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 1. Home
 2. Latest Posts
 3. Blog
 4. Career Options


CAREER OPTIONS

 * August 2, 2012


by Meg Evans

Young people entering the workforce often have to sort through a lot of career
suggestions. Autistics and others with developmental disabilities may be advised
to start a small business, on the assumption that it would be easier than
finding a conventional job. Rather than commit to hiring a new employee who
lacks experience, a company may be more willing to give tasks to an independent
contractor. I have occasionally seen the word “charity” used in this context.

Of course, neither hiring an employee nor doing business with a contractor is a
matter of charity. Both are straightforward business transactions—an exchange of
money for services. Hiring an employee requires more investment, though, and
generally is seen as a more substantial relationship than contracting out work.
Managers have to be convinced of a job applicant’s long-term value to the
company before they’ll hire the applicant. Historically, that calculation often
has been influenced by society’s attitudes about the relative value of certain
kinds of people.

I am old enough to remember when some folks thought it was an act of charity to
hire a woman or a person of color. When I was a student looking for work
experience to put on my resume 30 years ago, I applied for an internship at a
radio station. Upon arriving bright and early for the interview, I found myself
greeted by a tirade to the effect that women had no business trying to become
radio personalities. Nobody wanted to hear a woman’s voice when they turned on
the radio, the manager declared. Why, the very idea was absurd.

When I told him that I wasn’t interested in being a deejay and just wanted to
learn about advertising and the radio business (which was true), he became much
friendlier and gave me some work composing ads. So I ended up with a useful
entry on my resume after all; but it’s fair to say that although I learned a few
things about advertising, the experience I gained with regard to workplace bias
had more impact.

Although it would be easy to dismiss such attitudes as nothing more than
irrational prejudices, they often have reflected social reality with some degree
of accuracy. Back when people considered it normal to hear only male voices on
the radio, they might have been uncomfortable listening to a female announcer. A
radio station might indeed have lost audience share and advertising revenue if
it hired a woman—or a man who spoke with a noticeable ethnic accent, or who had
a foreign name and wasn’t willing to change it, or who sounded like he might be
gay.

Until civil rights boycotts and equal employment opportunity laws changed the
equation, managers in all industries routinely rejected applicants based on what
kinds of people they believed the company’s customers didn’t want to see or
hear. For those who couldn’t get on a payroll because of prejudice,
self-employment in a service business—for example, working as a cleaning
lady—was a common way to make a living.

This history shows why some young people with developmental disabilities have
been advised to start their own business or to work for companies that
specialize in “charitably” employing their kind. The subtext of this advice is
that employers never would hire them for conventional jobs on an
equal-opportunity basis. After all, customers surely would be uncomfortable
dealing with employees whose voices sounded unusual, or who made less eye
contact than might be expected, or who had nervous tics such as hand-flapping.
To expect that such people could just be hired like anyone else would be
absurd—wouldn’t it?

When we consider how much the landscape of our society has changed, almost a
half-century after the passage of the federal Civil Rights Act, we can see that
cultural expectations are much more fluid and easily shifted than they might
appear. It’s true that people are likely to be uncomfortable when they have to
get used to something new, such as diversity in the workforce. But they do get
used to it, and quickly. Nowadays, a woman on the radio is just another
announcer. Companies that wouldn’t have hired an openly gay applicant a
generation ago are providing health insurance and other benefits to the partners
of their gay employees. Bilingual workers often are hired because of their
language skills, rather than being rejected for speaking with an accent. The
United States now has an African-American president, as well as a female
Secretary of State who was a serious contender for the presidency herself.

More progress still needs to be made toward ending disability discrimination, of
course; but we’re on the right track there, as well. The 2008 amendments to the
Americans with Disabilities Act, along with their implementing regulations in
2011, greatly expanded legal protections against discrimination in the
workplace. Federal agencies are actively seeking to hire workers with
disabilities, and some private-sector employers have developed affirmative
action plans.

As with other groups of people, the simple fact of integration—that is, being
seen and heard in the workplace on a regular basis—leads to social acceptance.
It’s human nature to define normality in terms of whatever we see regularly.
When we interact with people who have various disabilities as we go about our
everyday business, we come to look upon disability as a natural part of the
human experience, and the artificial divide between “the normal” and “the
disabled” vanishes.

For those who genuinely want to be self-employed because of a passion for the
work, it’s a perfectly valid choice. But if you are a young person just getting
started in the workforce, please don’t let anyone convince you that there are no
other options but self-employment and “charitable” segregated employment. It’s
not true that you could never be hired for a regular job. Yes, prejudice and
discrimination still exist; but they are not the only reality. Even if you’ve
had a few job interviews that went poorly, it doesn’t mean all employers have
the same outdated attitudes, and it certainly doesn’t mean you are less capable
or worthy than others. Consider it a learning experience and move on.



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