Non-Inclusive "Inclusion"
I had three artifacts bubble up on my devices recently—one was sent by my daughter, two appeared in the New York Times—that got me thinking. So often, when an organization, person, or entity decides to follow ADA law or do the right thing and “include” people with disabilities, that “inclusion” becomes a rote exercise, a mere ticking of boxes without a genuine commitment to actual inclusion. Other times, when there is an effort to expand and include, prejudicial attitudes can throw up obstacles that wilt the will to step out, to speak up, to show up in glorious, authentically diverse ways.
Here are the three artifacts:
1. The first is from the New York Times’s Ethicist column from April 2025. The Ethicist is kind of a Dear Abby for—as described by the Times—“life’s trickiest situations and moral dilemmas,” interpreted and analyzed by a philosopher. I often enjoy the column, though I don’t always agree with the philosopher’s advice. That’s part of the fun, of course. This time, though, I believe he got it mostly right.
This particular column was titled, “Can We Ask A Disabled Woman To Leave Our Pickleball Group?” The person writing in with the moral dilemma was a member at a gym where she or he played pickleball twice a week, two hours each time, rotating through doubles matches on three different courts. According to the letter writer’s description, the gym listed this pickleball opportunity as “open play,” meaning that “anyone of any skill level can sign in and play.” But, the letter writer continued, the skill level of those open play pickleballers was actually very high.
S/he went on to describe a woman who had begun participating in this open play pickleball: This new player was “kind and well-meaning, but…[her] skill level was far below” the rest of the players. The letter writer believed that this new player had “a neurological deficit affecting her reaction time,” and explained that s/he and the other players had made “an effort to include her,” while privately wondering “why she hasn’t realized that she’s out of place.”
The letter concluded: “Would it be kinder to gently suggest she join a less competitive pickleball session, rather than our continuing to accommodate her with quiet frustration? While it’s an open session and we have no right to ask her to leave, everyone wishes she would. When I joined, I knew I needed to improve to keep up, and I did. No one believes she can.” — Name Withheld
The Ethicist opened up strong with his response:
“You say that you may be dealing with someone who has a neurological deficit. Encouraging people with disabilities to participate as widely as possible in social life should be one of the goals of a decent society. Sometimes this will require patience. But the terms of participation need to be openhearted and respectful.
That’s not the climate you’re describing. Let’s suppose that, as you suspect, this woman really isn’t going to improve. I agree that it’s not ideal for her to be the object of unspoken resentment and disdain. If she chooses to leave, though, someone else will become the worst player. Will that person then be pressured to leave, too? It sounds as if your group isn’t engaged in an ‘open play’ session — you’ve formed an unofficial competitive club with an implicit skill requirement.”
The Ethicist then continued to make a couple of possible recommendations: The letter writer could work with the gym to create a more competitive kind of pickleball league, or could have an (unfortunate) conversation with the woman with the suspected neurological deficit, suggesting that she find a more beginner-friendly pickleball group.
Sure. Either of those things could happen. But I consider both to be harshly exclusionary, and the conversation-with-the-woman-idea absolutely smacks of Mean Girls. I mean: Why? Apparently, there are professional pickleballers, but these folks are not that.
Here are some other thoughts/possible considerations:
*I’ve written about this before, but the disabled are the largest minority group in the country and the only one that any of us can join in any given moment. Traumatic brain or spinal cord injuries, any of a variety of accidents could mean that we become the woman with neurological deficits trying to connect socially and engage in physical activity at a local gym. Given that possibility, the question must be asked: Friend, how would you want to be treated in such a situation?
*The letter writer shares in her/his epistle that the pickleball players range in age from 35 to over 60. Wow. Time to learn some new skills, maybe. We all have deficits; I certainly do. When I’m made aware of my deficits—and I’m sure a lot of them remain undetected by me, but still—I try to address them in some way, even if it’s incomplete and/or quasi-pitiful. I do this because I’m trying to be a human being. I’m trying to be a human being that grows and, one hopes, improves over time.
Neurological deficits might not be the main problem on that pickleball court. Perhaps spiritual stinginess, self-centeredness, and an overly inflated sense of one’s own importance are the deficits that need to be addressed.
*Here’s an alternative way to address this challenge of inclusion/exclusion in this particular example. Everybody wants a good workout from their pickleball time, I imagine. What if all the morning pickleball players at that gym who believe they do not have neurological deficits were to wear wrist weights and ankle weights when they play? Why isn’t that a solution that we think of in these sorts of situations? The quick-witted with lightning-fast reaction times voluntarily choosing to handicap themselves to allow for goodness, kindness, generosity, and perhaps the genuine inclusion of a person with a particular set of challenges? Because we believe in dignity and respect and inclusion?
