“Speed of Dark” by Elizabeth Moon, is a novel that not only shares with us of how one copes with a disability but how they are perceived differently by others. Some nondisabled people do not empathize with disabled people and the challenges they face while others show compassion and see them as a real person. Nondisabled people do not take the time to educate themselves and understand the disability to enable them to offer support when needed and take in consideration of what life of a person with a disability must be like. They are quickly judgmental and do not give enough credit where credit is due. One living with a disability is often tagged and labeled; such as an inconvenience, …show more content…
Lou works for a pharmaceutical company as a Bioinformatics specialist and one of his pronounced abilities is the way he can locate patterns in data, in a way that a “normal” person nor a computer couldn’t even comprehend, he was indeed very intelligent. Lou and his other autistic co-workers, known as section A, had special accommodations that came with their position to help calm their minds and enabled them to concentrate on their work. However, in spite of section A’s contributions the corporation manager Crenshaw wants autistic employees to change to a “normal” person just like the rest of employees with the company to cut costs (43). Crenshaw basically gave them an ultimatum, they have a surgery to make them “normal” or they lose their jobs. Crenshaw believes the autistic do not have what it takes to be leaders and they are not cost effective. The author shows the challenges the discrimination showed against disabled persons by looking into Lou’s dilemma and that of his co-workers from how the autism conditions affects them. This in my eyes in disability discrimination and shows Crenshaw showed no empathy and lacking knowledge of disabilities as to the asset they bring to the corporation.
The author challenges peoples take on disability clear and factual. Far too many people are judgmental and ignorant of their words and charactering others. Speed of Dark makes one think who has the right to decide who is “normal” or who is abnormal”. We as individuals have our own very unique qualities and characteristics that make us different from one another. That in itself does not mean one is better than the other. We realize that everybody contributes to society in their own