Love Hates Labels (Black Tote Bag)

Love hates categorizing people by labels. Love hates reducing people down to labels. Love gets to know people, instead of assuming you know who they are.

People with disabilities are labeled in a variety of ways all the time. My daughter Sammi Haney plays Esperanza in Netflix's Raising Dion (Produced by Michael B. Jordon), and one of the reasons that she got the part is because even though she is only 8 years old, she is very smart and perceptive. She memorizes her lines in almost 1 take and also did a number of ad libs that the director loved. Yet, when some strangers see her in a wheelchair they automatically label her as being mentally slow because she has a physical disability, and so they talk to her very slowly as if she has a learning disorder (or they address me instead of her). We need to stop seeing labels, and start seeing people.