Episode 57: Look At This Photograph

TRANSCRIPT OF “LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPH”

[rock guitar music]

MALE VO [00:03]
This is Bad Attitudes.

[rock guitar music]

LAURA [00:20]
Hello friends and strangers! Welcome to another episode of Bad Attitudes: An Uninspiring Podcast About Disability. I’m your host, Laura.

You might think this topic wouldn’t need an explanation, but you would be wrong. Apparently.

Today’s episode is sponsored by Michael Murphy. Thank you, Michael!

If you would like to sponsor an episode, visit ko-fi.com/badattitudespod and make a donation. Every donation gets a shout-out in a future episode and your donations help keep the pod running.

If you like this episode, share it and the podcast with your friends. Word of mouth is absolutely the best way to grow this podcast and our community. And please make sure you are rating and reviewing the podcast on your preferred platform. It really helps me out!

For questions, comments, or ideas, email badattitudespod@gmail.com or reach out through social media. Follow @BadAttitudesPod on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

As always, I want to remind you that disability is not a monolith. My experience as a disabled person is going to be different from the experiences of other disabled people. I am one voice for the disabled community but I am not the only voice.

[rock guitar chord]

LAURA [01:49]
I was baffled that this happened to me once. I was absolutely gobsmacked that it happened twice. But, twice — as of this episode, because God knows it could happen again — I was accused of racial bias because I described white people in images as being…white. Do I have racial biases? Sure, we all do. It’s ingrained in us by society and the ultimate whitewashing of our educational system. But this is not that.

If you’ve been following my social media for a while, you’ll know that I add image descriptions to my posts. This is a common practice, especially among disabled content creators. The purpose is to help visually impaired people who use screen readers understand the photos that accompany a caption on social media sites like Instagram. Its entire purpose is to describe using words what is happening in a corresponding image. It’s sort of the reverse of closed captions, which are used to help hearing-impaired people understand what is being said on TV or in movies.

This doesn’t strike me as a complicated concept. Image descriptions are an accessibility tool to give visually impaired users access to social media. Because they like doom scrolling, too.

In both instances where someone came at me for describing white people as white, it was clearly a case of someone stumbling upon my posts by accident. They were obviously not my target audience. And many of you probably remember this happening, because you jumped on both posts and held it down until I got to the comments. For that, I thank you.

In the first case, it was in reference to an image I use all the time. It’s the cover art image for this podcast, which I also use for title cards for each episode. As I do every time, I described the image as including a “white man pushing a manual wheelchair.” That was the only statement I made about race, simply describing that there is a man in the photo and that the man is white. And yet, someone felt the need to ask, “Why’s he gotta be white?”

I don’t know, man, genetics?

He further elaborated, “Why do you have to mention his race?”

Well, because I’m literally describing the contents of the image. I might be a little less confused as to what was happening if the image description wasn’t offset from the actual caption by being enclosed in brackets and including the words, “image description.” It literally says in black-and-white that this specific text DESCRIBES the image. WHY IS IT SO COMPLICATED?

After multiple people, myself included, explained to him the concept of image descriptions, he basically excused himself by saying he has a “rainbow family,” and he’s sensitive to “stuff like this.” Stuff like what? I don’t understand how having a multi-racial family would make it okay for you to accuse someone of racism for stating that a white person is white. There is nothing inherently racist about describing a white person as white or a black person as black or whatever. It becomes racist when a value judgement is attached to race.

The second instance happened right after I posted the last episode for last year. On my social media, I posted a picture of a white teenage girl in a wheelchairl wearing a mermaid Halloween costume. I described her, unsurprisingly, as a “white teenage girl.” A Karen took issue with this, asking if the model wasn’t black or brown, she wasn’t acceptable?

WHAT?

In what universe is me acknowledging that a white girl IS white the same as me saying she’s unacceptable?

Let’s not gloss over the fact that there is still a lack of diversity in most media representation. But, again, I made no value judgement on this girl’s race, only stated what it was. In this case, I would say Karen was the one expressing her racial bias and her desire to be seen as oppressed. Poor white people. She clearly realized she was fighting a losing battle, because she had nothing to say in response to those of you who answered her comments.

Now, look, I understand that we all impose our own biases — racial or otherwise — on situations we encounter. Sometimes, we can be overly sensitive and read too much into something. I know I’ve done it before, specifically with perceived ableism. Sometimes, I have to pause and ask myself, “Is this person really expressing an ableist attitude, or am I taking this too personally?” I try — emphasis on try — to give most people the benefit of the doubt. I also use context clues.

Remember those? Most of us learned about context clues in elementary school so that we can use them in reading to answer questions we might have about what we’re reading. In this situation, a major context clue is the words, “image description.”

Honestly, the whole thing makes me facepalm. It seems to me that these individuals were looking for something to be upset about and found it because I used the terminology of race. Race is a triggering topic. People can lose their shit when race is involved, sometimes justifiably, oftentimes, not.

I know of one thing that can help mitigate this particular set of circumstances: More people using image descriptions. Not just disabled content creators, but ALL content creators. The concept of image descriptions is not new. If you have ever built a website, you’re probably familiar with “alt text,” which is code with text written to show in the case of images not loading or if the site visitor uses a screen reader. I started building websites when I was about 16, and it wasn’t too much later that using alt text for images became common practice. It was certainly common practice for the majority of the time I spent building websites. So making visual content accessible for the visually impaired isn’t a novel idea.

What are the big takeaways from this episode? One, context clues are important. They will also help you answer some Jeopardy clues. Two, describing someone’s race is not racist unless a value judgement is attached. So if someone identifies a black person as a black person, that’s okay. If they use a racial slur, that’s NOT okay and you can go after them with all the spoons in your drawer. Three, image descriptions are an important accessibility tool for visually impaired technology users. You should start adding them to your social media posts.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you in the next one.

[09:24]
[rock guitar music]