Note: This transcript is autogenerated and does contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Amy Julia Becker (00:05)
I’ve always believed that the language we use shapes reality and that the world around us shapes the language we use. Having a daughter with Down syndrome has only heightened my own attention to language and to its effects, and I’ve been especially aware of the rise in the use of language that demeans people in general, and people with disabilities in particular in recent years. So I’ve been looking for someone to talk with about these trends and what they mean and why they matter.
Which is why I’m so grateful that I got to talk with Dr. Chris Cipriano for today’s episode. I’m Amy Julia Becker, and this is Reimagining the Good Life, a podcast about challenging the assumptions about what makes life good, proclaiming the inherent belovedness of every human being, and envisioning a world of belonging where everyone matters. Christina Cipriano is an award-winning scholar and internationally recognized expert in learning and development.
She is currently an associate professor at the Yale Child Study Center and director of both the Education Collaboratory and Co-director of the Disability Discourse Project at Yale. She is also the author of a new book, Be Unapologetically Impatient. And here is my conversation with Christina Cipriano. Well, Dr. Cipriano, thank you so much for joining me here today.
Christina Cipriano (01:28)
Thank you for having me, Amy Julia.
Amy Julia Becker (01:30)
So you direct a project called Disability Discourse Matters that I was recently made aware of. And I was just so longing to talk to somebody about the language we use, both in public and in private, when it comes to all sorts of things, but especially and including disability. So I was really grateful to stumble upon your work and learn more about what you’re doing. Could you tell us though, here on this podcast, like what are the origins of this project? What are you aiming to do? You know, just tell us about this project.
Christina Cipriano (02:01)
Yeah, absolutely. So this project was birthed out of an interest in our research lab. So I direct a lab called the Education Collaboratory, where we work to advance the science of learning and social emotional development. So all kids are seen, served, and safe to learn in school. And this project grew out of our inclusion portfolio and really wanting to understand how students with disabilities are being served in our school systems and how
Political discourse may or may not be moving in the direction that’s best supporting them to be served, and/or their feelings of safety in being able to access and benefit from their learning in their environments. And so we have been doing work in the inclusion space for over a decade in really understanding the ways in which students with disabilities and learning differences and just differentiation in how they know, see, and navigate their world is honored, affirmed in our society. And as psychologists, we come to this work with an understanding that.
Discourse drives policy, it drives action, both big P and little P in the policies that are enacted and the ways in which they show up in how people are treated. And so in January of 2025, we and I want to honor my colleague, Dr. Michael McCarthy, who really has grown this work and developed this work further. You will see Dr. McCarthy’s name and work across the site as he’s been driving this forward.
with our AI innovations and translational work around disability discourse matters, we said, well, what if we were to pre-register a study? And pre-registration means you kind of say up front what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. So this matters for the the science nerds out there, ⁓ and get IRB approval to say, what if we followed how our political leaders are talking about disability from dehumanizing to humanizing? So we code and score the phrases they’re using, the policies they’re proposing.
The ways that disability showing up in discourse and made it publicly available. So we made this, you know, a kind of separate entity, publicly available, interactive data dashboard site. Because, you know, as academics, we write papers and next to no one reads them. But if we put it up online, you know, how can we have people to engage so that people can understand and we can kind of watch these trends in real time and study them? And so we started this work in January of 2025 with the
you know, the administration was shifting over here in the United States at this time. And so we pre-registered it right at the beginning of the month, right before ⁓ the Trump administration officially came into office. ⁓ and we were, you know, had a hunch that things might shift in the language in light of what we had been hearing happening in the fall from a study that came ⁓ out of McLean University on the use of the R word on what was then Twitter now X. And ⁓
But I can tell you that that was the genesis of where it started. And I never in my wildest dreams imagined that we would be here today having this conversation and have so much to talk about in terms of how our political leaders are understanding disability, framing disability, and engaging in discourse that is harmful and deficit-based for our kids and people with disabilities.
Amy Julia Becker (05:14)
All right. So thank you. And yes, I remember that study that you’re referencing and when that first came out. I am ⁓ I want to get I’m as I told you before we started, I do want to talk specifically about this work and the ⁓ data you’ve collected and what you are determining from that. But I also want to zoom out a little bit before we do that and just talk about language ⁓ that we use just culturally around disability.
And you’ve mentioned this a little bit in terms of like discourse drives policy, but I think we can zoom out even beyond that. Like just I’d love to hear you talk about why does the language we use matter? Like what difference does it make? Aren’t we just talking about words, you know?
