No One Wants to See That (Unless They Want a Picture): Hanoi

By D'Arcee Neal, Agent of Change

Originally Published April 2023, ECNV Newsletter

This is the sixth #TheDisabledBlackMagellan blog by Agent of Change, D’Arcee Neal who is a fellow in ECNV’s Ford Foundation Disability Justice Initiative. This year, D’Arcee will share his thoughts and experiences about disability and intersectionality with BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized identities.

I find myself still reeling at Candace Owen’s callous commentary this past weekend when she decided to rail against Kim Kardashian for using a model with a disability for her Skim’s campaign. Now among the most egregious things she had to say (and with Owens, that’s pretty much everything) was this idea that “no one wanted to see that,” and that the diversity call had in fact gone too far with the idea that you could see disabled people dressed up sexily and showing off their bodies. While the internet has rightfully criticized dear Candace including a wonderful rebuttal from the actress Christina Applegate who herself has recently joined the disability community, I’d still argue that many, many people feel like she was totally right because let’s be honest: when’s the last time you ever saw a woman with a disability in a pair of a lacy bra and panties?

People can sit and admonish her all they want, but Owen’s comments reflect the true heart of what many in the world already recognize, and it’s what I feel pretty much every time I head outside my door. Since the last time I blogged, this particular entry is coming from the bustling streets of Ciudad de Mexico, by way of Hanoi, Vietnam after I was unexpectedly detained there for a week following a visa mishap. While I won’t go into too many details, let’s just say that buying one way tickets when you’re traveling internationally can get very dicey on the need to procure visas just to pick up your bag, and as a result, I found myself stuck in Asia without a direct route for what was next. And while I was talking to my father, trying to work out a plan, a few times in the Hanoi airport, people were coming up to me with a request that I think is the worst thing you can ever ask a disabled person: “picture? You take a picture?” It got so bad that the woman behind the ticket counter had to advocate on my behalf forcefully asking people in the airport to stop with their requests.

It was my worst fear come to life. As a black disabled person who was traveling, I had suddenly become the thing I most feared: an exhibit. And you can read and think “well you should know better, you’re traveling in Asia and the people there don’t know any better,” which is the typical response whenever I say such things; but I’ll tell you now. If you’re going to do that, don’t. It doesn’t matter to me what a person’s cultural sensitivities are. I can certainly understand that people haven’t been exposed to certain things and that you have the right to be surprised when you come across it, however such ideas play out. Where it crosses the line for me, is when you decide to personally cross my boundary to bring me into it. I’ve been in situations where, for example, I was in Amsterdam crossing a bridge minding my business. A woman with a camera was taking pictures of the canals, but when she saw me, she decided to move her tripod, and started documenting me as I’m crossing the bridge and I’m steadily telling her to stop. Before I knew what was happening? That’s fine. Once I know? Not cool. Some people are fine with having their picture taken and I imagine to many a white tourist, people might find the idea amusing, even. But I have a harder time reconciling with that understanding when I see constant daily reminders of the blatant anti-African sentiments that Asia demonstrates, and as an African-American it puts me in the place of pictures for entertainment, over sentimentality. So, I decline.

I won’t go into the specifics about the difficulty in Hanoi because, if you’ve been reading the blog you can pretty much guess how that plays out, but I will say that I was much more comfortable with the level of difficulty there than I was in Bangkok. In Hanoi, and it’s difficult to describe, but people just got it. There was a moment where in order to access a street I needed, I had to traverse a single lane alley for two blocks that had been co-opted by motorcyclists. Able bodied people were shifting to the side whenever they’d come roaring through, but such a thing just wasn’t possible for me…and well….who cares? They waited, because well there was no other choice. Moving into traffic was surprisingly easy and maybe it’s just because after two months of doing so, I was just more at ease with the idea. That said, when I asked someone from the area about the way traffic worked and why no one was afraid of getting hurt in the middle of the street he told me “in the US, there’s the idea that you’re in MY way. In Asia, everyone thinks we’re ALL going this way, and it’s a fundamental way of looking at things.”

Perhaps that way is how everyone treats the idea of disability. In all my traveling between 6 countries, I’ve only seen ONE person in a wheelchair who was under the age of 60, and she was in Hanoi. But unlike me, who was traveling, she lived there, sitting outside the shrine collecting alms. When we saw each other, I greeted her as I passed by. I still think of her now. I wonder what she thought of me when she saw me, and the whole question about where disabled people are supposed to be, and when. Most countries keep their disabled people out of the public eye for various reasons, and of course when someone is visiting who is not bound to their rules, it must confuse the systems that are put in place to keep people in their particular place.

Here in Mexico, the general understanding tends to be “well, you brought yourself here, so you must know what you’re doing,” which is true. But it also boils down into frustration when for example I went to the market in an attempt to buy vegetables and was confronted with a stall after stall in inaccessible places forcing me to my knees in an attempt to pick various items. That didn’t need to happen. But then again, the feeling I get is that I didn’t need to be there, either. So who is right in this situation? Who is wrong? Why must it be a binary situation?

It reminds me of Frantz Fanon’s observation about blackness when he goes to the theater, and laments the fact that whenever he watches a movie, he is unable to divorce his blackness from what is happening on screen. The idea that white supremacy is so prevalent in the world that non-white people are simply forced to conform into their space in an attempt to enjoy entertainment or an escape because there is simply nothing else. That too, is what ableism feels like but on a much broader scale. You could, for example, simply refuse to see a movie. There is nowhere to go to avoid this feeling, and so instead I think of the other side of the equation from Hanoi.

The woman sat outside collecting money, showing people that she was in fact there, happy and thriving in the life that she had, visible and seen in a society that acted as though she was not. I can definitely respect and celebrate that. I only wish such ideas could be shared, and that it didn’t have to be a single idea shared by two crips on a sidewalk in a passing moment.

[Images: Skim’s Instagram model Haleigh Rosa and D’Arcee posing for the camera; A nighttime view of Hanoi, Vietnam overlooking the river; motorcyclists and pedestrians crossing a busy Hanoi street; Taking a selfie with a painted coronavirus ad on a Vietnam electric box; underpass in Mexico City celebrating Mexico culture through various holidays].