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Constructing Genocide
Sometimes children were born, on a primitive, ignorant, prejudiced planet, who differed from the others... Author: abfh |
Once
upon a time, on a primitive, ignorant, prejudiced planet, it sometimes happened
that children were born who differed from the others of their species.
Their thought processes tended to be more visual, and they often had difficulty
with speech. They took longer to learn certain skills. Sometimes
they needed help with their activities as adults. Their
differences did not matter in the small farming villages of the planet's past,
where every pair of hands that could make use of a plow or a hoe was needed.
But this all changed when an industrial society developed. Those who
could not work efficiently in the factories were denounced as having no place
in that society. Defective
genes, the doctors proclaimed ominously. There are institutions for
children like that, the parents were told. Send them away, forget they
were ever born, and try again for a more socially acceptable child. Some
doctors went into the institutions and conducted studies on the isolated, deprived,
abused, and uneducated children who had been abandoned there. As a result
of these studies, the medical profession declared authoritatively that very few
of the unfortunates stricken with this tragic affliction would ever be able to
talk, read, work, or do anything productive at all. Dead weight on
society, the medical journals and the popular press described them. A
prenatal test was soon developed to rid society of that burden. The
institutions were shut down for lack of funding, and the small number of
parents who opted against abortion raised their children at home. The
parents discovered that most of these children, when raised in a loving home
and properly educated, could in fact learn to talk, read, and work. Some
families even sought to adopt other such children. But
it made no difference to the prenatal testing regime, now firmly entrenched in
public opinion and in standard medical practice. The few remaining
individuals of this despised minority began to feel as if they were the last
specimens of an endangered species. Some of them became civil rights
activists and protested at genetics conferences and other such events.
Others wrote passionate essays calling for justice and tolerance. Their
efforts went almost unnoticed by the media and the doctors, and they continued
to be described as hopeless sufferers whose very existence was a tragedy. Eventually,
like ripples spreading across the surface of a long-stagnant pond, a new meme began
to make its way into the public consciousness. The supporters of
neurodiversity, as it was called, held the belief that differences in brain
structure deserved as much respect and acceptance as other types of diversity.
They began to persuade their fellow citizens that differences
of thought and perception should be celebrated, not destroyed. And
the last few survivors, as they mourned the millions lost over so many years,
could only wonder why it had taken so long... This
story originally was posted as part of a
longer article on the Whose Planet Is It Anyway? blog. |