On November 13, 2014, Disability Scoop reported:
The Obama administration is reminding schools of their wide-ranging responsibilities to students with disabilities who struggle with speech and other communication difficulties.
In guidance [PDF] issued Wednesday, federal officials said the nation’s public schools have obligations under three separate laws to “ensure that communication with students with hearing, vision and speech disabilities is as effective as communication with all other students.”
An advocate for the civil rights of the disabled warned of cases where this process may be administered in a discriminatory fashion:
Denise Marshall at the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a special education advocacy organization, said her group welcomes the guidance to schools, but she worries that it is not clear enough and could lead to further hurdles for students.
“Our members have seen a lot of schools try to force a student to use a communication aid or service that is clearly not appropriate just to rule it out. This causes significant delays and makes many students feel like laboratory test subjects and robs them of their dignity,” Marshall said.
From previous posts on the causes of the tendency to subject the disabled to discriminatory treatment:
“Spoiled Identity”: When the Disabled Are Not In “A State of Society” - In Pauline Maier's American Scripture we find:
In June 1776 the Virginia Convention ... amended the ... draft so it
said that "all men are by nature equally free and independent" and had
"certain inherent rights" ... "when they enter into a state of society."
The statement ... freed the state of Virginia from an obligation to
recognize and protect the inherent rights of slaves since ... slaves had
never entered Virginia's society, which was confined to whites. - Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, p. 193 (Emphasis added)
The post continues:
What is significant here is that the basic human rights—normal human rights—are not guaranteed simply because a person is human, but only if society accepts the person.
The "spoiled identity" which sociologists recognize in such stigmatized
people as the disabled, and especially those with birth defects, often
means a specific lifetime exclusion from society. The results, as
implied by the following defamatory passage from the Time Magazine web site, can be devastating:
Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com
The sociologist notes that the effect is reduced "life chances":
Goffman [says] “The term stigma, then, will be used to refer to ... a special kind of relationship between attribute and stereotype” (2). Observing
that “the person with stigma is not quite human” (3), Goffman explains
that the our unconscious assumptions lead us to “exercise varieties of
discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly,
reduce his life chances.”
More on the Virginia Declaration of Rights:
Edmund
Pendleton proposed the line "when they enter into a state of society"
which allowed slave holders to support the declaration of universal
rights which would be understood not to apply to slaves as they were not
part of civil society.
Molly
Ivins' "Governor," if he could actually wake up with a widely
scapegoated birth defect, would find everything profoundly changed. He
would suddenly find himself outside of society.
And
to be outside of society would be, as the framers of the Virginia
Declaration of Rights implied, to be denied the "universal rights" which
normal, decent people accord to each other. “The person with stigma is not quite human.”
From Here and There in Disability Discrimination:
Some time ago ABC News reported
another cerebral palsy discrimination case: “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.”:
Jennifer
Fitzsimmons, the chief assistant city prosecutor for this case, says in
the three years she's been in this role, she's never seen anything like
this.
"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."
After
Fitzsimmons reviewed the Knight family's complaint, a police report
based on a phone call from the Knight family, and the video captured by
[her mother-in-law] Prince, she decided to press charges. ...
Bailey,
who works as a truck driver, was charged twice. He was originally
charged for aggravated menacing, a misdemeanor of the first degree. In
this charge, the victim was Knight, an incident she says took place the
same day as the bus stop scene.
Bailey, she said, "was swinging a tow chain on his porch, saying he was going to choke me until I stopped twitching. I sent my kids with my mother-in-law to leave with them. My husband called the sheriff." ...
"I don't think this sentence will change things because it hasn't so far," said Knight.
Knight says living next door to the Baileys affects their everyday lives.
Just
last summer, said Knight, 9-year-old Joseph Bailey came over to play
with Knight's children and brought over a pocket knife, threatening to
"cut [Hope] up," followed by name calling. That harassment continued
into the school year.
Since the bus stop incident, Knight has
spoken with the bus driver and the school's principal. Knight now drives
Hope to school every day while her other two children ride another bus
to school.
