I felt very guilty but mostly I was confused - there are so many conventions and rules and it’s nearly impossible to do them all without feeling like a fraud... so I discovered a way around it.

If I wanted to live happily in Sudan, I had to remember a few simple things. 1) Kindly leave my moral compass and common sense in the cupboard along with my empty suitcase for when I leave again, and 2) Don’t think about anything.

At first I was so afraid of offending people because well, it’s really just not nice to… and in Sudan people take offence very easily – But what I discovered is that they also forgive very easily too. The best thing about this place is that as soon as people realize your intentions were not bad, they will automatically make excuses for you - forever; it’s actually really sweet – another thing that they do is they accept you regardless of who you are, no one is ever isolated. They say ‘Ho tab’o kida’ (6b3o kida) – which means ‘It’s just his/her nature’ – this is pretty much my free-pass card. Now when I don’t go to greet people, they come to me because ‘my nature is cold’ and they are not upset about it anymore. In fact, now if I do it, its like ‘wow Hind is amazing’ and if I don’t no one gets upset!!

It’s all about consistency, I realized that trying to change who I was to fit it and not offend anyone was just silly because I was setting myself up for a standard that I could not keep up with, whereas now that I’ve been branded in the ‘confused person’ category my life is pretty much awesome. 

N***er... it's only racist when white people say it...

This topic has been on my mind a lot...

It started when I was 14, back in secondary school (that's high school if your an American) and a lovely friend of mine, her name was Amy, asked if I could call after Kelly.

I didn't know who Kelly was, I knew she was in that circle of about 4-5 girls over by the bike shed because that's where Amy was vaguely pointing at with her facial features.

'Which one is Kelly?' I asked

'Umm... the one near the end'

'Can you describe her to me?'

'She's the one with short curly hair!'

'That leaves 3 girls.. I'm not sure which one you mean Amy!'

Poor Amy was in agony, there was very little for her to work with because all the girls wore the same school uniform and wore their hair down that day... I could see it in her face, she kept looking at me pleading that I would just know which one was Kelly without her having to racially segregate...

'The Black one', shouted out my best childhood friend, who had no problem describing people by their skin tones.

For a moment I was relieved that I could finally identify Kelly... but when I turned back to see Amy's face, she had flashed bright red at the sound of the word 'Black'. - She also frowned at my best friend (who is also white) as if to say 'You can't say that!!'

I needed a moment to process this.  There is 0% chance that Amy was racist... So why does she feel uncomfortable calling someone 'black', but is fine to call someone 'white'...?

Is she afraid of backlash? or does she inherently think that being 'black' is a bad thing? Whatever the reason, Amy was uncomfortable labeling someone racially with something that she was not. This was confusing for me as when I described someone as 'white' she was perfectly OK with it.

When we think back to racist America, it was all about segregation. Blacks here, Whites there - no mixing. The term N***er described a derogatory occupation, whereby the blacks had no choice but to have a white 'master'.

Now, this occupation has been outlawed, it is impossible for a white person to claim superiority over a black person in any way by law - whether it be socially, politically, scientifically etc

The N word has no meaning. It depicts the past, it cannot in any way shape or form have any power to return back the old ways - no matter how much a white person says the N word, they will NEVER be able to enslave a black person.

So why is it OK in society for a black person to say the word, and not for a white person to?

This in itself is where racism is rooted. Think about it this way. In comedy, you can punch up, but not down.
Why?

Because if you ridicule someone for having a PHD, when you have a Bsc, society knows that the PHD holder is actually more educated than the Bsc holder.

Whereas if  that same Bsc holder disses someone who never went to university - we have a problem.

So does allowing blacks to, and banning whites from saying the word N***er affirm white peoples superiority over blacks?

Or should the term just be banned all together??

How to Deal with nonconstructive Critics

There are certain people who will make it their life’s quest to put you down. Some of them will do this unintentionally because they believe deep down that you are indestructible… It’s kind of like the people who used to bully Amanda Todd; the young Canadian girl who was so affected by bullying that she ended up taking her own life after documenting it on scratch cards on YouTube. 

The same people who used to bully her were flooding in the ‘we will miss you’ ‘you were such a great person’ comments.

Why?

Because only then had they realized the impact of their words.

So why bully her in the first place?

They were being mean because they were probably bored or they had their own issues and saw targeting her as a venting mechanism… but they genuinely didn't realize their words would affect the young girl so much – they also failed to note that they were doing it in mass numbers. It’s often the case that people only see things from their own perspectives – I am not justifying this, merely explaining.

This is the backlash behind being ‘strong’ or not showing when things get to you. People often try to push you until you crack, some out of pure hatred, and others, out of pure boredom because they have a genuine belief that your threshold will never crack.

As someone who has often been on the receiving end of great criticism, I will tell you this, the person I dislike the most is not the one who hates me… it’s the one who tells me that so and so hates me. I have dealt with many types of people in life and work and this particular person seems to be the one who always ruins relationships and causes tensions between people.