Christina Cipriano (05:59)
Yeah. So ⁓ and I totally I totally appreciate that question because, you know, sometimes in some spaces with some identities, you could say, and people with those identities would agree with you that like, yeah, it’s just a word, doesn’t mean anything. But when we’re talking about disability and how disability is constituted in the individual, I like to talk about it as the salience of one’s identity and that meaning and how that holds value. And so, you know, within the disability
literature over the past, you know, 50 years, we can see the shift in the use of person first language. So seeing one’s disability identity as an asset and like a primary driver of how you understand the world, ⁓ versus others who view their disability, not in as much of an asset lens, but similarly in a space of this is for my accommodations, these are the needs that I have, we do not dismiss them. And so if we hold those
Kind of ways of seeing and understanding one’s identity to be true, right? Because this is all true and valuable. And then we zoom out to the ways in which our systems and policies are affirming or validating one’s identity. The way that we talk about disability becomes how we understand a disability. And the way we understand a disability, whether it’s strength based, affirmative, an asset to one’s
variability in how they understand their world versus something that is considered a deficit. And I will own and acknowledge I have a really hard time talking about the deficit framing because I am such a strength-based person in the way that I engage in my family and are in the disability community that ⁓ that shows up in the policies that get proposed and passed and the ways you know school systems are structured, the way social supports are structured.
It feeds the way funding is allocated, supports are you know, available to families, and you know, to the to the individual in their family who’s navigating disability and navigating potential barriers that are embedded in the systems they’re working in, when your ⁓ identity is viewed as an asset, right? You’re seen as value add. You have value to offer, ⁓ livelihood to be gained, you know, so we think about, you know,
Career success, gainful employment, economic, financial stability, you know, happiness, joy, ⁓ as opposed to alternative ways of kind of understanding disability, where it’s seen as ⁓ you know, people or groups of people that can’t or should not. Yeah. And that’s where that harmful deficit dehumanizing framing and rhetoric comes into play.
Amy Julia Becker (08:50)
Can you think of any like examples of ⁓ like I’m thinking of trying to like play out an example of each of these things. And I know we’re probably not gonna say, when you talk in these this language, here we can, you know, here’s exactly what happens. But at the same time, I remember, for example, when Penny, our daughter with Down syndrome, was first born, I had the language of Down syndrome baby ⁓ in my head. And I as soon as she was born, I was like, I don’t like that language. Like that doesn’t actually seem
descriptive of what of what’s happening here. And I learned about person first language and the idea of like, I have a baby with Down syndrome. Which again, it like I didn’t mean anything negative by saying Down syndrome baby. And no and I don’t think that’s always what is happening if someone says that to me. And at the same time, it was helping to reshape my understanding of my daughter to say, I have a daughter with Down syndrome. it is descriptive of her. It is an aspect of her identity. But again, ⁓
I am understanding when I was saying Down syndrome baby, I really was putting Down syndrome in the place of personhood as opposed to person first language where it’s a baby with Down syndrome. Again, there’s some people in the disability community who want to be known as autistic or deaf or disabled. And I think there are good reasons for that too. So I know it’s complicated even within person first language.
But anyway, I’m just wondering if you could give an example also on like kind of one side or the other of that assets based and deficits based ⁓ view of disability in terms of the language and what that ends up looking like in a school setting or a family or a, you know, policy setting. Yeah.
Christina Cipriano (10:30)
So it’s I so appreciate you sharing that. You know, at the end of the day, right, it comes down to well, ask Penny, how does Penny want to be referred to? Yeah. And I think about with my own children, like how do they self-disclose and want to self-disclose and what value does that bring to their own life and their identity and how they see themselves? And my and my children are wildly diverse in their own ways, right? So we want to honor that and support that and teach the adults around our our our young people to be able to have those words to ask how someone wants to be referred to and like
recognize that there’s value in their answer, that that is a to be affirmed and supported in the ways that we structure our system. So, you know, it’s interesting when we think about kind of the history of disability and disability support services and kind of understanding the way individuals with disability have a livelihood to be gained, because the medical model traditionally gave us a real deficit frame of disability. Difference this is that disorder diagnosis that comes from the, you know, clinical side, the
Diagnostic manuals and the ways in which we kind of historically spoke about and talked about certain disabilities stemmed from what we were, we being medicine diagnosing, right? And those labels, those labels came with frames around them of shame, guilt, ⁓ you know, dismissing needs as less than, of like not value, this idea that’s of what someone can’t do versus what they can. ⁓
And then, you know, we’ve looked towards like the sixties and seventies in the US, we really started to see this shift. you know, capital crawl, asset-based language, movements like that we went, you know, through the organizations, predominant organiz organization, the Special Olympics, coming forward to say, Hey, we’re going to, you know, shift this narrative. We’re going to, you know, fight for policies, advocate for policies. We had see the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
shifts in the way diagnostic criteria and certain identities are affirmed and supported within the literature. I mean you could look at the progression of even autism. For example, autism ⁓ used to fall under a c a classification of MR, or this will be the only time I’ll say this on your show, mental retardation, right? Words we don’t use anymore. And so we see ⁓ you know, the shifts moving from that to prevent pervasive developmental to delay.
