Followup: Courts and the Civil Rights of the Disabled

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Here is the article which followed the previous article, In Retrospect: The Supreme Court and The Disabled:

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities.

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

The previous article,  In Retrospect: The Supreme Court and The Disabled, was about judicially interpreting away the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. It should be noted that the ADA is not a civil rights act. It refers only to barriers to the employability of people who can be productive members of society if reasonable accommodations are made in the workplace. The ADA does not even address such workplace civil rights matters as defamation of character or harassment. It says nothing about co-workers who attempt to degrade and intimidate employees who have, or are thought to have, a disability.

In this context, note a recent news item:

An Ohio man faces one month of jail time for teasing and taunting a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy after a video of the incident went viral.

On Nov. 27, Judge John A. Poulos of the Canton Municipal Court sentenced 43-year-old William Bailey to 29 days in jail. ...

William Bailey "was dragging his leg and patting his arm across his chest to pick his son Joseph up," said [Tricia] Knight. "I asked him to please stop doing this. 'My daughter can see you.' He then told his son to walk like the R-word." ...

The next day Knight posted the video on her Facebook page while [Knight's mother-in-law, Marie] Prince uploaded the video they called "Bus Stop Ignorance" to YouTube. Within days, the video went viral. ...

"I think when we look at cases, there's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But when there's nothing out there regarding disabilities, it took me a little bit longer to come to a decision." ...

As for whether this case presents a new precedent in Ohio is another debate.

"I don't know if it sets a precedent so much maybe as it begins a conversation between people," said [Jennifer] Fitzsimmons [the chief assistant city prosecutor for this case]. "I think conversation starts progress, and I think if it can bring something else to light, it would be good."

Disabled people are a targeted minority. We call them retards, harelips, and spastics; and we abuse little people, those with Downs Syndrome, the developmentally disabled, bipolar people, and many others.

We have had a civil rights revolution, embodied in the Omnibus Civil Rights Act of 1964. But note what Prosecutor Fitzsimmons said about the treatment of a little girl with cerebral palsy just a day or two ago: There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. The Civil Rights Act has made such "commenting and gesturing" unacceptable when it applies to those we call minorities, that is, those of a different race or ethnicity.

However, we have a double standard concerning discrimination against the disabled. We treat them as having stigma. For example, note the following passage:

A drawn-out impeachment process is our worst option: another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor.

This is from an article by the supposedly liberal columnist Molly Ivins, which appeared in the print edition of Time and has been on www.time.com for over a decade. It is obviously defamatory, and it seems to be clear evidence of a double standard. After all, would Time have printed it if the late Ms. Ivins had used the n-word rather than the h-word?

Above, we saw that William Bailey publicly humiliated a defenseless little girl, because she has cerebral palsy. He felt safe in doing so, with reason: This sort of thing happens all the time. After all, the nation's premiere news magazine defamed another group of disabled people, in print, and the nation has tacitly accepted this. It is as if, for the disabled, the civil rights revolution never happened.

How can this be? After all, justice–in this case, the freedom from marginalization and disenfranchisement–is, by definition, universal. As Martin Luther King said, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Perhaps the reason is that our civil rights revolution apparently was not implemented, as King thought it would be, as justice–which is universal–but as protected class, which is obviously not universal. (King did not dream that his children would be in a protected class. He said I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.) We–even the infamous William Bailey–know that there are certain kinds of things you don't say about those we call "minorities." That sense–can we call it a sense of right and wrong?–obviously did not kick in where a little girl with cerebral palsy was concerned, and it did not kick in in the case of Molly Ivins' supposed earthy humor regarding a birth defect.

Protected Class and the Courts:
Would the court system of a liberal society, sidestepping universal justice, treat "protected class" as a term at law? One has only to read the news:

Publication: The Spokesman Review - Publish date: March 2, 1996
A state judge supports an earlier court ruling giving Spokane restaurants the right to refuse service to Hells Angels wearing their club insignia.
Spokane County Superior Court Judge Neal Rielly, in a written ruling released Friday, says members of the biker gang aren't a "protected class" under state or federal discrimination laws.

