Disabled

As a fellow disability policy consultant and publicist who also uses a wheelchair, I read Barbara Faye Waxman’s “A Backlash of Hate” (Platform, Jan. 17) with a nauseous cringe.

I too am concerned with the possibility of backlash created in part by the Americans With Disabilities Act, but I see one more probable cause of such a backlash to be, not hate, but Ms. Waxman’s own brand of subjective activist response to simple ignorance and fear of the unknown.

As disabled Americans in this new day of increased integration we have a uniquely fresh and valuable life experience to share with the general public. Our responsibility to our own life experience as well as to the ignorance of others is to integrate and educate with the same open-minded objectivity we ask for. As doors open, our responsibility is to enter confidently and assert ourselves with grace and dignity, not burst through, armed for battle with “data on hate crimes” as Ms. Waxman suggests.

Our greatest challenge is no longer physical but social as we help others (including those with disabilities) to focus more positively on the many abilities and similarities we all share as individual Americans rather than the relatively few disabilities and differences among each of us that create anxiety.

My vision of hope for the future of Americans with disabilities is that of evolution, not revolution.

PATTI SHANABERG

Los Angeles