Or PDD, then PD NOS, then you know, where does intellectual disability doesn’t show up until really the past like 15 years? Yeah. Like really recent in the scheme ⁓ of the ways in which we’re understanding. And, you know, the point of me kind of bringing that to bear in our conversation today is that you know, I work in school systems. And so ⁓ it’s been very clear in our research over the course of my career and historically for those who’ve been engaging in in disability work that, you know,
labels that are used for for young people in the medical model that are intended to open up support services, insurance IDs, claims and so forth, right? ⁓ are also historically used in the education system as excuses to dismiss a child as not being someone’s responsibility, not being in a school, not being worthy of an education or education. And so if you’ve
Bring those narratives now to like where we are here. We’re in May of 2026 having this conversation. I think it’s important to date it. Yeah. We’ve seen our research has documented a significant shift in the public and political discourse around disability. We’ve seen the rise of the R word among p from individuals in power and the R word had been eradicated.
From public vernacular until you know 18 months ago. Yeah. In terms of use, we’re seeing it come across both in political figures, social media, Netflix, television shows most recently, engaging in use of this word and trying to bring it back. ⁓ concurrent with policies that are ⁓ moving the education and treatment of individuals with disabilities back into the medical model. So moving it outside of the school system and into
⁓ the the deficit framing of the medical model.
Amy Julia Becker (14:47)
There’s so much that you just said that I want to ask you about. ⁓ I have to decide where to go next. I guess actually, l so I wanna one of the things I wanna talk about the rise of the R word. So I think we’ll get back to that, just noting that. ⁓ I also though I recently was reminded of a phrase that I like literally had forgotten what it meant. So I went back and read this essay by Steven Pinker in the 1990s about the euphemism treadmill.
If we keep changing the language around any sort of kind of minority group, often what that shows is that our concept about that group is not changing. And so the language becomes negatively coded around the group. And so then we try, okay, we’re gonna get another word, and then that becomes negatively coded because we haven’t actually changed the underlying concept. And
I s so basically this is a quote from his this is again from nineteen ninety four. He says the euphemism of treadmill shows that concepts, not words, are in charge. Give a concept a new name, and that name becomes colored by the concept. The concept does not become freshened by the name. We will know we have achieved equality and mutual respect when names for minorities stay put. And I both agree and disagree with him, ⁓ just to put my cards on the table, because I do believe that language shapes our lived experience.
And also that our unlived experience shapes language. And he’s kind of saying it’s an either or, like only the concept is that’s the only thing operative. But I just wanted to what you thought about
Christina Cipriano (16:19)
I appreciate you bringing that Yeah, bringing that analogy to bear. I think the important kind of the important context that I would draw from the ways in which Pinker was kind of explaining and thinking about and how you would plug disability in is the value judgment in that conceptual piece at first about what is the value of disability. Yeah. And so, you know, getting at this idea that, you know, historically across human existence, individuals with disabilities and the treatment of a disability was this, you know, shame, fault.
blame something deficit wrong. And again, I just like even hate bringing these words into your conversation because I don’t want them getting tagged and moved because that’s not how we’re speaking about and not how I value totally disability and how you do either. Right. ⁓ but that undertone, that foundation is something that’s ⁓ hard to break. And so I do agree with this idea that we can keep adding or shifting some of the words and perhaps we haven’t dealt with the underlying kind of recognition or acceptance as
of all human lives is valuable, right? As asset based. And I I I think, you know, ⁓ so my oldest, I I’ve got four kids, ⁓ wildly diverse on all the dimensions of diversity we could talk about. And my oldest has a rare disease. So he’s medically complex, called Fail McDermott syndrome. He’s also autistic and has epilepsy. Yeah. And I think about how in certain spaces and places he’s going to be fourteen next week, how in certain spaces and places he’s
You know, I’ve been told and he’s been treated as though like, you know, he’ll never learn. ⁓ like this is not of value to him. Like why, you know, you know, kind of created in situations of like that they’re kind of waiting for an end. And and unfortunately with his ⁓ his ⁓ his identities, ⁓ st children do do pass away. There is so they’re you know, like thinking about livelihood in life. ⁓ whereas like we take the view of like his life.