And more recently in Illinois:

Plaintiffs Gary Kohlman and Allen Roberts are members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.*fn1 They contend that the Mayor of Midlothian (defendant Thomas Murawski), Midlothian's Police Chief (defendant Vince Schavone), and a Midlothian police officer (defendant Hal Kaufman) ordered restaurants and bars in Midlothian to refuse to serve the plaintiffs because of their membership in the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club and/or their wearing of Hells Angels insignia and logos. ...
Because no suspect class is at issue, the plaintiffs must allege that:
(1) they are members of a protected class; (2) who are otherwise similarly situated to members of an unprotected class; (3) who were treated differently from members of the unprotected class; (4) based on the defendants' discriminatory intent. 

In Plessy v. Ferguson, the first Justice Harlan wrote:

Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.  In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.

Yet we have among us people we see every day, who are members of a targeted minority, but are not, as Prosecutor Fitzsimmons' comment reveals, in a protected class (there do not seem to be civil rights cases regarding them). That should not make a difference in how we treat the disabled. But it does: The most horrifying aspect of Molly Ivins' offhand remark is that everybody understands it. If it was possible to "harelip" the governor, it is understood that person would be outside the protections* and considerations we afford those of "normal" identity.

(*) Addendum 11/20/13 - Ta-Nehisi Coates recently observed:

“Faggot,” like most slurs, is a word used to remove a group from the protections of society.

 (As in the slur deployed by the late Molly Ivins in the quote from Time.com at the beginning of this post.)

In Retrospect: The Supreme Court and The Disabled

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

The last post, In The News: Disability Discrimination, noted:

On another weblog, In Retrospect: The Supreme Court and The Disabled documented a case in which the august Supreme Court slighted the disabled by interpreting away much of what little legal protection the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 provides. Here is a repost of that article:

In 2008, the year of Obama's first presidential election, the American Congress took action to remind the Supreme Court of the intent of existing disability employment law. Under the headline, Congress Passes Bill With Protections for Disabled, the New York Times wrote:

The bill expands the definition of disability and makes it easier for workers to prove discrimination. It explicitly rejects the strict standards used by the Supreme Court to determine who is disabled.

The bill declares that the court went wrong by “eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect” under the 1990 law.

“The Supreme Court misconstrued our intent,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House Democratic leader. “Our intent was to be inclusive.”

In an effort to clarify the intent of Congress, the bill says, “The definition of disability in this act shall be construed in favor of broad coverage.”

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, the principal Republican sponsor in the House, said, “Courts have focused too heavily on whether individuals are covered by the law, rather than on whether discrimination occurred.” ...

“This is one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation of our time,” said Representative Jim Langevin, Democrat of Rhode Island, who uses a wheelchair.
Lawrence Z. Lorber, a labor law specialist who represents employers, said the bill would change the outcome of “a slew of cases that were thrown out of court in the past.” Now, he said, “employees who have cancer or diabetes or learning disabilities will get their day in court and are more likely to get accommodations from employers.”

Lawmakers said that people with epilepsy, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis and other ailments had been improperly denied protection because their conditions could be controlled by medications or other measures. In a Texas case, for example, a federal judge said a worker with epilepsy was not disabled because he was taking medications that reduced his seizures.
In deciding whether a person is disabled, the bill says, courts should not consider the effects of “mitigating measures” like prescription drugs, hearing aids and artificial limbs. Moreover, it says, “an impairment that is episodic or in remission is a disability if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active.”

Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, the chief sponsor of the bill, said: “The Supreme Court decisions have led to a supreme absurdity, a Catch-22 situation. The more successful a person is at coping with a disability, the more likely it is the court will find that they are no longer disabled and therefore no longer covered under the A.D.A.”

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, said the bill, by establishing more generous coverage and protection, “will make a real difference in the lives of real people.”