Hope was born 29 weeks premature after Knight was
involved in a head-on auto collision. When she was born, Hope weighed
only two pounds, 12 ounces, which caused several medical problems
resulting in two brain surgeries. Knight says her daughter fought for
her life the first two years.
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 Fitzsimmons. "I think conversation
starts progress, and I think if it can bring something else to light, it
would be good." (Emphasis added)
We reported on previous cerebral palsy cases here and here.
We noted the double standard in respect to the civil rights of minorities and the civil rights of the disabled here.
Here we asked for a landmark disability civil rights case.
In 2004 Martha Nussbaum discussed the idea of shame as an instrument of public policy. Shaming those who willfully degrade and disregard the public good, it was argued, would advance civil society. She said:
Shame has been a prominent topic in recent discussions of punishment. Theorists and practitioners have favored bringing back the blush on the face, so to speak, punishing people by some form of public humiliation instead of a fine or community service. Shame punishments have a long history: Consider the "scarlet letter" and the pillory. The recent revival of interest in such punishments is closely connected with a sense (on the part of communitarians) that we have lost our public sense of shame, the collective social boundaries that shame once policed.
Nussbaum put this in the context of disability discrimination:
On the other side, our society also has been thinking a lot about how to protect citizens from shame. One can see this in particular in recent public debates about citizens with disabilities, where much attention is given to how both employment and education can be non-stigmatizing. ... An interest in shame in punishment is ultimately inconsistent with respect for the equal dignity of all citizens.
A characteristic of disability stigma is the tendency to dehumanize disabled people, denying them respect and dignity. Scapegoating—the tendency to project fear of one's own faults on a targeted group—underlies the “disgust” which precedes shame:
As
psychological research shows, people tend to project disgust properties
onto groups of people in their own society, who come to figure as
surrogates for people's anxieties about their own animality. By branding
members of these groups as disgusting, foul, smelly, slimy, the
dominant group is able to distance itself even further from its own
animality.
Emotions such as anger can produce corrective action. Nussbaum observes, “Some emotions are essential to law and to public principles of justice: anger at wrongdoing, fear for our safety, compassion for the pain of others, all these are good reasons to make laws that protect people in their rights.”
But shame and disgust are nonpolitical in a liberal society:
I think that even the moralized form of disgust is problematic, for two reasons. First of all, it is frequently a screen for the more primitive kind of disgust. When people express disgust about a group whom they take to be a source of social decay, citing moral grounds, there is often something much uglier going on. ... Second, even when the moralized disgust is not a screen for something else, it is ultimately an unproductive social attitude, since its direction is anti-social. Anger is constructive: Its content is, "This harm should not have occurred, and the imbalance should be righted." Most philosophical definitions of anger include the thought that the wrong should be punished or somehow made good. Disgust, by contrast, expresses a wish to separate oneself from a source of pollution; its social reflex is to run away. (Emphasis added)
In "Spoiled Identity": When the Disabled are Not in "A State of Society" this weblog noted:
What is significant here is that the basic human rights—normal human rights—are not guaranteed simply because a person is human, but only if society accepts the person.
The "spoiled identity" which sociologists recognize in such stigmatized
people as the disabled, and especially those with birth defects, often
means a specific lifetime exclusion from society.
Martha Nussbaum notes the collectivist impulse motivating many shamers:
The
prominent defenders of the appeal to disgust and shame in law have all
been communitarians of one or another stripe ([Lord] Devlin, [Amitai]
Etzioni, [Leon] Kass), and this, I claim, is no accident. What their
thought shares is the idea that society ought to have at its core a
homogeneous group of people whose ways of living, of having sex, of
looking and being, are defined as "normal." People who deviate from that
norm may then be stigmatized, and penalized by law, even if their
conduct causes no harm.