And his joy is not something to take for granted. And it’s certainly not worth waiting for. And so we’ve structured kind of our mindset and our way of being and existing around like centering his joy and his experiences as long as we get to have them because it is a gift that he’s still with us and our family. And he shows us every day all that he’s learning and continuing to learn and proves all the doctors and teachers wrong in those regards. but you have to be willing to see it and willing to accept.
I’m willing to embrace alternative ways of knowing, seeing, and navigating your world. And that really is the broader asset-based frame that I take across my scholarship and work in understanding diversity in being and thinking. And you can take that lens and you could, you know, we I I center disability, but you can also center ⁓ you know, language, you can center economics, you can center culture, you can center gender, like we could go into many an identities if wanted.
of like what that diversity in your experience and the way you live brings to your world and what it has to offer in a meaningful way. Yeah.
Amy Julia Becker (19:25)
Thank you. And thank you for sharing a little bit of your just own ⁓ not just yes, your personal story, but also how this this kind of gets lived out within your story. And I ⁓ can certainly relate, even though Penny’s experience is different, at the same time, just that sense of like what does it actually mean for us to value one another as humans as gifts and ⁓ without these, yeah, kind of utilitarian expectations that come to each other. ⁓ I wanna get back to the R word also, because as you mentioned
The Special Olympics began a campaign ⁓ you know, in the early ⁓ two th the two thousands, spread the word to end the word, and they did a really good job. Like it actually made a big difference. Absolutely. ⁓ and then within the past couple of years, that word has just been like exponentially on the rise. And in fact, I think that was even part of what prompted this disability discourse matters work, which we will turn to soon. ⁓ but I was wondering if you could speak to
Just to the degree that you know this, like why did this word decline effect you know, why was it effective and declining? And then what brought it back? Like what what’s happening here?
Christina Cipriano (20:31)
Yes.
So ⁓ you know, the the messaging, the campaign that Special Olympics led around ending the word was highly successful, I think, on every indicator you could possibly look for, ⁓ in terms of hearing it used, seeing it used, and like w we no longer saw it in media, it was no longer deemed appropriate, we no longer saw it in scholarship, like right. It was kind of across sectors. ⁓ and why did it come back? Well, ⁓
the you know kind of if we look historically at what happened has happened here in the United States. in the fall of twenty twenty four, ⁓ Elon Musk used the word on his it was then Twitter before we kind of made the X transition or it was like right in there. And ⁓ his use of the word was affirmed at scale. And I don’t want to give you the exact stacks I’m not looking at it, but we can pull it all together in that moment as like being useful. And
⁓ Elon Musk was then appointed to be special advisor to then inaugurate, you know, then soon thereafter inaugurated President Trump. ⁓ and so we now had a senior advisor in the White House who had affirmed the use of this word on and was controlling the social media kind of network side of it, of it being allowable and usable. And we saw ⁓ simultaneously social media influencers ⁓
And media picking up the word and feeling like they had now the permission to use it again. And actually, Joe Rogan, who runs a wildly successful podcast, used it at the beginning of one of his shows a few months after that, and actually talked about the use of the word and the return of the world word as something that was of value to our our society contemporarily, which I hope you’re hearing my disgust and sarcasm as I’m sharing that out with you of like that that’s where we have ended up. And then in addition to that.
our our president, you know, our data has demonstrated that he has used the word as well as member of his cabinet have used the word in different contexts in their political discourse since being in office ⁓ in the ways in which they’re engaging. And so ⁓ you know, we now see it showing up in ⁓ a Netflix, a popular Netflix television show has used the word multiple times. There’s been major organizations that are most recently kind of reaching out to try to stop it. We’re seeing that happening at the same time as
policies around how we support and understand individuals with disabilities are kind of reverting back to the medical model of this kind of treatment versus education and deficit versus asset-based language. And so we’re we’re tracking all of this as part of our work. We’re not drawing any causal inferences. We’re just tracking and putting the data out there in interactive ways for folks to engage. But ⁓ that would be the
kind of like we if we just specifically think about the R word and where we’re seeing the R word move, that’s the trends in our data. And you can actually follow that trend. We have a special kind of subheading on our ⁓ dashboard on disability discourse matters, all about the R word. So you can actually see it, see who said it, see the context of when they said it in official political discourse, how that was scored and showing up, concurrent with other dehumanizing language.
