Stevie Wonder sent a message to ableists everywhere while presenting the winner for Song of the Year at the Grammys this past week. As he opened the envelope to read the name of the winner, he joked to the audience by bringing attention to his own blindness. A lot of people watching most likely were wondering how the successful, blind artist was going to read from the envelope. However, the star was able to easily shoot down these concerns by making anyone thinking he was not capable of presenting the butt of the joke.
He basically turned what many would consider a disability (his blindness) into an advantage over probably everyone else in the room, as well as most people watching. Because of the fact that he was blind he could also read Braille, which is not something that most people could say that they could do. “You can’t read Braille, nanananana!” he exclaimed to the room full of artists and celebrities to bring attention to the funny circumstances at hand. For once he was able to embrace his blindness without anyone in the room questioning his ability to be just like anyone else.
This flip flop of normal roles in society really shows that “disabled” people really are just differently abled. Wonder made it clear that he is just as capable of doing just about anything that a seeing person could do other than see. He even showed that some are capable of doing things that a lot of seeing people cannot do.
This is only the most recent occurrence of Wonder fighting stigma against differently-abled individuals. He has been proving his abilities to be the same as any other performers since he was an 11-year-old boy in 1961 when he signed with a Motown producer. It is public acts of pride such as the one at the Grammys that truly make it clear that we should not look down upon others just because they are a little different from ourselves. Wonder said it best himself right before announcing the Song of the Year winner by saying “we need to make every single thing accessible to every person with a disability.”
