Actually, I, in a lot of ways I feel like
I’ve had a very privileged life. But I recall
one particular situation that maybe is pretty
telling. I had, I had finished law school
in Los Angeles and I was interviewing for
jobs. I had actually gotten a job with the
government but they, they had frozen all the
positions so I was out in the private sector
interviewing. And I found that some firms
would simply not call me back for a second
interview and I was from a good school. But
some of them were honest and they said frankly,
you have great qualifications but we don’t
think our clients would be comfortable with
you as their lawyer because of your disability.
And that was actually illegal in California
for them to do although it was prior to the
ADA but they said it and I found myself at
that time feeling grateful for their honesty.
And I didn’t sue. That was before I was
affected by my work with my colleagues in
the movement. But it was certainly a very
major experience of discrimination and I went
unemployed for over a year before a state
government job opened that I ended up working
in for several years. I was also in segregated
elementary school. In elementary school we
had a disabilities school that was attached
by a corridor to a regular ed school and they
had the library. And every week we would get
to go to the library and they would march
us from our school to the library and there
were never any non-disabled kids there in
the hallway. It was almost like they cleared
the hallway for us to go there and not be
seen. And I think that’s what they did actually.
That it was deliberate. I know that that was
our time, we got the library then, and nobody
else. So it seems like people were afraid
to have us seen by the regular ed kids. That’s
where I went to elementary school. And I was
mainstreamed after, in junior high and high
school. That was Kalamazoo, Michigan. And
I know that in some of the larger cities in
this country, like Chicago, they built segregated
junior highs and high schools. So people I
know who were in similar age, a similar age
group were segregated here through their entire
educational process simply because the cities
were bigger and had more money, so I was fortunate
at least that just the size of the community
I was from got me mainstreamed by seventh
grade just because they didn’t have the
money to build segregated schools.
