Dr. McNair's Responce

In October, I emailed Dr. McMair my essay titled Three Views of Disability and he responded with the following:

The title of the section of your paper "The Rose Colored View" is the part that I think is most relevant to the social role valorization presentation that I did. I would begin by saying that I don't think the srv view is "rose colored" implying that one does not see the reality of the situation. I think that one of the things that srv does a pretty good job of doing is looking at the natural consequeces of a whole variety of actions, practices, etc., that impact the lives of persons with cognitive disabilities (since that was the major context of my comments). I don't advocate treating cognitively disabled adults in an age appropriate manner for any reason other than that they are adults. I personally don't buy the "mental age" argument because I honestly am unsure how it help in interactions with people with cognitive disabilties. I think it does little more than demean people. For example, I attended a church once where a man with cognitive disabilities was a part of the team that served communion. The man fulfilled those responsibilities admirably. However, there was a changeover of the elders, and a psychiatrist became one of the elders. He advocated removing the man from the serving of communion because to use his words, "He has the mind of a 10 year old." I guarantee to you that no one in the congretation would have even suspected that the man had a congnitive disability on the basis of his communion serving. However, because of an overzealous application of mental age, the man was seen as a disabled man, not a man. I could share other examples as well. I think it is affirming and even life supporting to treat someone with the respect that simply accompanies their age, particularly when I know the effects of stigmatization should I do otherwise.

I would also say that I am accepting a person for who he is. But I am also respecting a person for who he is. The fact that there are those around persons with cognitive disabilities who will not respect them, makes my interactions all the more important, all the more urgent. This view is actually just the opposite of what you state, I believe, when you say...

"The Rose Colored view advocates that we become respecters of persons. This view also contradicts how God calls us to view one another. I Samuel 16:7 tells us that man looks on the outside, but God looks at the heart. Scripture tells us that the strong are to bear the burdens of the weak. This is the opposite of the Rose Colored view. God calls his followers to be incarnational just as He was. We need to be incarnational in our ministry with people who are disabled. We need to enter into their world and understand their realities to the best of our ability . As Romans 12:15 says, we should mourn with those who mourn, and rejoice with those who rejoice."

I am advocating that we be a respecter of persons, because I am not looking at what is on the outside. At least I am not looking exclusively at the cognitive disability that the person has, the mental age or whatever but I am attempting to look at the heart, the soul of the person. It is because that person is created in the image of God and is loved by God that I am respecting that person. That causes me to not take that person at face value, but to look deeper into who he is. To say, that although he appears very child-like, he is not a child, and should not be treated as a child. To say that although the person with severe cognitive disabilities appears very limited, he has value and has worth and should be respected as a person, not simply as he appears. A significant portion of what I was trying to communicate through a discussion of srv was that whole notion of respecting the person by not looking at the outside, and being very circumscribed in a whole variety of aspects of life such that I communicate and fight for the value of persons, because they may not appear to some to be valuable on the outside.

So the view is not rose colored in any way. It is not saying that people are not disabled who are disabled. Rather it is fighting tooth and nail for them to be viewed as fully human, and to prevent the kinds of things that society will do covertly or overtly, consciously or unconsciously that detract from viewing a person superficially simply because he has a disability.