I know this isn't the type of thing that the algorithm likes, but I would love to see videos on obscure disabled people from history who did interesting things. That Black lawyer sounds very cool!
Same! As someone w a disability who only really knows about Disability Activism's Greatest Hits, learning more about the people who fought to get to where we are now would be so amazing!!!
I think there's a real parallel between how Helen Keller's eugenicist beliefs are talked about to the way we talk about current celebrities when they do things that are wrong but not necessarily unforgivable. I was reminded of the Contrapoints video about cancel culture, where she talks about essentialization. So in this case, 'Helen Keller once said that some disabled babies shouldn't be saved' becomes 'Helen Keller was a eugenicist,' as if to imply that she was an active and frequent supporter of eugenicist causes. But that kind of nuance seems not to stick in people's minds, for various reasons.
The book "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James W Loewen uses Helen Keller as an example of how the US education simplifies historical figures in order to actively avoid teaching critical thinking skills. It's a good book for starting to deprogram from the propaganda the education system forces on children with some suggestions on how it could be improved.
I enjoy the structure of the first half being more a biography and the second is commentary. I was super interested in Helen Keller as a child and read a biography comic on her and really admired her (I am not from the global north so I mostly never learned about Western historical figures in school, only through books and the internet). So I like that I learned more about her today. I find it interesting that she's coming back up in the disability conversation. And yes as you said all the "Helen Keller is a eugenicist" coverage made me think she was actively supporting eugenics like her other activism - not one article one time. edit: adding info
Thank you for this. Keller deserves to be remembered as the complete, dimensional human being she was, at every stage of her life. As an autistic person who had behavioral issues as a child, I've always related to the story of her childhood in some ways, and hated the popular, "Miracle Worker"-inspired view of her as a monstrous, animalistic brute who needed to be tamed - and tamed with abusive methods, "for her own good" - into a conforming human being.
Once again, your brain has blown my mind!! You gave me so much more info about Hellen Keller in this one video than I think I’ve ever learned about her in my entire life. Wow… so much that I never knew about her, thank you! And I did NOT know what you mentioned about Temple Grandin’s politics, that was very informative - thank you for shedding light in that dark corner too!
I enjoy your musing. The good and bad filter is so successful at keeping the leasons of history from us. MLK is remembered as a liberal pacifist and Malcolm X is remembered as a Black nationalist. Any truth in those portrails freezes them as least effectively critical of power. Where are the socialists who knew nuance and grew as people? Everywhere in history, we're simply not taught the interesting and complex stories of thier lives... if even the truth
Thank you for this video! It really expanded my knowledge on both Keller and disability in this time period. The subsequent discourse around Keller, either as a smoothed-off, controllable, saintly child, or as a despicable eugenicist, is a pattern I've seen again and again with regards to famous figures, and feared happening to me. That the pressure of time and attention and historiography can only push our image of people towards simplistic views. Nothing but pure good or nothing but pure bad. And that if you don't work to create a false, perfect image of yourself, you can only ever be remembered as horrible. I don't know a resolution to this pattern. This video and works like it certainly help, but the vast majority of people's interaction with a famous figure will always be a soundbite, a single image, something optimized down until it can't be compressed any further. Maybe the best we can hope for is a deeply internalized understanding that there's more to the story. That what we know about someone is always limited by the time we've spent looking into them and the structures that illuminate or conceal them. I feel like I have that deep understanding for subjects like math or physics or chemistry: However far I've learned, there's more to it. Everything I hear, and everything I know is a simplified picture that obscures even as it informs. I want to develop that deep understanding, that humility of the extent of my knowledge, when it comes to history and historical figures, and of famous current figures too. This video helps with that. Thank you.