The Washington Post wrote:

Rights for the Disabled: IT WENT largely unnoticed in a week of economic upheaval, but Congress approved one of the more momentous pieces of civil rights legislation in recent years. The bill, passed overwhelmingly in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate, will significantly broaden protections for the disabled. It instructs the Supreme Court to act "in favor of broad coverage," a distinction that should make it easier for disabled workers to claim discrimination. By explicitly arguing for a less constrictive interpretation, lawmakers sought to restore the intent of the original Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990; the Supreme Court has imposed a consistently narrow interpretation of the ADA. President Bush has said that he will sign the bill into law despite previous concerns that the legislation would spur excess litigation.

The legislation is the result of two years of remarkable cooperation between business groups and disability rights organizations. The compromise strikes a balance as it guarantees rights for workers with "actual or perceived impairments." For example, airlines can no longer discriminate against prospective pilots if the applicants employ "mitigating measures," such as corrective eyewear. ... [The bill protects intermittently disabled workers who can] prove they have a disability that "would substantially limit a major life activity when active." The bill will also provide protection, for the first time, to workers with serious ailments such as diabetes, epilepsy and cancer.

Business and disability groups are pleased with the final version of the bill and said that collaborating on the legislation should reduce the number of lawsuits over its implementation. The direct language of the bill, and the laudable cooperation that forged it, should also improve employment levels for the disabled. Two out of three people with significant disabilities are unemployed, a disturbing statistic that disability organizations say is unchanged from when the original ADA became law. This time, Congress's intent is clear, and we hope the courts follow it.

These two articles described case after case where the august Court cruelly denied protection to disabled individuals even though the intent of the Americans With Disabilities Act should have been clear. As the Times noted, The court went wrong by “eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect” under the 1990 law. As Senator Tom Harkin said: “The Supreme Court decisions have led to a supreme absurdity.” The question these articles brings to mind is, Why the needless cruelty of these excessively narrow interpretations? One would almost conclude that the only thing supreme about this Court is its supreme indifference to what matters in the lives of real people.

In the News: Disability Discrimination

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul - Walt Whitman, Preface to first edition of Leaves of Grass

A human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only. - James Agee

Reciprocity principle: If a remark or an action or an attitude would be seen as discriminatory if directed toward a minority, it is discriminatory for us. We have exactly the same civil rights, even if the justice system does not act as if we do. - Introduction: Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort

In Introduction: Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort I observed:

Our society, in part with the aid of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), is respectful with certain other types of disabilities. A couple years ago I used public transport in such European cities as Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, Munich, Paris, and Amsterdam. There was virtually no wheelchair accommodation. Characteristically, when I saw someone in a wheelchair, someone was along to help. Here, we wait patiently while a bus loads someone in a wheelchair (as decent people should). It is socially unacceptable to stare (again, as it should be). As with AIDS, an ethical public relations campaign has largely removed the stigma from these disabilities.

Not entirely. From Andrew Sullivan's Blog, two days ago:

John List and Uri Gneezy conducted a series of experiments to evaluate discrimination against disabled people seeking car repairs:

[W]e recruited several men between the ages of twenty-nine and forty-five to act as our secret agents. Half these men used wheelchairs and drove specially equipped vehicles. The other half were non-disabled, but in all cases the individuals hopped into a specially equipped vehicle for the disabled with a fresh ding on the side and headed to Chicago-area repair shops.

When our secret agents got to an auto repair shop they simply asked for a price quote to fix their car. What we found initially was shocking. The disabled were given quotes 30 percent higher than the quotes given to non-disabled for the exact same repair!

A more general case: 

As of today, if you’re disabled you can no longer go straight to the front of the line for all of your favorite rides at Disney World. It may sound like a callous joy-revoking move from the home of the Magic Kingdom, but, then again, the reason for the change is pretty appalling. Families, fully capable of waiting in line like everyone else, were scamming their way to the front of the line by, wait for it, hiring disabled–or perhaps more appropriately "disabled”–tour guides. The TODAY show went undercover this summer to expose the practice.

Here’s what they found:

Last May's investigation began with ads found on Craigslist in which tour guides bragged about their "disabled passes": "Let's cut the Disney lines together," "access to special entrances." Going undercover at Disneyland, the TODAY producer and his family hired two of those guides, with home video cameras rolling.

