What Do We Want? Visibility!

 

Leaving you this holiday weekend with the brilliant Maysoon Zayid whose TED Talk above includes myriad revelations well worth your time, among them:

One fun fact I learned while on the air with Keith Olbermann was that humans on the Internet are scumbags. People say children are cruel, but I was never made fun of as a child or an adult. Suddenly, my disability on the world wide web is fair game. I would look at clips online and see comments like, “Yo, why’s she tweakin?” “Yo, is she retarded?” And my favorite, “Poor Gumby-mouth terrorist. What does she suffer from? We should really pray for her.” One commenter even suggested that I add my disability to my credits: screenwriter, comedian, palsy…

Disability is as visual as race. If a wheelchair user can’t play Beyoncé, then Beyoncé can’t play a wheelchair user. People with disabilities are the largest minority in the world and we are the most underrepresented in entertainment.

Indeed.