I'm moving into a more conventional storytelling form, and this one is authentically autobiographical.
I was working with a young technician who had just started on an IT career, and it came to light that he was unable to distinguish the LED colors on server racks. I was first struck that this seemed like an odd problem today, because color-blindness is so prevalent among men, and men are so prevalent among IT work. And then I realized how absurd it was that he had been the paint guy at the local hardware store, prior to his present job - mixing colors that he himself could not distinguish.
And yet, as he pointed out, all the paint mixing was formula-based. It could be done by a blind robot, and so my sense of absurdity was, in many ways, a form of ableism.
So, that's kind of what this week was about: revealing my own ableist preconceptions, and how subtle they are at work. That, and what every week is about: how shit I am at drawing, and how I will never be comfortable with that state of affairs.
I'm moving into a more conventional storytelling form, and this one is authentically autobiographical.
ReplyDeleteI was working with a young technician who had just started on an IT career, and it came to light that he was unable to distinguish the LED colors on server racks. I was first struck that this seemed like an odd problem today, because color-blindness is so prevalent among men, and men are so prevalent among IT work. And then I realized how absurd it was that he had been the paint guy at the local hardware store, prior to his present job - mixing colors that he himself could not distinguish.
And yet, as he pointed out, all the paint mixing was formula-based. It could be done by a blind robot, and so my sense of absurdity was, in many ways, a form of ableism.
So, that's kind of what this week was about: revealing my own ableist preconceptions, and how subtle they are at work. That, and what every week is about: how shit I am at drawing, and how I will never be comfortable with that state of affairs.