"I'm here to make sure everyone has fun at Disneyland and we get on as many rides as possible," one of the guides, named Mara, told the producer and his family. "I have a special card that's going to help us beat the lines." And she charged $50 to do it, getting them straight past long lines at such attractions as the Mad Tea Party ride. ...

When confronted one of the guides told TODAY: "We live in a capitalist country, and I don't feel like it's morally wrong."

This is a known moral two-step. Capitalism, of itself, is essentially amoral. As Dickens documented, in an earlier phase it cannibalized  its own work force through child labor. Our liberal society can tolerate capitalism only because it is heavily regulated. Morality is imposed on capitalism from outside by insider trading laws, the forty-hour work week, child labor laws, and various formal provisions against false advertising and fraud, among other strictures. The late journalist Henry Fairlie dissected this notion that "We live in a capitalist country" could in any sense be an ethical standard. In How Fares the Republic: The Liberal View of the Market:

For those who glorify “the market,” [Fairlie observed], “the purpose is always the same, to leave the economic realm in command over all others, to explain all human impulse, as it is expressed in the political process, in terms of nothing more than the ‘acquisitive instinct.’ ... they are in bondage to an economic view of human aspiration against which they have no defense once the supremacy of the political realm has been surrendered.”

We should always resist the triumph of the “economic view,” of the valorization of private gain at the expense of the public good, over the political and ethical realm.

On another weblog, In Retrospect: The Supreme Court and The Disabled documented a case in which the august Supreme Court slighted the disabled by interpreting away much of what little legal protection the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 provides:

In 2008, the year of Obama's first presidential election, the American Congress took action to remind the Supreme Court of the intent of existing disability employment law. Under the headline, Congress Passes Bill With Protections for Disabled, the New York Times wrote:

The bill expands the definition of disability and makes it easier for workers to prove discrimination. It explicitly rejects the strict standards used by the Supreme Court to determine who is disabled.

The bill declares that the court went wrong by “eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect” under the 1990 law.

“The Supreme Court misconstrued our intent,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House Democratic leader. “Our intent was to be inclusive.” ...

Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, the chief sponsor of the bill, said: “The Supreme Court decisions have led to a supreme absurdity, a Catch-22 situation. The more successful a person is at coping with a disability, the more likely it is the court will find that they are no longer disabled and therefore no longer covered under the A.D.A.”

The first post in this weblog specified an emphasis on the subset of the disabled who are especially stigmatized, generally because the disability results from a birth condition:

While the primary focus will be as the blog title suggests, this blog is about all of us who bear stigma because we are physically different—little people (Google "dwarf tossing"), those we call retards, those we call spastics, those we label with the h-word, as the late Ms. Ivins does above, and others—who are, as her folksy phrase implies, pervasively targeted in our society. These pages are about the civil rights of this Disability Cohort. This weblog seeks to document the current "I don't care" climate of disability discrimination, and to propose solutions.

But as the above examples reveal, there persists general disability discrimation among the "normal," "decent" people of our post-civil-rights-revolution society. For some possible remedies, see: Imagine That America Had Its Consciousness Raised

Internalized Discrimination: You're Not Supposed to SAY That

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

And my feeling wasn’t righteousness or pride in having told the truth, it was horror that I had committed such a faux pas, and that if things like that happened you just weren’t supposed to talk about them. And you certainly weren’t supposed to announce it at a dinner party. Kate Christensen

The political sphere is where you engage with your humanity. You have not merely a right, you have an obligation to participate, to make sure the people, as a whole, are able to make good decisions, and pass good laws and treat you as a human. And if one group subjugates another, if it says 'You can talk about anything you want, except everything that matters to you,' then you are not a full member of the polity. - Eric J. Miller (Emphasis Added)