Amy Julia Becker (23:42)
Yeah. So let’s talk about the data. ⁓ so ⁓ let’s start with just the basics, like how do you collect it and kind of measure it? Like where does that come from?
Christina Cipriano (23:52)
my goodness. So it is a ⁓ deeply comprehensive and extensive search process with multiple rounds of iteration and human check around web scraping. ⁓ and we’re looking for official language, not what like CNN reported someone said or what showed up in the morning news. It is literally the official report. So what’s happening in the hearings, what’s being said in the press conferences, the official statements that are going on.
⁓ and the official accounts and communications coming from our political leaders. And we built the models with the White House and Cabinet. And we have since, although at the time we’re having this conversation, it’s not up there, but it will be very soon scaled to all of our senators and congressmen as well. ⁓ and being able to track and follow how individuals are speaking about individuals with disabilities, so how our political leaders are speaking. And so we collate track and we check.
And then double check and affirm the final statement of exactly what was said, which in our in today’s society is actually incredibly difficult because of the way media moves stories and the way in which language gets closed. And so we put the verifiable statement in context. So we also want to know: like, was this, you know, a press conference and it was a pre-written statement? Was it a, you know, during a QA?
a live chat like where the context behind it, which is also have been found in our data to be very important of how individual disabilities are being framed, the policy proposals that are being brought forward and following them, the context, who said it, where it was in the timing. And then in addition to kind of putting that all out there, we developed a scoring system from humanizing to dehumanizing. And so we really want to understand like when individual disability and their livelihoods are being considered valued.
And affirmed, whether there is, and that’s that’s the highest score for, if they’re being ⁓ deficit framed, which is kind of the most common thing we see across political communications, which is a three, if they’re being critical towards individuals dis with disabilities, which is a two, and then if they’re using ⁓ hate speech or you know, inciting harm towards individuals with disabilities, which is a one, and ⁓
I will tell you, we, you know, we had our hypo we pre-registered the studies. We had our hypotheses that we would see a lot of deficit framing kind of occurring. That was what we proposed. we thought would happen. But what has been remarkable and striking in a really disturbing way is the volume of dehumanizing ⁓ statements that are being said across our political leaders, across context. and so those are the use of hate speech.
And you know, words and terms that would incite harm towards individuals with disabilities. And so, ⁓ yeah, anyway, we can kind of unpack that.
Amy Julia Becker (26:41)
Yeah, I do. I would like to unpack that. I think gosh, I have so many questions. ⁓ so in some ways you’re saying that you are seeing these as trends, right? You expected if this is on a scale of one to four, you expected a lot of three. And instead, and you’re getting that, but you’re also getting a lot of one, like a lot of like, I didn’t actually think we would get that much. Can you like maybe I don’t know if that you want to pull on like some examples of that or again like a
Christina Cipriano (27:09)
And so it’s all up there. So this is the thing about creating like a living data set and having it be publicly, you know, it’s pre registered, it’s IRB approved, like it’s verified. By the time it gets up to our website, this thing has been checked so many times that like that is what someone said, that is the context with which they said it. And multiple people have scored and coded and AI has double checked it and said, Yeah, that was a really like a dehumanizing thing that was said in that given instance. And so when we look at the dehumanization kind of bucket at
scale of what we’re seeing in these one categories. ⁓ the the c the discourse around autism and autistic individuals. Yes. ⁓ is most readily hanging out there in the ones. And people might say, well, why? Why is that happening? So you’ve got you’ve got the R word, which is we were saying like shocking that that has come back is showing up in our ones. And then the o the dis ⁓ discourse around autism. Yeah. And that’s really being driven by our Secretary of Health and Human Services. So you can go ahead and take a look on the website there. We have them ⁓
Dr. McCarthy created ⁓ code cards for each individual. So you could actually sort by ⁓ the political leader and then see across the range of their scores. ⁓ but when we speak about autism and autistic individuals as livelihoods that should be eradicated, right? That’s inciting harm towards individuals with disabilities, like worth their worth their worthiness of a the of the autistic individual of a of a life that does not deserve to be led, lived, right? And so that’s the the frame. You can see the different ways in which
that shows up and how that differs from, you know, a deficit frame around saying someone like someone with autism can’t, right? That would be like kind of the the difference.