*My son with Down syndrome constantly astonishes me with his ability to genuinely and deeply empathize with others, and to forgive those who trespass against him. His EQ is off the charts. If we lived in a society that actually valued such things, he would be a king. But we don’t. We live in a society that reveres those who crush others in business, those who receive a perfect score on the math portion of the SAT.
*Maybe the pickleball players could allow for the possibility that they might have something to learn—sportsmanship? kindness? good humor?—from the woman they’ve identified as the worst player in their morning sessions.
*I agree with The Ethicist that “the terms of participation need to be openhearted and respectful.” That seems like something that parents and communities might seek to teach their precious children, early on. Or that adults who recognize the absence of openheartedness and respectfulness in themselves might seek to address when they’re gifted with the opportunity to do so.
2. In March 2025, filmmaker Jonatas Rubert published a video in the New York Times Opinion section titled, “What Having A Brother With Down Syndrome Has Taught Me About Everyone Else.” I loved the video, with collage cutouts and funny animations. The big takeaway for me was that we humans have become attached to creating distinctions that sort and separate us, leaving some unnecessarily isolated.
Rubert got a fair amount of flack in the Comments section for his video. He stated that Down syndrome is one of the most common and frequent variations in human beings, with more than five million people in the world with Down syndrome. And this is what many commenters took issue with: He asked in his voiceover: “When something is frequent and common, isn’t that what we call normal?”
I get what he’s saying. We consider Mark Zuckerberg and Amber Heard “normal.” Why can’t Down syndrome (and autism and cerebral palsy, etc.) be considered a variation of normal that keeps it on the normal side of abnormal?
A lot of commenters did not see it that way. Here’s a representative comment, recommended by 32 other readers, from Joseph Katz in Hamburg, Germany:
“Because he's not normal.
‘Normal' means near the average (a ‘norm,’ in mathematics, is an average).
Someone with Downs cannot do many important things that normal people can do: read a newspaper, balance a checkbook, hold a typical job.”
I know many people with Down syndrome who can read the newspaper and hold a job, though I’m not sure what Katz means by “typical job.” I also know a lot of people without Down syndrome who couldn’t balance their checkbooks if their lives depended on it. I’m related to some.
I’m not trying to say that everything is normal, or that we should all be equal or the same, or we should overlook real differences. I am trying to say that that label of “normal” may be more elastic than we often allow for.
Here’s another comment from Y of Florida:
“[M]ost DS people are not that high functioning and [the] prenatal screening process does not offer details regarding the future once diagnosis is established.”
So true. And you can never read the future for any child you might be lucky enough to have. Any “normal” child can become a drug addict, a ruthless titan of business, or a creep—or all of the above. Yes, good values, consistent parenting, and a robust community life can mitigate the likelihood of these outcomes. But don’t we all know good families where a kid just went very wrong? Sometimes the apple really does fall quite far from the tree. That’s the nature and the magic of becoming a parent: The covenant is you will do your flawed best as that child’s parent, and you will love that child no matter what ensues. There’s nothing in the contract about a parent getting what he or she imagines or believes is deserved.
There were a lot of heartless, left-brain kinds of comments in response to Jonatas Rubert’s video about his brother. I’m going to out on a limb here and guess that many of those commenters have never really spent time with someone with Down syndrome. But there were also a lot of comments representing a big-hearted alternative position. Here’s one from Phil in Canada:
"My wife’s only sibling, Bob, had downs. [sic] He lived with us, after her mother became too sick to care for him, for 17 years. Our four children grew up with him. Caring for him had its challenges, but after his recent death from dementia, we are all deeply grateful for him and the impact he had on our lives. He really loved us unconditionally and was full of what Christians call the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, goodness, faithfulness, kindness, self control). Our children have grown into kind caring adults. They are the ones who care for those that others ignore, and who practically serve their neighbours. They are excellent at humanizing others and doing what they can to help people flourish. Learning from Bob helped to build that in them. We need more Bobs.”
There it is: the central idea. Can we “normals” allow for the possibility that we might have something to learn from people that are different from us? Or, looking around, do we feel like we got it so right that there’s no room for learning or improvement?
I feel comfortable speaking for my husband, my children, and myself when I say that our beloved family member with Down syndrome has taught us so much about love and acceptance. What’s the point of “including” people who are different if there’s no acknowledgement that they might bring something unique and precious to the table?
3. This next one speaks for itself. A young woman, Lydia, who uses a wheelchair takes us on a videotaped odyssey showing us how inaccessible “accessibility” can be. Decision-makers at this school ticked the “accessibility” box, but unfortunately accessing the library for students in wheelchairs means taking an elevator in the hinterlands and then wheeling yourself through miles of corridors. Lydia used the video in her campaign running for Disabled Students’ Officer at her school on the platform plank of securing a proper lift for wheelchair users to enter the library. Here’s her video (click on Lydia’s photo to watch it):
