Speech by Rhonda J. Brown accepting the ABA 2005 Paul G. Hearne Award for Disability Rights, delivered at the ABA Annual Meeting in Chicago on August 8, 2005.

Thank you President Greco and members of the Commission, and thank you all for such a warm reception. I can only hope that you can begin to imagine how thrilled I am to be in your distinguished company, and to be receiving this award. It's all the more incredible to me because, of course, the work I've done, which has come to your notice, I did not do alone.

I think you'd agree no one accomplished anything in civil rights alone. There could never be enough time to possibly list all those who have inspired me, led me, challenged, partnered, mentored, and supported me. And, while each one of these individuals deserves recognition, my gratitude, and our respect, none of them would forgive me if I used my time here just to do that. Because each of them knows, as do you, that no one accomplishes anything in civil rights if we miss opportunities to move the goal forward, or, dare I say, "raise the Bar."

Instead, I want to take this opportunity to start something tonight, to urge us into discourse, tonight and beyond, and beyond this room. Because, you see, I believe we have much to talk about, much we need to talk about, much we should talk about. For example:

We should  talk about the public backlash and judicial hostility currently directed against the Americans with Disabilities Act, and disability rights in general.

We should talk about the Bar's dismal record for understanding disability as a civil rights issue and for effectively representing winning facts when we have them.

We should talk about how the only right of a person with a disability capable of commanding the public's attention and inspiring the media is the right to die.

We should talk about why so much distance and misunderstanding exists between the disability rights movement and its progenitors, those civil rights movements that, through their example and their history of struggle for equality, gave to people with disabilities a new and compelling way to understand the nature of our predicament and gave to us the model and tools for redressing that predicament.

Finally, we should talk about how each of these issues has at its core a single shared root cause. That root cause has been the failure to develop a mature public discourse on disability. Because of this failure, myths, misconceptions, and stereotypes about the experience of disability remain in open circulation, unchallenged, unexamined, more firmly engrained with each repetition.

Any serious discussion of the reality of the experience of disability is crowded from the mainstream marketplace of ideas.

At this point, our discourse has failed to recognize that, and how our unexamined myths and stereotypes and fears still dictate our conduct. Such conduct translates into an insurmountable barrier to the person with a disability who is applying for a job, trying to rent an apartment, or preserve parental rights. Such conduct is a barrier to the public's understanding that disability is first and foremost a civil rights issue.

Most of us know people with disabilities who are going about their lives, working, supporting themselves and their families, and actively contributing to the diversity and vitality of the communities where they live. But these examples can be before us on a daily basis and have surprisingly little impact on society's preconceptions. The funny thing is, we accommodate our stereotypes by perceiving such people to be something extraordinary. We should challenge that. We should examine that. We should talk about that.

People going about their lives, doing everyday things and who have achieved some measure of satisfaction and success are not brave, heroic, or inspirational. Such people should be the norm. Such people should be exactly what we expect. If it is not the norm, we should examine the lives of people with disabilities who have been denied those experiences and ask what went wrong. When we do that, and we find circumstances in which choices and opportunities are cut off by limitations not inherent to the individual, but imposed instead by assumptions we as a society make, we should pursue an honest and public examination of these circumstances.

The President of Harvard, in seeking to explain restricted opportunities for women in the sciences provoked a lively public discourse, one in which the media automatically sought out women with distinguished careers in the sciences — in other words, the people most directly impacted by the stereotype — for their contribution to that discourse. We need to achieve that same level of examination, inclusion, and dialogue on matters of disability. As I've been saying, we should talk.

I am more grateful than I can say for this recognition, and for the opportunity to give our dialogue on disability a nudge toward maturity. Join me. No one can do it alone.

Thank you.