Im jealous, as an English speaker I couldnt speak as fast as you to save my life! Kudos on your presentation. I read about her in grade school, being a natural born bibliophile. I believe your issue with the " views" of those times is that AmeriKa at that time was being moulded by several " judeo-Xian " kults ... Look at Protestant Reverends supporting Slavery ( woodrow wilson, Birth Of A Nation, etc.)
really glad the youtube algorithmn looked in my favour and showed me this video! i will admit, i had never heard of hellen keller until the 3oh!3 song don't trust me - we aren't taught about her here in europe! in the last few years i learnt a bit about how her political nature was sanitised, but this was such a well explained video - i never knew whereabouts in america she was from or had ever heard of anne. i massively appreciated your personal insight and opinions on viewing people within the context of their surroundings and society and time. it's something that ties into the whole topic of cancel culture for me - it feels so disingenuous to pull quotes out of their context. i see it with discussions around psychology and psychiatry with people completely ignoring the accepted beliefs and language at the time to frame people a certain single-faceted way. as someone who has gone from solely being a wheelchair user to being ambulant and using mobility aids or walking unaided certain distances, i really resonated with the little thing you said about still being such a part of the disabled community despite requiring less accessibilities than you once did. i feel that now i have somewhat more ability i want to speak up on disability rights and related topics even more and learn more than i was once able to. as another commenter said, you talk really fast for me to catch up with and process, but i hope you don't mind me slowing down your video! it helped a lot, others should try that before complaining about things that people may not be able to easily work on. excited to watch more!
Enjoying this topic, but SLOW down. Hard to follow you when you race verbally. This isn’t a race. Had a headache by the time you ended. Thank you for your research
Click the cog wheel in the upper right [app] or lower right [website] corner, go into the second option, Playback speed, and find a lowered speed setting that matches your preference the closest. It's on you to use accessibility tools to accommodate yourself, and not on other people to modify how they express themselves to your liking. Some people just speak faster, some people also like to listen to fast speech and understand it better, and if it's a recording you can speed up or down at will, demanding that someone speaks differently and criticizing their natural mode of expression, just because you prefer it differently is very entitled and rude.
![Disability in Ride the Cyclone [CC]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/jENuEpwuihU/mqdefault.jpg)
![Disability in Ride the Cyclone [CC]](/img/tr.png)
![Revisiting the "Solitary Forager Hypothesis" [CC]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yH4D1vvfVHs/mqdefault.jpg)
I know this isn't the type of thing that the algorithm likes, but I would love to see videos on obscure disabled people from history who did interesting things. That Black lawyer sounds very cool!
Same! As someone w a disability who only really knows about Disability Activism's Greatest Hits, learning more about the people who fought to get to where we are now would be so amazing!!!
I think there's a real parallel between how Helen Keller's eugenicist beliefs are talked about to the way we talk about current celebrities when they do things that are wrong but not necessarily unforgivable. I was reminded of the Contrapoints video about cancel culture, where she talks about essentialization. So in this case, 'Helen Keller once said that some disabled babies shouldn't be saved' becomes 'Helen Keller was a eugenicist,' as if to imply that she was an active and frequent supporter of eugenicist causes. But that kind of nuance seems not to stick in people's minds, for various reasons.
The book "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by James W Loewen uses Helen Keller as an example of how the US education simplifies historical figures in order to actively avoid teaching critical thinking skills. It's a good book for starting to deprogram from the propaganda the education system forces on children with some suggestions on how it could be improved.
I enjoy the structure of the first half being more a biography and the second is commentary.
I was super interested in Helen Keller as a child and read a biography comic on her and really admired her (I am not from the global north so I mostly never learned about Western historical figures in school, only through books and the internet). So I like that I learned more about her today. I find it interesting that she's coming back up in the disability conversation. And yes as you said all the "Helen Keller is a eugenicist" coverage made me think she was actively supporting eugenics like her other activism - not one article one time.
edit: adding info
Thank you for this. Keller deserves to be remembered as the complete, dimensional human being she was, at every stage of her life. As an autistic person who had behavioral issues as a child, I've always related to the story of her childhood in some ways, and hated the popular, "Miracle Worker"-inspired view of her as a monstrous, animalistic brute who needed to be tamed - and tamed with abusive methods, "for her own good" - into a conforming human being.
Best 42 minutes of my saturday morning ❤
Once again, your brain has blown my mind!! You gave me so much more info about Hellen Keller in this one video than I think I’ve ever learned about her in my entire life. Wow… so much that I never knew about her, thank you! And I did NOT know what you mentioned about Temple Grandin’s politics, that was very informative - thank you for shedding light in that dark corner too!
