Unpublished Remarks from a Disabled Person on the West Coast, Part 2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 Unpublished Remarks from a Disabled Person on the West Coast, Part 1 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.