Funny is good but sometimes...

There are a myriad of Hellen Keller jokes out there, many of which are pretty funny. But at some obvious level they are also very insulting to people who are either blind or deaf. Many things work like that. When you are making a joke about someone you are often picking out a weaker part of them, or something about them that bothers them or looks funny to others. A lot of that is not bad, but it can go too far, and it can go way to far more quickly when makig jokes about the disabled. A good example? Take the Galludet University men's basketball team. Galludet, located in Washington , DC, is the only university in America for the deaf (though not just deaf students attend there). The basketball team competes at the Division III level, facing a number of challenges that hearing teams don't deal with. The players can't call out screnes to one another, the coach has a difficult time making in-game adjustments without calling a timeout, and so on. However, this does not stop the team from winning, often to the consternation of their opponents. Perahps to deal with the possible "embarassment" of losing to an all-deaf team, some Catholic University fans once held up a sign that read, "Win or lose at least we can hear," before a game with Galludet.
They probably thought it was hilarious, maybe you do too. But at some point it becomes mean, and it others the person being made fun of. Stereotypes are created that write the disabled as incapable of doing anything useful for society. Until the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in the early 1990s, people with disabilities were assumed to not be ale to advance beyond high school. The rigors of college were too difficult for the disabled to surmount. "What, are you blind?" The way that this phrase is used, one might assume that blind people are uncapable of insight. People with dyslexia, ADD, ADHD are often similarly written off. I could go on about other disabilities for pages on end, but I want to close with the hope that in making fun of one another we do not become dismissive of one another as well. It is easier to write someone off as stupid or incapable than it is to work with that person to find out how they work best and then help to create such an environment for that person. This is good advice whenever one is dealing with another person. We do not all fit together easily, if often takes some effort, but I would say that it is worth the effort.