Amy Julia Becker (28:46)
Yeah. Okay. That’s really helpful. Thank you for underlining that. And it’s interesting. I’ve been reading ⁓ Brene Brown’s book, Braving the Wilderness, which came out in 2017. So it’s like almost 10 years old and is about belonging. And I just was reading this ⁓ section in there about language being the beginning of dehumanization. Like that that’s actually where from the research she’s done, where dehumanization begins. And
Therefore, like that’s one of the reasons why the language we use is so important because she’s like, What that means is that language is the beginning of violence. Like that if i what happens when you start dehumanizing individuals or groups of people begins with simply an othering, right? Like I’m just gonna see myself as very separate and different and superior to you. But over time that can become
⁓ violence. And I just wanted to hear your response to that perhaps even in the context of what you’re hearing with this political discourse.
Christina Cipriano (29:47)
Yes, I yes, I I I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment. And I also really appreciate you bringing ⁓ Brene Brown’s words into our conversation. ⁓ very, very much a a fan. And so ⁓ you know, when we think historically about what happened to individuals with disabilities, we’re only talking about like fifty years ago when kids like my son were being institutionalized in decrepit conditions in Willowbrook and like the ways in which we saw, you know, there was
the whole expose around like what was happening to individuals and children with disabilities and where they were being put and housed and how they were being ⁓ you know, starved, not treated, ⁓ medically, ⁓ you know, having, excuse me, I this I can’t even talk about this stuff without getting like upset about it. But the the the things that were happening were egregious at all levels of human existence. And that was the history that we started from in our country around, you know, we started from a lens that
People with disabilities were not being seen as people, right? As humans. Yeah. It was a dehumanizing start and base. And that was the language that we started from. And so it incited tremendous violence towards individuals with disabilities and brought about shame and guilt and blaming on, you know, parents and promiscuity and dischoices you made and like you had done something wrong. Like we’re talking across American history. And
Then, you know, we think about where we’re at now in 2026, we have the Rward on the rise, rhetoric in the on the regular around the eradication of entire populations of individuals with disabilities, ⁓ as though their lives or livelihoods are not worth living, concurrent with calls to move and fund moving funding and supports from education to treatment.
To medical treatment and services outside of school systems and schools and then education is that pathway, is that gateway to independence, to economic stability, security, to livelihood, to to joy in what any human being would want to seek as they move through a life worth living, and ⁓ the denial of or the, you know, the idea that there could be a denial of an education and access to an education at the same time. And so
⁓ you know, I think we all have a right to be afraid right now in what we’re hearing and what we’re seeing. And, you know, we talk about in our in our published work around this that, you know, silence right now is not neutrality in the face of what we’re experiencing as a country around the discourse for individuals with disabilities. It’s it’s really giving permission for this type of hate speech and language and then policies that are you know, being put forth to
pervade and to move ⁓ with the potential and the prospect that isn’t that I mean that isn’t that far away in our history to think about, recognize of of how, you know, how quote unquote far we thought we had come in such a short period of time. Well, it does appear as though and the trends are pushing that we could go, we could go right back there. And or it could look, you know, it’ll look qualitatively different, but equally as dehumanizing.
And ⁓ I don’t know if you’ve engaged Amy Julia with your daughter at all around this discourse, if you know, if she has anything to say about it yet. I’m not sure how old she is, but I know for my children and for the other young people in my life with disabilities, they have a lot to say around hearing how other people talk about disability. And it doesn’t necessarily need to be the president, right? Like just hearing in general when, you know, someone talks about their disability as an illness.
Yeah. Right. Like why? Why is it that way, mommy? Or like why are kids not allowed to be with or why, you know, they the the questions that they ask, they ⁓ they just bring about a new realization of like you know, our young people are listening and learning. This is like kind of the implicit messaging that’s occurring. And they’re also learning how to be a peer or not be a peer or an ally to a person with a disability by what they’re seeing.
And you know, the last thing I’ll just note on this, as a developmental psychologist, we know that children learn from the role models around them and they they learn from those they hold in high prestige. And especially as they’re younger, who they hold in high prestige are people in positions of power and in uniform. Right. So your teachers, your doctors, your political officials, your elected officials and the messages they see on social media, I mean, like it’s it’s like the perfect storm.
of disaster when we think about the way the next generation will understand and think about disability. So ⁓ if we have a right to be concerned and also an obligation to act ⁓ in the face of the information that we’re currently seeing.
