Everyone who knows me (and quite a few folks who don’t) knows that I went to Ireland in June. It was an amazing, magical experience.
You might be wondering what this has to do with Creating Community and my usual theme of disabilities. My answer is Belfast.
Those of us who have lived long enough remember the Troubles, when IRA bombings in Northern Ireland seemed commonplace and the back-and-forth vengeance murders between the Unionists and Loyalists appeared endless. During those years in the 1970s through 1990s, Belfast was notorious as one of the three B’s for travelers to avoid (along with Baghdad and Bosnia).
Then the Good Friday peace agreement in 1998 set in motion events that enabled a travel-novice from Durango to wander the streets of Belfast in 2016 in safety.
It took monumental efforts and a lot of sacrifice to end the violence. But the most intriguing aspect of the situation is the wall.
For the protection of both communities, a wall runs through the city, separating the Unionists and Loyalists. To this day, the gates are closed from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. each day. So though the communities are living side by side, they aren’t going to school together or playing on the same ball teams. You can’t invite your Loyalist co-worker to your Unionist home for dinner with the family. The people on the other side of the wall are still the “other.” The community is still broken.
As I looked at the massive wall running through the city (often topped with barbed wire), I had to wonder where in the U.S. we’ve built our walls. Belfast has a physical manifestation of what divides it, but it isn’t the only community that impedes the integration of different groups of people.
For their presumed safety, we still relegate people with intellectual disabilities to segregated settings – group homes, specialized work settings, villages, recreation settings built especially for “them.” These are the places behind the wall. And while walls may keep us safe, they also keep us apart.
Our identities are shaped through our ideas of similarity and difference. As humans, we constantly seek where we belong – the “us.” Yet in order to have an “us,” there has to be a “them.” We find differences that define ourselves by who we exclude.
The more exposure we have to others, the more opportunities we have to find the similarities and broaden our notions of where we (and they) belong. The reality is that though we want others to see us as individuals, we tend to see others as groups. When we build relationships with individuals, the things that once defined them as part of the “other” start to break down.
The people we met in Belfast were confident that the day will come when a generation is strong enough to tear down the wall. I hope we can put our faith similarly in a generation that no longer knows the scars of separate schools, homes, workplaces and activities for people with intellectual disabilities.
Tara Kiene is president/CEO of Community Connections, Inc.
