Ableism and the Trouble with Merit
March 30, 2023
I want to tell this story in two parts. In one, the expectation of meritocracy oppresses everyone; in the other, even access to academic oppression is denied.
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I want to tell this story in two parts. In one, the expectation of meritocracy oppresses everyone; in the other, even access to academic oppression is denied.
Savarnas don’t know caste—the same way a fish does not know water. When you breathe, see, feel, and thrive within a system, it is difficult to notice it, let alone know it. How does a fish then know water? By starting to know itself, of course.
Asnara walks to the FACE centre, crossing puddles and also generations of women from her community making and selling beedis. Beedi-making is a common household occupation for women and girls in Pakur, Jharkhand where Asnara lives with her family.
When Muskan said “Hamare yahaan yeh sab chalta hi nahi hai” (These things aren’t allowed in our areas), we couldn’t help but notice that she said it for feeling love as well as anger.
Welcome to the second edition of our Teacher Talks series where we meet first generation learners who share their stories of their own education and of teaching in centres for informal education.
Sahiba learns from Google, calls it her teacher and navigates her everyday—from getting things done to finding about her mental health—on Google. Her questions about the self and measures to take care of that self made everyone on the Zoom call think ‘Main kab badi huyi?’ (When did I grow up?).
Baby Halder’s life was not an ordinary one. Leaving behind a husband and decades of violence, she was thrust into the uncertainty and loneliness of a new city, about which she has spoken of many times over the years.
In feminist organisations and within the academic discourse, we sit with the term ‘safe space’ quite often and roll it in our mouth to reiterate how multifarious and ever changing that term is.
“Tumhari chahat kya hai? Tum kya chahti ho?” (What do you desire?) When was the last time we asked an adolescent what they think about their desires? How can we see their lives from their perspective?
One day, in the process of trying to understand the “digital”, Khushi observed that young Muslim girls around her would only show their hands in the Reels that they made and uploaded on social media.