Amy Julia Becker (34:39)
I appreciate the ways that you have begun to take action. So I mean that’s truly like this is this is a part of that for sure. ⁓ and I’m I guess I have just a couple more questions. I could talk to you forever, but ⁓ part of actually what prompted me to reach out to you is that I’ve noticed that President Trump does not use the R word with regularity. I know he has, but it’s not like his go to. Yeah. But he does measure people or make comments about people’s intelligence all the time. So
I just heard him ⁓ say as kind of a joke that he’s gonna start talking about calling the Democrats the Democrats. And he, I mean, repeatedly has ⁓ called someone who opposes him, you know, whether that’s Tucker Carlson ⁓ or, you know, ⁓ Kamala Harris, right? Low IQ. Like low IQ is something he goes to a lot. ⁓ so I don’t think that I mean, most people are not hearing that and thinking, ⁓ I bet Tucker Carlson has a low IQ. They’re thinking
Donald Trump wants to knock that person down. Like Donald Trump disagrees in some way or yeah, you know. I guess what I’m asking you is could you help me just like what happens with that type of rhetoric? Low IQ people when you’re not actually talking about someone who’s taken an IQ test and gotten a low score, right? Like but at the same time, you’re denigrating someone and using an intelligence measure to do that. Like what what’s happening?
Christina Cipriano (36:02)
Yeah. Okay. So okay. So first I want to honor that like this discourse that you’re speaking of is not on our website. So this is not part of like the data that we collect around. We’re not talking about like specific to individuals with disabilities. So just like hold that there. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. That being said, when you have somebody in a position of privilege or power who uses any sort of like medical, educational, technical term in a non-medical educational way, they are
dismissing that whole group of individuals’ lives and livelihoods as less than, and are asserting an authority or an expertise that they themselves do not have. And so you can imagine how that type of framing in language could land for individuals who do identify with whatever it is, whatever the frame that he might have been using, right? In terms of being seen that way.
I’ll give you like a ⁓ kind of comparatively to like something we do have up on our website just to to kind of draw the parallel of ⁓ after there was a horrific plane crash, plane accident really early in the Trump administration, and our president was very quick to say that it was a result of the DEI hiring that had occurred and that individual disabilities were hired and this was why the plane crashed, right? And so ⁓ at that moment there were, know.
groups, advocacy groups across the country were kind of coming forward and saying, like, this is ⁓ you know, you’re what you’re basically saying is that we shouldn’t hire anyone with disabilities anymore. So that’s how that’s interpreted coming out of the office of the president. And similarly, individuals with disabilities feeling as though their livelihoods to be able to work is now threatened, something that they had, you know, continuously been up against barriers and supporting to kind of open access access to ⁓ in the United States. And so that internalization of that
Messaging, right, is I think one layer. There’s multiple layers here. And that internalization for the individual should not be lost while we’re talking about like what we’re seeing happen in our communities as we’re moving these conversations forward. ⁓ and then one other note I wanna make is that when individuals ⁓ in positions of power
use words or terms. I you know, we’re talking about this where we’re we’ve been talking about ableism the whole time today. We haven’t used that term. Right. Right. Right. But we’re talking about ableist speech. but we could also be talking about like racism and racist speech being used. ⁓ it gives other people the permission that it’s okay to use that type of word or frame or phrasing andor policy around an individual.
And so, ⁓ you know, we could talk about it with gender of like, you know, roles women shouldn’t be in, right? If someone in position of privilege or power makes a claim, makes a statement, right? They have the power and potentially not the expertise to speak to it. It’s not an evidence-based argument, but says it in that position, it can trickle into, and you know, history has shown the policies, the practices, and the hiring decisions that are made ⁓ afterwards. And so these are really important.
kind of elements for us to be keeping in mind as we’re thinking about the rights and livelihoods of, you know, our kids with disabilities.
Amy Julia Becker (39:18)
Yeah, and I do I appreciate just again all the work that you are doing to draw the through line, ⁓ or at least suggest that there is one between the rhetoric and the reality. ⁓ and the and that there is these this isn’t just language. This is also policies, ⁓ and it is ⁓ a permission structure and you know, all of those things. I I would like to end with a question that hopefully is getting back to. I know the way in which you like to ⁓ both not just
talk about but also conceptually approach the concept you know the concept of disability but ⁓ which is just what role can our language play in reimagining or ⁓ even the idea of this podcast reimagining the good life right of like giving us a different way to speak and ⁓ live and have policies and have family life around disability like how do you how do you approach that how do you live that out and what difference does it make?