When dealing with critics it is important to remember a few things.

1.      If you weren't sought after, they wouldn't bother with you

2.      When someone criticizes you, (and it is not advice) they immediately put you above them or see you as a threat

3.      If you let this get to you, they have accomplished what they wanted to do, which is to get rid of you as a threat, and therefore make you bad at whatever you are shining at.

I think that the best way to deal with this type of thing is to remember that you are threatening to this person and unless they are just evil, they are probably venting from their own problems onto you because you appear to have something they crave – strength. If you keep this in mind, they will never get to you because you will always be self-assured. This means that you will never take anything they say seriously, and therefore it can never get to you. It's kind of like when a child says 'You're Ugly!' what they really mean is, I feel so frustrated with you and I want you to feel it too!!

Never get emotionally involved with anyone you do not fully know because that would be you handing them a whole load of power over you - power to make you happy, as well as sad.

Why I don't understand 'Religious' People.

There is something deeply irritating about false people.

By false I am not referring to 'fake', please do not mistake the two. 'Fake' are people who pretend they are something they are not, whereas 'false' people live out an entire new personality due to one little experience (which they probably blew out of proportion) and generally believe that this new personality is truly their own.

Now, usually it wouldn't bother me, people have every right to do as they please and I have every right to cut them out of my life as I please but its when the way they act starts to involve you in a way that you cannot control.

In case you haven't guessed it, I am talking about the 'oh suddenly I'm so religious, and I need to save you from the depths of hell' type people.

When I was younger, people trying to find out what is wrong with me, diagnosing the way I practice my spirituality as incorrect and then trying to fix me was single handedly the one thing that drove me insane. Mainly because it made me doubt myself, and inevitably I felt like a bad person.

But lately this stopped bothering me at all, I realized that for most of these people its about getting as many people on board with them as possible so that they can affirm their beliefs.

Don't get me wrong, I do not think all religious people are false - I just think that the ones who are truly religious and content with their beliefs don't need to go around and get people 'on board' with them because they are what they are.

What gets me however is that some of these 'newly found' religious people are so fixated on practicing the fundamental aspects of their religion, that they lose sight of the actual meaning, and they hold an arrogant demeanor about themselves for following the fundamentals.

Take Islam as an example, the Prophet Mohamed said that 'He who holds even an atoms weight in arrogance in his heart will never enter Paradise'.

He also used to wear clothing that just loosely touched his ankles (they didn't drag by the floor) - It is known in Islam to be forbidden for men to wear clothing that drags by the floor (such as the pope does with his cloak) as it is considered a sign of superiority. The prophet also had a beard.

So these newly found religious people are very good at growing beards, and wearing short trousers - but when it comes to being kind, talking to women without objectifying them for their clothing or never being arrogant, its like these basic things don't count!

Its like their appearance somehow makes them better than everyone else!

They use their new religious platform to act in ways that the prophet would never allow and frankly, what irritates me more about the middle east is that people immediately respect those who dress that way before even knowing them!!

 

Are 'White' people better?

For those of you familiar with my writing, you will know about my past,

I was born in a random country, raised in another, and ethnically I am from an entirely different country.

Having been raised with different languages and cultures from early on, by the time I reached puberty, I often felt displaced; As I grew and entered adulthood, those feelings were settled by my lack of need to define who I was in a way that segregated me.

I decided that being something, no one else has the option to be, eg: saying I'm 'Sudanese' is a form of segregation in itself. The fact that only people who possess certain DNA (something they were born with and have no control over whatsoever) is a divider amongst people.

With this way of thinking I was able to break many social and racial barriers and approach people I would have been too afraid to approach in the past, but what I didn't realize about Sudan, is that unlike the UK, not everyone who did not feel the same way about racial equality had to keep their mouths shut...

As I applied for a teaching job which I was more than qualified for, the principal of the school laughed hysterically in my face because I expected the salary he advertised for... He replied with 'That salary is for a white person' - I was puzzled, and to my confusion he simply continued 'You know, with white skin and blonde hair'.

So is it really possible that the white supremacy,  ideology exists openly in Sudan, when it comes to employability?

 

The only difference between the 'white, with blonde hair and blue eyes' (which for the record better fits a Polish person rather than an English) and I is the colour of their skin and their racial heritage.  We were educated the same, in fact I'm pretty sure that being 'white' overrode the need for education past high school for this employer.      
                                
My racial heritage is Sudanese and I can tell you first hand, I had no 'innate' knowledge of the Arabic language or culture when I moved back here a year ago. It would be naïve to assume that someone raised in one country has the same values and ethics as someone raised in another - Chinese people have very strong work ethics and work much more than they rest when compared to Europeans. The same goes when comparing Europeans to Sudanese... But to assume that a European raised in China will have a lower work ethic because they are 'European' in race seems a little bit ignorant.
                                                
The trouble is you hardly ever hear Europeans being turned down in China... or anywhere in the working world, so does the white superiority ideology still dominate the working world?