LONDON, UK – Ade Adepitan walked the runway at the Fashion for Relief charity fashion show,… [+] At Somerset House off-duty during Autumn/Winter 2015/16 London Fashion Week. (Photo: Mike Marsland/WireImage)
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A survey carried out by disability charity Scope, reported by broadcaster ITV, found that it is hard to find black celebrities and celebrities from ethnic minority backgrounds with disabilities on British TV screens.
The survey found that 43% of British people believe that disabled people from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds should play prominent roles on TV and streaming services. Unfortunately, only one in 10 respondents said they had seen such characters on TV in the past 12 months, and around 25% said they rarely or never saw such characters on their TV screens.
A prime example of someone who fits the criteria, at least on British television, is Ade Adepitan (pictured above), a former Paralympian, author and reporter for the BBC and Channel 4. But someone with an explicitly intersectional background, like Adepitan, enjoys a degree of name recognition because of their rarity and can be seen as the exception that proves the rule.
Another British multi-disciplinary figure is Shani Dhanda, who was diagnosed with osteoporosis as a child in the late 1980s and went on to become the founder of the Asian Disabled Network and helped organise the UK’s first Asian Women’s Festival. Last month, the award-winning activist was named Britain’s most influential disabled person in the Shaw Trust’s Disability Power 100 list.
Speaking about the reality of living with her intersectional identity, Dhanda told ITV News: “It’s a particularly lonely and isolating experience, living in a world that wasn’t designed for you and already struggling and facing so many barriers and challenges.”
She added, “Losing yourself in society is another form of erasure. It’s very hard to envision what you can do or who you can be when there’s no one else who looks like you, and I didn’t have that.”
London, UK – November 29, 2023: Shani Dhanda celebrates Smirnoff’s “We Do Us” initiative… [+] In partnership with Tilting The Lens and Sink The Pink. (Photo by Dave Benett/Getty Images for Smirnoff)
Dave Bennett/Getty Images (Courtesy of Smirnoff)
Danda’s compelling analysis speaks to the heart of the problem that stems from the lack of BIPOC disabled talent on our television screens. But frankly, the same is true for disabled on-screen professionals from other backgrounds. The glass screens in our living rooms are a mirror that reflects society, and when certain important segments are regularly missing from the core broadcast output, it not only isolates and devalues those who are excluded, but also reaffirms the exclusionary attitudes of the broader public.
In considering the necessary mechanisms of affirmation and acceptance, it is also important to consider different types of portrayals of disability, especially in the context of fiction. Not only do characters with disabilities need to be faithfully portrayed by actors with disabilities, but such portrayals must be as grounded in the real world as possible and avoid harmful, extreme portrayals of people with disabilities as tragic victims or otherworldly superheroes.
It would be better for the disability community, and perhaps society as a whole, to show characters with disabilities doing the same things everyone else does, from waking up in the morning and brushing their teeth before work to going on dates and arguing with family.
When it comes to assessing the shortage of racial minority talent with disabilities in particular, it is not easy to pinpoint exact mechanisms, as the causes are likely diverse and overlapping. A more charitable view might point to a lack of confidence and awareness among those responsible for ordering and producing primetime television shows.
After all, if there is a widespread lack of trust towards disabled people across the media industry due to a fear of “getting it wrong”, adding race to an already complicated equation may be going too far for some.
A more cynical analysis that looks at the depiction of minority groups purely in terms of symbolism might simply question whether distributing two symbols to one individual would be more impactful, or whether a more equal distribution would be mathematically better.
Ultimately, if television aspires to be a mirror to society, it can’t just portray disability out of its real-world context. The reality is that disability can and does happen to anyone, at any time. Whether we actively choose to think of it that way or not, disability is an inherently intersectional identity. Thus, to portray disability solely through the prism of white, middle-class people would be like taking a large shard of glass from a broken mirror and pretending it wasn’t broken at all.