The averted gaze and a smothering of empathy - Matthew Scully

The editors of this weblog have looked for other blogs about the stigmatized disabled, that are actually by the stigmatized disabled rather than by those who help us, and so far have not found any. If they exist, they are rare and not well known. The reason is not hard to find. "Normal," "decent" society tacitly admits that the disability cohort are a targeted minority (as in the quote by the late "liberal" columnist Ms. Ivins which begins this post), but has failed to provide the civil rights remedies enacted for other persecuted groups. "There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities." - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons
The just-world hypothesis works, in part, by blaming the stigmatized disabled for the pervasive social targeting which marginalizes and disenfranchises them. "A familiar experience of our people is the case where our family, friends, or co-workers imply that we should have done better, considering our background; and completely ignore the crucial fact of our lives: Discriminatory social attitudes reduce our life chances." It is considered divisive and socially unacceptable to speak out about our situation, even though people like Ms. Ivins can allude to our second-class citizen status in full confidence that this is readily understood by their readership.
We who write this remember that most of our lives we ourselves kept silent. And there is an internal struggle against convention every time we add another post to this weblog. A struggle, like that described below, against the tendency to feel guilty about having been honest about a situation which is widely covered up:

Novelist Kate Christensen, author of the memoir Blue Plate Special, talks to Dave Davies about exposing her father’s abuse:

I remember looking up at the group of grownups [at a dinner party], and feeling an upwelling of anger at my father. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I don’t even know where it came from, what caused me to blurt out, ‘My father hit my mother and she cried,’ to the group.

And there was a silence, and my father was ashen, and there was a sort of collective in-drawing of breath from the people in the group, and I realized that was just not cool, what I had just said. And on the way home my father yelled at me for it, and said, ‘Don’t ever do that again! Don’t ever say something like that in front of my friends! You just really embarrassed me, and everyone was horrified and you should never do that again.’

And my feeling wasn’t righteousness or pride in having told the truth, it was horror that I had committed such a faux pas, and that if things like that happened you just weren’t supposed to talk about them. And you certainly weren’t supposed to announce it at a dinner party. - Blue Plate Special

But if we do not attempt a narrative of liberation, who will?

This is the Son of Kings

The dramatic irony of Oedipus is that he doesn't know who he is. The reason receives somewhat less attention than expected: Oedipus' parents tried to have him murdered as a baby:

This is the Son of Kings

"Nor is that other point to be passed over, that the Sphinx was subdued by a lame man with club feet . . ." - Sir Francis Bacon

It was night in Thebes and the cry of a newborn echoed in the halls of the king. He waited, as custom prescribed, for the midwife's announcement. But when she arrived, she stared boldly at him for awhile. Finally she said, "Somethin's wrong with 'is foot."

The king hastened to the royal bed, where he found the queen lying with her back to the naked infant. "Do what you have to do," she murmured.

"I'll have Shepherd take it to the Grove," he said.

It was not yet dawn when Shepherd arrived at the Grove of the Lost. Unseen predators coughed beyond the lamp as he laid the tiny bundle on the bloodstained rock.

 

The story would have ended there, but as Shepherd made to depart he heard the infant sobbing quietly, hopelessly to itself. He took the child forthwith to his parents' home in a mountain village.

"Take care," he told them. "This is the son of kings."

"What shall we call him?" his father asked. But just then Shepherd's mother, having unwrapped the child, exclaimed, "Oh, the poor baby, his poor foot's all swollen."

"Very well," his father decided, "we'll call him Haltfoot."

When he was become a man, Haltfoot set off for Thebes with his most trusted companions, for he would look upon the faces of his parents. As they entered a crossroads, with the towers of the city gleaming in the distance, a mounted nobleman ordered them to step aside. But Haltfoot, having recognized the king from his likeness on a coin, said "It is written, A commoner shall pass, and none shall deny him."

At this the king made to run him through with his spear. But Haltfoot, stepping aside, seized the spear as it passed and threw the king into the road.

"Take him home," he instructed his companions. "Let him know the village where a prince spent his youth."

Whereupon the king asked, "Who are you?"

"I am your son, whom you sent to the Grove."

In the cool of the evening Haltfoot passed through the gates of Thebes and found the restless queen pacing the byways of the market.

