The Problem with Gratitude

Or: Requiring Gratitude from Disabled People Merely Seeking Equality

Image Description: Two year old Kelly wears a fuzzy blue coat, warm white stockings, and a crown made of cardboard and covered in tin foil. She has a serious expression on her face because she has no time for toxic gratitude.

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Let me say right up front that I practice gratitude every day. Every morning that I am able to scrape myself out of bed, get up, and have a day — I am grateful. I started young in practicing gratitude as a coping mechanism for daily chronic pain, slowly losing abilities, and measuring time with physical challenges and growing disability. I just had to, there was no other way I could keep going through the pain, trauma, and stress without being grateful for the little things: a sunbeam, the smell of fresh cut grass, the patterns of music, the smile of loved ones.

So, this essay is really hard to write because I am a huge believer in gratitude as a practice, as a way to experience life, as an essential need to focus on joy and keep moving through difficult times. Centering on gratitude even on very hard days (weeks, months, years, or — gulp — a lifetime) has kept me going and also appreciative of what life has to offer.

Undeserved Gratitude

But there is a kind of gratitude that is just plain problematic. It’s the moment when someone points to a shoddy ramp, a restroom with an ‘accessible’ stall not large enough for a wheelchair, or a job that reluctantly provides minimal (insufficient) accommodations and then pointedly demands or expects me to exclaim my gratitude. Um, no thanks.

As disability rights advocate Judy Heumann said in the documentary film Crip Camp:

“I’m very tired of being thankful for accessible toilets. I really am tired of feeling that way. If I have to feel thankful about an accessible bathroom, when am I ever gonna be equal in the community?”

It’s been a theme throughout my life. Of being asked by society: “haven’t we done enough yet?” The message is accessibility, inclusion, and being treated equally as a disabled person is some grand outsized favor. That I should be grateful for the scraps delivered with inadequate access and discriminatory treatment.

Examples of Toxic Gratitude

Just a few examples to share: most places I go in the community still don’t have proper accessible restrooms, so I can’t even be grateful for that. Air travel in my wheelchair is a gamble (will I arrive with a working wheelchair?) and also very uncomfortable. And rules that were going into effect to make accessible air travel improvements are being paused (likely cancelled). Through most of my employment history I didn’t request any accommodations and was afraid to take sick leave because of the common perception that disabled people aren’t good workers or need special treatment. I felt I had to be grateful to secure jobs, which I was well-qualified for and had earned — plus I had a reputation for doing good work.

It’s harmful, this expectation of misplaced gratitude. While I am glad to find places to go to the restroom, should I have to be more thankful of bodily relief than anyone else? My husband speaks of a high school teacher who told students they didn’t need to ask to go to the restroom because no human should need another’s permission for this. Why is there an expectation that my human (and very unspecial) needs mean I owe society an overabundance of gratitude in having them (minimally and grudgingly) met (on occasion)?

As I reflect, I am feeling less grateful by the minute. To be regularly excluded and discriminated against by society is not a gratifying experience. It’s bad enough I keep having to fight these battles, but then to have to demonstrate some theatrical performance of gratitude is asking too much.

I’ve been in a many-years long fight for accessible cab service because there is none in my area (frankly, across the U.S. this is a common problem). I order an accessible cab weeks or days in advance and it doesn’t show up. When I confront industry members (repeatedly) about persistent problems and discrimination in service, I am told: “it’s too expensive” despite using the same exact vehicles that are merely outfitted with ramps, that “drivers who are special” or are willing to work with disabled people are impossible to find, or that my basic belief that I should experience the same service as anyone else is outrageous and I should be grateful for substandard (or no) service at all.

Equality Should Not Require Extra Gratitude

The heart of most of my discrimination experiences is that as a disabled person I should expect a lesser life and be grateful for it. This, my dears, is pure unadulterated ableism. It may be disguised, but that is the core of this kind of toxic expectation of gratitude.

What I often do in these cases when I have the opportunity is ask: would you like to be treated this way? Would you like to be told to expect less than and be grateful for it? I suspect that exclusionary and lesser treatment would not be appetizing to the people who perpetrate it onto others — just a wild hunch.

If they are willing to admit this change in feeling should the positions be suddenly reversed, then it’s time to get down to work and stop expecting gratitude where it is seriously misplaced and undeserved. Then, a wild idea: how about making the accessibility and inclusion changes in our society that would eradicate the need for false gratitude?

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