♿ A theory on accessible parking rage 😡
If I wanted to massively increase our Facebook stats with rage clicks, I post about people being confronted for "looking disabled enough" for accessible parking.
Americans love their parking spaces. Talk about taking away parking and they freak out. My favorite community board meeting remark was a woman who, red faced and spitting with rage, claimed that removing a surface lot and replacing it with underground parking, a public plaza, grocery store, cafes, and apartments was part of a plan to turn our neighborhood into a "dystopian hellscape."
She could still be right; it's under construction, so it's too soon to say. But it doesn't seem particularly hellscapeish to me.
Anyway, I've been wondering why people who normally dgaf about people with mobility issues suddenly turn into warriors when they see someone who is not 100% wheelchair reliant or 100 years old parking in an accessible space. I've had to talk otherwise reasonable, not-shitty people out of confronting complete strangers. Like internet trolls, these folks live and walk among us and we don't know who they are until they reveal themselves as the Disability Police.
Why is this such a thing? Of all the horrific ways we treat people with different levels of ability, who do we choose parking as their one human right?
Here's my hunch: The media portrays people with disabilities as magical saint/victims or as villains. We give convenient parking spaces to people with disabilities as thanks for being rolling inspiration porn, just like we give primo parking as a reward to company execs and top sales guys.
Let's imagine we're a 'normal' person walking out of the pharmacy. Or a tech bro who has not yet been hit by a bus and experienced a life-changing revelation (maybe you missed that week?). You see a car pull into an accessible space and get ready to bask in this viral video irl. It's going to be great. Look at this disabled person who is running errands! They are not letting their disability stop them! Wow! So inspiring!
And then...a person gets out of the car. You don't feel inspired. At. All. Look at this person, not being adorably pathetic! In fact, you are full of anger. How dare they pretend to be a virtuous saint when really they are just a standard issue person with some chronic illnesses and a few surgeries under their belt?! How dare they think they're special?!
Cue: demanding proof of a disability, raging against people sponging off the system, decades of pent-up vitriol about 'welfare queens,' etc.
It's a way for society to remind us that there are those who are deserving of support (and free, convenient parking) and those who should grab their bootstraps and stfu. If you aren't pity-worthy and inspiring, you don't belong out on the streets.
We use accessible parking as an ostensibly legitimate and legal way to harass people with the 'wrong' sort of disabilities. We demand they prove that they are worthy of this 'perk.' We yell at them until they cry and go home. Cops run their plates and verify their ID.
All under the guise that we, as a society, care about protecting people with disabilities.
What do you think about my theory? Why does parking get under people's skin when people so rarely think about disabilities?
PS. Or maybe it's a way to deal with guilt over bullying kids with visible disabilities as children.