{"id":92491,"date":"2016-07-15T14:39:56","date_gmt":"2016-07-15T14:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/07\/15\/the-ableist-racist-classist-underpinnings-of\/"},"modified":"2016-07-15T14:39:56","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T14:39:56","slug":"the-ableist-racist-classist-underpinnings-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/07\/15\/the-ableist-racist-classist-underpinnings-of\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ableist, Racist, Classist Underpinnings Of ‘Laziness’ – The Establishment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ableist, Racist, Classist Underpinnings Of ‘Laziness’ – The Establishment<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

dr-archeville<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Hello, I\u2019m a lazy Millennial. <\/p>\n

In other words, I\u2019m from a generation
\n that has worked more hours for less money than any generation before
\nme, but occasionally I eat a granola bar for breakfast<\/a> instead of pouring myself a bowl of cereal.\u00a0 According to some, including many writers of online thinkpieces<\/a>, that\u2019s enough to make me \u201clazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the problem isn\u2019t me, or young
\npeople in general, or any group that\u2019s historically been decried for its
\n idleness.\u00a0 Like Millennials, groups that are called \u201clazy\u201d are often the
\n hardest-working people around.<\/b>\u00a0 They\u2019re just subject to ableism, racism,
\n classism, and other bigotry that codes exploitation or exhaustion as
\n\u201cunwillingness to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

I myself have had a very confusing
\nrelationship with \u201claziness\u201d from a young age, often being called \u201clazy\u201d
\n for enjoying reading and video games by the same parents who praised me
\n for always getting my homework done on time.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, I became rather
\nconfused about the quality of my work ethic.\u00a0 Was I lazy or not?\u00a0 In my
\nteens, I developed an anxiety disorder and a perfectionism that made
\nacademic shirking impossible, but the constant state of worry disrupted
\nmy sleep and left me so exhausted that I would often come home from
\nschool and go straight to bed for a nap.\u00a0 Sometimes, all I could do was
\nlay in bed, awake, ruminating on everything I could possibly worry
\nabout.<\/p>\n

But because I was in bed, this was called \u201claziness.\u201d<\/p>\n

I worked so little at that office
\njob, I couldn\u2019t believe it.\u00a0 I could spend multiple hours each day
\nscrolling through Tumblr or playing on social media.\u00a0 My \u201cwork\u201d time
\ninvolved reading articles vaguely related to my work \u2014 mostly because
\nthere wasn\u2019t much work for me to do.\u00a0 Compared to being on my feet all
\nday, being expected to work every moment on the clock, it was nothing.<\/p>\n

I worked three times as hard at my
\nfood and customer service jobs as I did at any of my digital marketing
\npositions.\u00a0 And yet contemptuous thinkpiecers keep on describing people
\nwho work in those industries as \u201clazy.\u201d\u00a0 Why don\u2019t you get a REAL job?\u00a0 Like reading Tumblr while sitting at a desk, instead of busting your ass at McDonald\u2019s.<\/i><\/p>\n

According to Dr. Alison Munoff, a licensed clinical psychologist, \u201claziness\u201d is nothing more than a value judgement.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Laziness\u2019 is not a personality
\ntrait, it is simply a matter of a lack of proper motivation and
\nreinforcement, as it is a behavioral pattern rather than a part of who
\nwe are,\u201d says Dr. Munoff. \u00a0 \u201cThe ability to actively approach a task in a
\n time-effective manner changes depending on the task and its value in
\nour lives. For example, in a situation of obtaining limited resources,
\npeople find themselves quite motivated and resourceful, meaning that
\nthis task is simply a priority based on its value and necessity, and has
\n little to do with someone\u2019s personality.\u00a0 Unfortunately I find that when
\n asked about the first time people were told they were being \u2018lazy,\u2019 it
\nwas from a parent or caregiver who was unsuccessfully attempting to
\nmotivate the child without a good understanding of the way this idea
\nwould be carried forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

In nature, animals spend a lot of their time being idle<\/a>.
\n\u00a0 Most of the footage shot of big cats like lions are of them lazing
\naround.\u00a0 Part of this is because many of them are nocturnal, but it\u2019s
\nalso because animals will hunt, forage, and eat until they\u2019re full, and
\nthen most of the rest of their time is spent conserving energy.\u00a0 Laying
\naround doing pretty much nothing is completely natural.\u00a0 It\u2019s adaptive.<\/b>\u00a0
\nYet laziness has this negative connotation in many human societies.\u00a0 And
\nthat negative connotation is often deployed in ableist, racist, and
\nclassist ways.<\/p>\n

