Handicapping Cerrie Burnell

26 February 2009 – London, England, UK Cerrie Burnell is one of the co-hosts of CBeebies, CBBC’s (BBC Children’s Television) very successful TV show for preschool children. ….But  29-year-old Cerrie suffers from a serious handicap that could threaten her ability to continue in on the show. She isn’t blind or deaf, and she doesn’t have impaired speech or an intellectual disability. She does have a right arm that ends at about  the elbow, but that isn’t really the problem. Her handicap results from a small group of bigots who have protested her appearance claiming that her physical difference will frighten their children and give them bad dreams. It seems unthinkable that there are still people in the 21st century with such deeply rooted intolerance of even the slightest human variation that they would threaten to boycott preschool educational programming to prevent their child from seeing a woman they consider to be defective. Here is one example quoted on MSNBC Today:

I didn’t want to let my children watch the filler bits on the bedtime hour last night because I know it would have played on my eldest daughter’s mind and possibly caused sleep problems.

BBC News quotes Sir Bert Massie from the Equality and Human Rights Commission:

I think what’s happening is a number of adults do have prejudices, do have very negative views about disabled people, and instead of admitting the views are their own, they’re projecting them on to their children and saying the children are doing this. And of course they don’t give their names [on message boards], so it’s all anonymous.

The MSNBC Headline sums it up as:

One-armed TV host scares kids, parents say
Experts say that adults’ wariness of BBC TV show host is ‘old-fashioned’

“Old fashioned” seems like an unfortunate euphemism here. Old fashioned is baking your own pies or writing letters with a pen and mailing them to your friends. It is a not inadequate to cover burning crosses on the lawns of minority-group neighbors, sexually harassing one’s employees, slandering people who share your religious views, or threatening to boycott programs that employ people with physical or mental differences is not just “old fashioned,” it is cruel and intolerant. It was wrong 50 years ago and it is wrong today. It not only harms the direct target of the discrimination, it also harms the children that are supposedly being protected by these parents.

Fortunately, there are many more parents coming to the defense of Cbeebies and Ms. Burnell than those expressing their bigotry. However, the very fact that we can see this as a controversy with two sides to be explored suggests that there is still a lot of work to do. FOr more on coverage of this issue.

This ABC video discusses the controversy. Note the title, “ONE ARM Kid TV Show Host Creates Controversy,” which implies that Carrie Burnell created the controversy by having one arm. This is a little like saying that the “Jews create holocaust” by being Jews or “Negroes create lynchings” by being African or by being Black. All of these problems are created by the bigots who act on their hatred and ignorance, not by the victims. Nevertheless, this is a good video that shows Cerrie on the show and interviews her about discrimination and her choice not to hide her disability.

[[Youtube video. Cerrie Burnell interview on discrimination]

H/T Roy Bercaw for bringing this to the attention of icad.

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