Dawn was brightening the eastern horizon when Haltfoot rose from the royal bed. But the queen detained him, asking "Why did old Shepherd start when he saw you last night?" Haltfoot instead replied, "Do you know where the king is?"

"He rides to the royal estates.

"You are very like him in form," she added. "Who are you?"

But Haltfoot commanded, "Look upon me."

Now it was full day, and an unpitying sun blazed on the cold stones.

"I too am of royal blood," said Haltfoot. "Look upon me and know who I am."

The queen stared wildly at him. "Say no more," she cried. "By the Merciless, say no more."

Unpublished Remarks from a Disabled Person on the West Coast, Part 2

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul - Walt Whitman, Preface to first edition of Leaves of Grass

To be decent, every person has to make their own ethical decisions. . . . If you are conformist, you almost certainly violate universal ethical standards of decency.

Then they would ... thrust him out of the house, spitting on him and throwing stones as he ran away. ... He let it out and they all turned against him immediately. - A "sin-eater," described in Master and Commander: (vide infra)

She is looking straight at me with a grim, angry expression, so that I almost recoil. You should be ashamed, it seems to say. Unpublished Remarks from a Disabled Person on the West Coast, Part 1 

The following were conveyed to the authors of this blog by one of the stigmatized disabled:

From the first article in this series, hopefully it is beginning to be apparent what the purposes of the series are.

One purpose is to give a report from inside on one of the fronts in the battle against prejudicial discrimination.

Another purpose is a sociological perspective. Social identity is what makes ordinary human life work. For a person to have what Erving Goffman called a "spoiled identity" may be to "reduce his life chances."
 
  A third purpose is to argue that all prejudice is the same prejudice and all discrimination is the same discrimination. The enormous harm of prejudicial discrimination throughout the ages is the history of man's inhumanity to man. Prejudice is too monstrous to be a tool for any honorable purpose.

  A fourth purpose is to argue that such middle-class values as the idea of a common humanity; the idea of a connection with the past and the future and of a responsibility to our ancestors and our descendants; the idea of civility and of respect, so far as possible, for all people regardless of what group they are thought to belong to; the belief in uplift; and the idea that political freedom comes when "we the people," all of us with one spirit work together for the public good--to argue that these were favorable to the stigmatized. The contrary values of the sixties, in particular the tendency to frame solutions in terms of group identity, have been harmful to those with a spoiled identity.
 
  A fifth purpose is to draw attention to a pervasive double standard in discrimination. For example, the term "harelip" is as ugly and defamatory as the n-word, yet even when it clearly is being used to marginalize and disenfranchise those with cleft lips and palates, as in the phrase "if it harelips the governor," progressives stand calmly silent.
 
  A sixth purpose is to argue that "harelip" is the symbolic birth defect, the one which William Shakespeare and Mark Twain cite, and that those so stigmatized have a corresponding classic symbolic role, the scapegoat, the "sin eater,"* as Patrick O'Brien says in Master and Commander: in Wikipedia, "one who is blamed for misfortunes, often as a way of distracting attention from the real causes." [Ed. Note: The current Wikipedia no longer says this. It does say:

The biblical Jesus has been interpreted as a universal archetype for sin-eaters, offering his life to purify all of humanity of their sins.

 For the Disabled Archetype in myth, see the following post, This is the Son of Kings.]

 A seventh purpose is to draw attention to widespread prejudices, some with impressive scholarly pedigrees, which could contribute to the double standard mentioned above, which serve as the unspoken and unexamined rationale for targeting the stigmatized: "In a certain state it is indecent to go on living," the influential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote. "To vegetate on in cowardly dependence on physicians and medicaments after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost ought to entail the profound contempt of society."
 
  An eighth purpose is to ask you to imagine the life of the stigmatized. Would a complete stranger attack you as soon as he sees you? Three such cases (out of many) are described in the first article, and as seen above no less a personage than Nietzsche argues that this is legitimate. What would be the cumulative effect, if you went through each day never knowing who would turn on you? If you came to realize that in many cases where for others the answer is "yes," for you it is "no," would you have the same hopes, the same aspirations, the same goals, the same confidence as you do now? Imagine an existence characterized by reduced life chances.
 