Such surrender to conformism is contrary to the liberalism underlying the founding of the United States:
My
study of disgust and shame shows that these emotions threaten key
values of a liberal society, especially equal respect for people and for
their liberty. Disgust and shame are inherently hierarchical; they set
up ranks and orders of human beings. They are also inherently connected
with restrictions on liberty in areas of non-harmful conduct. For both
of these reasons, I believe, anyone who cherishes the key democratic
values of equality and liberty should be deeply suspicious of the appeal
to those emotions in the context of law and public policy.
Further reading in Martha Nussbaum's thought on human dignity:
Let’s start with an assumption that is widely shared: that all human beings are equal bearers of human dignity. It is widely agreed that government must treat that dignity with equal respect. But what is it to treat people with equal respect in areas touching on religious belief and observance? ...
On the whole, the accommodationist position has been dominant in U. S. law and public culture - ever since George Washington wrote a famous letter to the Quakers explaining that he would not require them to serve in the military because the “conscientious scruples of all men” deserve the greatest “delicacy and tenderness.” - Veiled Threats [NYT], 2010
Poet Stephen Kuusisto of Planet of the Blind writes:
Every day I wake up and read horror stories about the disabled—some stories come my way via social media, others from traditional news sources. Whatever their source they all have the same sub-text: whether the abuser is a policeman, a social worker, a family member, a bureaucrat—disability life is still imagined to be reduced life even 24 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Note the word “imagined”—all of the abusers in the articles below imagined their victims were negligible people, or worse, weren’t people at all. The sheer breadth, the legion of these stories, tells us that these ugly imaginations are fed like bacteria in a petri dish. I’ve heard ugly sermons where disability is a metaphor for lack of faith; heard ugly radio where social services for the disabled are described as nothing short of fraud; heard college professors demeaning students with disabilities; heard bureaucrats and physicians and merchants all say in varying tones of disgust or approbation that they don’t have time for disability—this human condition thing is so inconvenient.
Concerning medical discrimination, William Peace of Bad Cripple writes:
I need to find an internist in the Syracuse area. With a working cell phone I made dozens of calls this morning. I contacted 20 different internists--not one physician would take me on as a patient. The reasons varied.
"The office is not wheelchair accessible".
"Dr. So and So does not accept patients who are paralyzed. You need to see a specialist".
"We do not have an accessible exam table".
"We do not take your insurance carrier".
"Dr So and So is not accepting new patients. The office cannot recommend another physician ".
... Within 90 minutes the proverbial light bulb went off--cold calling an internists office was a waste of time. ... for much of my life I have been refused as a patient. ... The sad fact is well over 20% of people with a disability are turned away from doctor offices.
Cerebral palsy writer Independence Chick writes:
But then I realized that on the other side of the coin are people who scream, “Entitlement!” whenever the PWD [Person With Disability] is given any latitude at all, or any particular help that the temporarily able-bodied population can’t access and in fairness, should not access. These are people who claim PWDs shouldn’t have SSI because it’s “living off the government.” It’s teachers who claim that, “Yes, Melissa has dyslexia, but she shouldn’t be read aloud to during tests–that’s an entitlement and unfair to the other kids.” It’s county social workers who claim adults with disabilities are “entitled” to group home placement, but not to lives of their own. That’s being “uppity” and “entitled.”
That's what disabled people are called if they are not humble and apologetic. “Uppity.” One of us worked the last few years before retirement as administrative support for a public transit vehicle maintenance shop. A co-worker told him the mechanics considered him “stuck-up.” (Since he spent decades, before he confronted the climate of discrimination, playing what Spike Lee calls the “minstrel” and making self-deprecating remarks in order to buy acceptance, he considered “stuck-up” a complement.)
Some time ago ABC News reported another cerebral palsy discrimination case: “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.”:
Jennifer Fitzsimmons, the chief assistant city prosecutor for this case, says in the three years she's been in this role, she's never seen anything like this.
"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."
After Fitzsimmons reviewed the Knight family's complaint, a police report based on a phone call from the Knight family, and the video captured by [her mother-in-law] Prince, she decided to press charges. ...
