Photo Courtesy of Polina / Pexels
By Alfonso Julián Camacho
Our President Does Not Think I’m Worth It – He is Wrong.
How much am I worth in today’s climate of red hats and DOGE?
Maybe I don’t really want to know.
I am a sight to behold. I am mute, motor disordered, unable to swallow and I spit more often than a baseball player. I am disabled.
It takes me a little longer to do things. I’m more expensive to educate. I am an acquired taste.
Am I worth it?
Our president says no. Programs that support people like me are “radical,” “biased” and somehow keep America from being great again (his words). He seems to think I’m not worth it. That worries me.
I appreciate America’s taxpayers. America’s taxpayers are investing in me. Taxes help people like me to be independent and provide healthcare until we can afford to buy our own. Taxes fund hope. I may not get more than a hundredth of a cent from our readers, but it makes a difference in my life. I would like to think I am a good investment.
Our conservative neighbors say that people like me are treated differently and that it is not fair. They say everyone should begin life’s race at the same starting line and run on the same field. Fair is fair, they say, and anything that puts a light wind at the back of another racer is somehow “unfair.”
Were it that simple. The rules of our 100-yard dash are made and enforced by people with racing spikes, tech gear, a coach, trainer, dietician and a 50-yard head start.
Women are still escaping the kitchen, bedroom and nursery, often carrying kids in their arms. They are running in heels and enduring insults for menstruating. They start the race 10 yards behind the starting line. (Further back for women of color).
Latinos and Asians run the race in workers boots carrying sledgehammers, pickaxes and leaf blowers. They had to walk many miles to the track from their segregated barrios on the wrong side of the train tracks they built. They start the race 20 yards behind the starting line.
Black Americans run the race with iron balls and chains forged by 400 years of slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow and systemic racism. They have come so far since being considered only 3/5 of a person and being unable to vote but still begin the race 30 yards behind the start line.
Native Americans are the only people on this continent targeted for extermination. The one percent who survived start 45 yards behind the starting line. The rest are buried six feet under the starting line.
Disabled Americans have only emerged from the shadows of invisibility in the past 35 years when Judy Huemann led the Capitol Crawl and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Our field is not leveled. We are still crawling on our hands, elbows and knees up those cold marble steps of the United States Capitol. We start 75 yards back and there is a moat between us and the starting line.
Our own campus can be a hostile place for people with disabilities. How many people do we have at SWC using wheelchairs? Almost none. Is that because people in the South County who use wheelchairs do not have the mental wherewithal to attend college? Or could it be that our undulating, non-accessible campus is formidable for people using wheelchairs?
Steven Hawking—perhaps the most brilliant mind of this century—would never have a chance at Southwestern College or MAGA America. A man who could not speak and ran his wheelchair with his cheek would probably not seem worth it to our president.
We have DEI because life is not fair and America is not fair. The field is not level and the starting line is all over the place. We are a country built by slaves and immigrants kept down for so long they still have not caught up. Now those who have overcome the obstacles and excelled are being fired and insulted as “DEI cases” or “Affirmative Action hires.“ Black generals, Asian American doctors, Indigenous administrators, women directors and disabled managers must have had “unfair advantages,” according to our president and his followers. They question how a Black person, an Asian America, an Indigenous leader, a woman or a disabled person could possibly educate themselves and work their way into a position of responsibility?
Our president and his ivory skinned cabal seem to think people of color, women and people with disabilities can’t hang. He seems to think we are a bad investment. He seems to think we are a drain. He says we are not worth it. This is, after all, a man who openly mocked a disabled New York Times journalist.
I think the president has it all wrong. I am a good investment that will pay off for America.
I believe I am worth it. Thank goodness so do some other people.