Christina Cipriano (40:19)
Thank you. It’s such a a beautiful question ⁓ to kind of think through. So a couple of thoughts come to mind. So first, each and every one of us has a unique vantage point for how we view and understand our world. And many times that vantage point may be considered a disadvantage in other settings or spaces, and especially when we’re talking about disability. But if we shift our frame and our lens from being at a disadvantage with a disability to having a different vantage point.
To viewing our world and our families with disability to view our world, that opens up a tremendous amount of opportunities and pathways for how we will then be able to kind of seek opportunity, seek access, and see and embrace joy. And for us and our family, that is what ⁓ you know, our experiences have arrived at at this point in our lives. That, you know, understandings and experiences and identities that I mean, even I had been socialized as a child to understand as
you know, putting us at a disadvantage when it came to to disability and diversity, ⁓ have really provided me with the gift of a different frame. And, you know, once you have that new frame, it’s like a new pair of glasses, it’s the only way you see things is to move forward. ⁓ and move forward in pursuit of joy and justice. And I will say that, you know, when our complacency manifests as patients with injust systems, we’re waiting.
For these systems and structures to change at the expense of our kids. And I am not waiting at the expense of my children. And I encourage everyone around me to not wait either. And that’s what I teach in my science. it’s called the be unapologetically impatient mindset of how we can shift our frame so that we can make sure that we’re seeking joy and justice in every interaction we have for our children.
Amy Julia Becker (42:09)
Well, and this is a another conversation we’re gonna have another day because that’s also the name of your book. Am I correct about that? It is.
Christina Cipriano (42:15)
Because
yes, the book my book that came out last year, absolutely.
Amy Julia Becker (42:18)
So
that that is something that we are gonna circle back to, but not on this c in this conversation. ⁓ although what I do also wanna point out that I think you’ve helped us see is that right now complacency is not simply saying, maybe it’ll change later. It’s actually it’s changing now in a direction that is actually going not where ⁓ justice and joy would might lead us. So ⁓ so there’s
I think there’s an even greater urgency to the work that you’re doing when we look and see not just the rhetoric, but also the funding structures and the policy decisions that are being made around ⁓ disability and in many other ways too.
Christina Cipriano (42:57)
Yes, I I could not agree more. And I would encourage, you know, you and anyone who’s listening that when you find yourself in a position where you have the opportunity to say something, or you’re thinking to yourself, like, gosh, someone should say something, someone should do something. You’re at like the IEP meeting, the school board meeting, you’re talking with the doctor, I’m sure, the you know, the parent group, whoever it might be, that someone is you. Yeah. Right? You should say something. And not everybody has the opportunity to be there in this moment.
And I view opportunity as obligation with where we’re currently out in our discourse around disability.
Amy Julia Becker (43:32)
Thank you so much for just sharing all of your experience and knowledge and thoughts and ⁓ for the work that you’re doing. It’s really been wonderful to be able to have this conversation today.
Christina Cipriano (43:43)
Thank you. Thank you so much, Amy Julia. It’s a pleasure chatting with you.
Amy Julia Becker (43:50)
Thanks as always for listening to this episode of Reimagining the Good Life. We’ve got more great conversations in store. I’ve got Karen Swallow Pryor upcoming talking about childlessness and fertility and reimagining the good life. Shocking topic there. ⁓ also gonna be talking to Malcolm Foley about his book, The Anti-Greed Gospel, and Craig Thomas. You’re in for a treat with that one, ⁓ who has written a wonderful novel called That’s Not How It Happened. And I can’t wait to share all of those things with you.
If you are resonating with what’s going on in this show, I would love to invite you to subscribe to my Reimagining the Good Life Substack newsletter. It really just extends this work. We over there also are going to be challenging assumptions, proclaiming belovedness, and envisioning and building belonging. And we’d love for you to be a part of it. You’ll find the link in the show notes. You know what’s coming next. If you are listening still, then which is to say, please follow, rate, review this show.
We want other people to know about it. ⁓ even better, share it with someone else directly. And you can always send questions or ideas anytime. We’ve got a ⁓ link at the end of the show notes where it says send us a text, and we love hearing from you. And as always, I’m gonna conclude by saying thank you to Jake Hansen for editing this episode and Amber Beery, my director of content for producing the show. And thank you for being here. Let’s all keep reimagining the good life together.