Bailey, who works as a truck driver, was charged twice. He was originally charged for aggravated menacing, a misdemeanor of the first degree. In this charge, the victim was Knight, an incident she says took place the same day as the bus stop scene.
Bailey, she said, "was swinging a tow chain on his porch, saying he was going to choke me until I stopped twitching. I sent my kids with my mother-in-law to leave with them. My husband called the sheriff." ...
"I don't think this sentence will change things because it hasn't so far," said Knight.
Knight says living next door to the Baileys affects their everyday lives.
Just last summer, said Knight, 9-year-old Joseph Bailey came over to play with Knight's children and brought over a pocket knife, threatening to "cut [Hope] up," followed by name calling. That harassment continued into the school year.
Since the bus stop incident, Knight has spoken with the bus driver and the school's principal. Knight now drives Hope to school every day while her other two children ride another bus to school.
Hope was born 29 weeks premature after Knight was involved in a head-on auto collision. When she was born, Hope weighed only two pounds, 12 ounces, which caused several medical problems resulting in two brain surgeries. Knight says her daughter fought for her life the first two years.
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 Fitzsimmons. "I think conversation starts progress, and I think if it can bring something else to light, it would be good." (Emphasis added)
We reported on previous cerebral palsy cases here and here.
We noted the double standard in respect to the civil rights of minorities and the civil rights of the disabled here.
Here we asked for a landmark disability civil rights case.
Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. -Molly Ivins, Time.com
In Pauline Maier's American Scripture we find:
In June 1776 the Virginia Convention ... amended the ... draft so it
said that "all men are by nature equally free and independent" and had
"certain inherent rights" ... "when they enter into a state of society."
The statement ... freed the state of Virginia from an obligation to
recognize and protect the inherent rights of slaves since ... slaves had
never entered Virginia's society, which was confined to whites. - Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, p. 193 (Emphasis added)
In Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote (synopsis):
The
dwarf, the disfigured, the blind man, the homosexual, the ex-mental
patient and the member of a racial or religious minority all share one
characteristic: they are all socially "abnormal", and therefore in danger of being considered less than human. Whether ordinary people react by rejection, by over-hearty acceptance or by plain embarrassment, their main concern is with such an individual's deviance, not with the whole of his personality.
"Stigma" is a study of situations where normal and abnormal meet, and
of the ways in which a stigmatized person can develop a more positive
social and personal identity. (Emphasis added)
What is significant here is that the basic human rights—normal human rights—are not guaranteed simply because a person is human, but only if society accepts the person. The "spoiled identity" which sociologists recognize in such stigmatized people as the disabled, and especially those with birth defects, often means a specific lifetime exclusion from society. The results, as implied by the following defamatory passage from the Time Magazine web site, can be devastating:
Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com
The sociologist notes that the effect is reduced "life chances":
Goffman [says] “The term stigma, then, will be used to refer to ... a special kind of relationship between attribute and stereotype” (2). Observing
that “the person with stigma is not quite human” (3), Goffman explains
that the our unconscious assumptions lead us to “exercise varieties of
discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly,
reduce his life chances.”
More on the Virginia Declaration of Rights:
Edmund
Pendleton proposed the line "when they enter into a state of society"
which allowed slave holders to support the declaration of universal
rights which would be understood not to apply to slaves as they were not
part of civil society.
Molly Ivins' "Governor," if he could actually wake up with a widely scapegoated birth defect, would find everything profoundly changed. He would suddenly find himself outside of society.
And to be outside of society would be, as the framers of the Virginia Declaration of Rights implied, to be denied the "universal rights" which normal, decent people accord to each other. “The person with stigma is not quite human.”
For example, Independence Chick says, in I Am Disability,
What if, instead, we gave Disability some new lines to say? I would rather hear it say something like:
“I am Disability.
I know I look scary, and it’s true that I will influence, to a degree, what the person with me can do. However, I hold within me many surprises, dreams, hopes, and expectations.