  A ninth purpose is to draw attention to the dual nature of identity. There is the identity we have by ascription, which Goffman describes as "spoiled." But other sociologists, such as John Murray Cuddihy, have argued that a feature of liberal modernity is that individuals have their character by achievement and not by ascription. Randall Kennedy, in "My Race Problem -- And Ours," [see Defining Liberalism: Randall Kennedy's 'My Race Problem—And Ours', My "Liberalism" Problem—And Ours] argued that "a brute fact does not dictate the proper human response to it." For the stigmatized, there are terrible consequences attendant on accepting the way many persons see them. A difficult choice is forced on them: To accept the "profound contempt" as their due; or to reject it at the possible cost of being accused of failing to know their place. As a friend once told me, when someone once asked him, "As an outsider, what do you think of the human race?" he answered, "It gives me a valuable perspective."

(*)From Master and Commander: "I have a curious case ..."

What is his name?
Cheslin: he has a hare lip. ...
Yet he has been of singular service to men and women, in his time.
In what way?
He was a sin-eater. ...
Will you tell me about him? ...
When a man died Cheslin would be sent for; there would be a piece of bread on the dead man's breast; he would eat it, taking the sins upon himself. Then they would push a silver piece into his hand and thrust him out of the house, spitting on him and throwing stones as he ran away. ... He let it out and they all turned against him immediately.

Unpublished Remarks from a Disabled Person on the West Coast, Part 1

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul - Walt Whitman, Preface to first edition of Leaves of Grass

To be decent, every person has to make their own ethical decisions. . . . If you are conformist, you almost certainly violate universal ethical standards of decency.

The following were conveyed to the authors of this blog by one of the stigmatized disabled:

Transit Route 359 from downtown past one of the city's lake parks, in the Year of Our Lord 2006, uses 60-ft New Flyer hi-floor coaches which have long seats facing each other at the front. I like these seats, and as I sit in one of them one spring afternoon, relaxed, anticipating the view of the canal and the coastal mountains when the route crosses the bridge, I commit the error of an unguarded glance at a woman directly across from me. She is looking straight at me with a grim, angry expression, so that I almost recoil. You should be ashamed, it seems to say.

 Although she has caught me by surprise, I am not actually surprised; and though in a sense I understand what is happening, in another sense I never quite do understand these incidents. She probably wouldn't look at a minority that way, or for that matter a person in a wheelchair. The era when help wanted ads contained phrases such as "No colored," or "No handicaps need apply" has passed. But as for us--for my kind--it's as if the civil rights revolution has never happened.

 It is a few months earlier. A passenger waiting on a bench at a downtown bus stop is looking fixedly at a spot a couple of inches below my eyes. A few minutes later I glance back. Her gaze is still locked. Now I face her: sometimes this will cause such people to realize what they are doing, and they will look away. But not this time.

   I sometimes think that we are the symbolic people. Sociologists have studied us, and the philosophers have mentioned us in their remarks about the human condition; Shakespeare refers to us by our familiar epithet, but with his usual charity, in "King Lear" ("This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. He begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock. He gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.") and in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" ("And the blots of Nature's hand Shall not in their issue stand; Never mole, hare lip, nor scar, Nor mark prodigious, such as are Despised in nativity, Shall upon their children be"). We are similarly mentioned, but unkindly, in the movie "Casino," in an article by the "liberal" columnist Molly Ivins at time.com, and Mark Twain makes cruel sport of us in Huckleberry Finn. ("Mary Jane's nineteen, Susan's fifteen, and Joanna's about fourteen--that's the one that gives herself to good works and has a hare-lip.")
   It is some years back. I'm waiting by an elevator at City Hall, where I work for the City. Someone from another department points at me and says something to a waiting minority, whose eyes widen in shock as she looks at me. He repeats it, louder this time, so I can hear it. "Harelip," he says. "Harelip."