Down Syndrome, World Day: 50 million views for “the ridiculous excuses that still discriminate”

ROME – “It’s not your fault, it’s us who are not prepared to take you on a trip!”, or “We already have a little girl like you in the group”, “We closed the registrations just ten minutes ago!”, are some of the ridiculous excuses with which people with Down syndrome are often denied participation in social life. But today there are no more acceptable excuses to discriminate. For the day of 21 March just ended, dedicated to Down syndrome, CoorDown asked people with Trisomy21 syndrome and their families what were the excuses they heard for being excluded from education, sport, work and other various social occasions.

50 thousand views on TikTok. Some of these apologies were so unbelievable and blatantly ridiculous that they became the leitmotif of the association’s new global campaign Ridiculous Excuses, Not To Be Inclusive that the community of TikTok has been viewed over 50 million times, making it a trending topic. A video shot in New York with comic tones and the atmosphere of classic 80s sitcoms in five episodes of daily discrimination played by actors with Down syndrome who stage the most absurd answers to justify exclusion from the class trip , in the world of work, at school, in sport, in summer camps.

Skill and discrimination, what do they mean. In almost two decades of activity, CoorDown and its network of associations have contributed with innovative and disruptive communication campaigns to change the perception and representation of disability by creating awareness and raising awareness. But, despite many achievements in rights and inclusion, people with Down syndrome still have to fight for a place in school in social life. Exclusion today is almost never direct and explicit, often ridiculous excuses hide a more crude truth. People with disabilities suffer systematic disadvantages in all areas of their lives due to a pervasive, insidious and invisible mechanism, taken “for granted”, what is defined as real ability. Abilismo is a word with a broad meaning that concerns the norms, common sense and often unaware and unrecognized codes that shape our ideas and the representations we have about disability. Talking about ableism for CoorDown means denouncing how discrimination is a transversal issue that also affects people with other disabilities or neurodiversity, but not only.

People’s testimonials. Thanks to the campaign’s partnership with TikTok, the @CoorDown channel has been populated with real-life testimonials from people with Down syndrome and their families from all over the world and the ridiculous excuses they’ve had to hear. In addition to them, creators and people with different disabilities have joined, proving how strongly the theme of exclusion is felt. «With this global campaign we want to name and make visible a phenomenon that people with Down syndrome and their parents, brothers, sisters and caregivers experience every day. Perhaps they seem like small events, in reality they are real discriminations often made with a smile of circumstance or unawareness which, however, mark the lives and hearts of those who suffer them. The time has come to tear down this wall too and unmask the false “good intentions” of those who, out of laziness or lack of understanding, still exclude people with intellectual disabilities» explains Antonella Falugiani, President of CoorDown.

Italy still hostile to inclusion. A necessary and urgent cultural change that affects the whole of society if we consider that according to a recent Eurobarometer survey, a small but significant part of Italian society is openly hostile to the inclusion of people with disabilities: 9% of Italians (+ 1 point compared to the EU average) would not feel at ease with a President of the Republic with a disability; 6% (+2 points compared to the EU average) would be uncomfortable if they had to interact every day with a disabled colleague; 13% (+2 points compared to the EU average) would have some difficulty in accepting a partner with disabilities for their children.