I enjoy your musing. The good and bad filter is so successful at keeping the leasons of history from us. MLK is remembered as a liberal pacifist and Malcolm X is remembered as a Black nationalist. Any truth in those portrails freezes them as least effectively critical of power. Where are the socialists who knew nuance and grew as people? Everywhere in history, we're simply not taught the interesting and complex stories of thier lives... if even the truth
Well you changed my views on Helen Keller 😊
Thank you for this video! It really expanded my knowledge on both Keller and disability in this time period.
The subsequent discourse around Keller, either as a smoothed-off, controllable, saintly child, or as a despicable eugenicist, is a pattern I've seen again and again with regards to famous figures, and feared happening to me. That the pressure of time and attention and historiography can only push our image of people towards simplistic views. Nothing but pure good or nothing but pure bad.
And that if you don't work to create a false, perfect image of yourself, you can only ever be remembered as horrible.
I don't know a resolution to this pattern. This video and works like it certainly help, but the vast majority of people's interaction with a famous figure will always be a soundbite, a single image, something optimized down until it can't be compressed any further.
Maybe the best we can hope for is a deeply internalized understanding that there's more to the story. That what we know about someone is always limited by the time we've spent looking into them and the structures that illuminate or conceal them.
I feel like I have that deep understanding for subjects like math or physics or chemistry: However far I've learned, there's more to it. Everything I hear, and everything I know is a simplified picture that obscures even as it informs.
I want to develop that deep understanding, that humility of the extent of my knowledge, when it comes to history and historical figures, and of famous current figures too. This video helps with that. Thank you.
Im jealous, as an English speaker I couldnt speak as fast as you to save my life! Kudos on your presentation. I read about her in grade school, being a natural
born bibliophile. I believe your issue with the " views" of those times is that AmeriKa at that time was being moulded by several " judeo-Xian " kults ...
Look at Protestant Reverends supporting Slavery ( woodrow wilson, Birth Of A Nation, etc.)
Really good delivery. Shes one of my fave historical figures.
really glad the youtube algorithmn looked in my favour and showed me this video! i will admit, i had never heard of hellen keller until the 3oh!3 song don't trust me - we aren't taught about her here in europe! in the last few years i learnt a bit about how her political nature was sanitised, but this was such a well explained video - i never knew whereabouts in america she was from or had ever heard of anne. i massively appreciated your personal insight and opinions on viewing people within the context of their surroundings and society and time. it's something that ties into the whole topic of cancel culture for me - it feels so disingenuous to pull quotes out of their context. i see it with discussions around psychology and psychiatry with people completely ignoring the accepted beliefs and language at the time to frame people a certain single-faceted way.
as someone who has gone from solely being a wheelchair user to being ambulant and using mobility aids or walking unaided certain distances, i really resonated with the little thing you said about still being such a part of the disabled community despite requiring less accessibilities than you once did. i feel that now i have somewhat more ability i want to speak up on disability rights and related topics even more and learn more than i was once able to.
as another commenter said, you talk really fast for me to catch up with and process, but i hope you don't mind me slowing down your video! it helped a lot, others should try that before complaining about things that people may not be able to easily work on. excited to watch more!
Good video!
Enjoying this topic, but SLOW down. Hard to follow you when you race verbally. This isn’t a race. Had a headache by the time you ended. Thank you for your research
Different people speak at different rates. You can simply slow it down using RUclips's video controls
Click the cog wheel in the upper right [app] or lower right [website] corner, go into the second option, Playback speed, and find a lowered speed setting that matches your preference the closest.
It's on you to use accessibility tools to accommodate yourself, and not on other people to modify how they express themselves to your liking. Some people just speak faster, some people also like to listen to fast speech and understand it better, and if it's a recording you can speed up or down at will, demanding that someone speaks differently and criticizing their natural mode of expression, just because you prefer it differently is very entitled and rude.
Oh, you must be new - this IS actually Sydney talking slow!! 🤣