Today, we can all enjoy reasonably
\npriced produce thanks to the many exploited Latin undocumented immigrant
\n workers picking our fruit and vegetables \u2014 labor that is so intensive
\nthat we \u201cnon-lazy\u201d white people simply can\u2019t handle it.\u00a0 And let\u2019s not
\nforget that all of this land was stolen from the Indigenous tribes that
\nwere here before we floated over and laid claim to it all.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t
\nstealing other people\u2019s hard work supposed to be lazy?<\/p>\n

Or is it just that it\u2019s easier to call people lazy than admit that you exploited them?<\/b><\/p>\n

Even if you\u2019re not racist, you\u2019ve
\nprobably used the idea of laziness in a way that hurts a lot of people.\u00a0 I
\n still struggle with an anxiety disorder and go through bouts of
\ndepression, and a lot of what\u2019s involved in these mental illnesses looks
\n like what people call \u201claziness.\u201d\u00a0 Depression saps your energy and makes
\n everything seem pointless.\u00a0 Anxiety is paralyzing, making even some of
\nthe simplest tasks (like calling people on the phone) seem daunting, so I
\n avoid them. <\/p>\n

Combine the two and you\u2019ve got me
\nhuddled into a ball on the bed, unable to do anything but listen to
\nNetflix playing in the background.\u00a0 It looks like laziness, but I\u2019m
\nactually engaged in an exhausting war in my own head.\u00a0 Anxiety is like
\npushing a giant boulder in front of you wherever you go, and depression
\nis like dragging a giant boulder attached to your legs by chains.<\/p>\n

People with physical illness and
\ndisability are also prone to being accused of laziness, especially if
\nthat illness or disability is not visible to others.\u00a0 There are people
\nwho are nearly constantly in pain or constantly fatigued, but you would
\nnever know by looking at them.\u00a0 These individuals work much harder than
\nable-bodied and \u201chealthy\u201d people.\u00a0 Not only do they often have to work to
\n survive because disability payments (if they can get them) are not
\nnearly enough, they have to navigate a world that caters to able-bodied
\npeople, and they have to navigate that world while their bodies work
\nagainst them.\u00a0 But article after article decries the \u201claziness\u201d of people
\n who use motorized carts or take elevators up one floor instead of using
\n the stairs, not for a second thinking that there are people who
\nwouldn\u2019t be able to shop or go up floors at all without these
\n\u201cconveniences.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easier to think of someone as
\n\u201clazy\u201d than to face the fact that school costs too much, that better
\njobs are inaccessible, that childcare is unaffordable, that people are
\nforced to work so hard for so little that there\u2019s no way they could have
\n enough energy to attempt schooling or finding better work, and that
\nwhat we give to people who can\u2019t work is insufficient to the point of
\nbeing shameful.\u00a0 I could say that calling people lazy is, in itself,
\nlazy, but it\u2019s not just an intellectual shortcut.\u00a0 It\u2019s a defense
\nmechanism.<\/p>\n

Everyone has a finite amount of
\nenergy.\u00a0 Some of us have greater drains on our pool of energy than
\nothers, whether it comes from the stress of racial microaggressions, the
\n stress of poverty, or mental or physical illness.\u00a0 Needing more time to
\nrecover isn\u2019t laziness.\u00a0 Having less time or energy to make breakfast
\nthan the previous generation isn\u2019t laziness.\u00a0 When you take a second to
\nlook into the reasons behind the behavior, you\u2019ll never end up finding
\nlaziness.\u00a0 Because laziness isn\u2019t real.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

^^^ THIS<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ableist, Racist, Classist Underpinnings Of ‘Laziness’ – The Establishment dr-archeville: Hello, I\u2019m a lazy Millennial. In other words, I\u2019m from a generation that has worked more hours for less money than any generation before me, but occasionally I eat a granola bar for breakfast instead of pouring myself a bowl of cereal.\u00a0 According to … <\/p>\n

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