I will challenge you to think in new ways. I will teach you that there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers–only options. If I make it hard for your child to write with a pencil, there’s no need to apologize for or fret about that, because there are computers. If I have taken away your child’s physical voice, I can show you how to get it back through assistive communication technology.
I can teach you and your child to stand up for yourselves. Along your journey, you will meet people who believe I am a monster or a disease and that your loved one is infected, defective, or ‘less.’ I never wanted these people to do so, and I am sorry. But I can also teach you to respond to them–gracefully, assertively, and yes, angrily if you must. I will give you and your loved one courage that you never knew you had.”
An article in Andrew Sullivan's The Dish mentions the “social entitlement” of those who conform to standard expectations.
Another article in The Dish discusses tactics the disabled use in online dating:
Elizabeth Heideman examines how wheelchair users and others with visible disabilities navigate the world of online dating:
Because of disability trolling, some people may hesitate to disclose their differences right away. Wheelchair users may only post photos that show their bodies from the waist up, or people with visual impairments may not mention their guide dogs and white canes in bios. Only when they schedule an in-person date with someone do they mention their disability.
Tiffiny Carlson calls this “dropping the D-bomb.” Carlson, a writer who uses a wheelchair due to spinal cord injury, has been online dating since 1998. “I always disclose my disability right away in my profile and photos,” she says via email. Just like a messy divorce-in-progress or the fact that there are three kids under the age of 10 waiting at home, Carlson feels that disability is an important fact that potential partners should know from the beginning.
At the end of July a Department of Labor employee wrote:
Earlier this year, the LBJ Presidential Library in Texas held a summit to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. In President Obama’s speech at the event, he reflected on this continuing legacy, to both America at large and him personally:
Because of the Civil Rights movement, because of the laws President Johnson signed, new doors of opportunity and education swung open for everybody — not all at once, but they swung open. Not just blacks and whites, but also women and Latinos; and Asians and Native Americans; and gay Americans and Americans with a disability. They swung open for you, and they swung open for me. And that’s why I’m standing here today — because of those efforts, because of that legacy. And that means we’ve got a debt to pay. (Emphasis added)
But as noted in several previous posts, there is little civil rights action as such in cases of disability discrimination:
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
And the following defamatory remark remains on the web site of a major national magazine:
Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com
A revision of a post from September, 2013:
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 middle-class values were favorable to the stigmatized. These include:
- 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.
- The idea that political freedom comes when "we the people," all of us with one spirit work together for the public good.
The contrary values of the counterculture, 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."
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? 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," 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. When a disabled person was asked, "As an outsider, what do you think of the human race?" he answered, "It gives me a valuable perspective."
/**************************************/
(*) In Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity
(**) The sociologist notes that the effect is reduced "life chances"
(***) Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com
(****) 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. - Lear, Act III, Scene iv
Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar, Nor mark prodigious such as are, Despised in nativity, Shall upon their children be. - A Midsummer-Night's Dream. Act V, Scene ii
(*****) 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. - Huckleberry Finn
(#) “The invalid is a parasite on society. In a certain state it is indecent to go on living. 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.” - Nietzsche
(##) from particularism to universalism, from ascription to achievement, ... - The Ordeal of Civility
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
In Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote:
The
dwarf, the disfigured, the blind man, the homosexual, the ex-mental
patient and the member of a racial or religious minority all share one
characteristic: they are all socially "abnormal", and therefore in
danger of being considered less than human. Whether ordinary people
react by rejection, by over-hearty acceptance or by plain embarrassment,
their main concern is with such an individual's deviance, not with the
whole of his personality. "Stigma" is a study of situations where normal
and abnormal meet, and of the ways in which a stigmatized person can
develop a more positive social and personal identity. (Emphasis added)
An entry by Deborah Fallows in James Fallows' column three years ago illustrates this:
The
real story here is about the situation of dwarves in China. Airen, 矮人,
or small people. When we lived in Shanghai a few years ago, I happened
to be walking behind a dwarf, on a lane near where we lived. Everyone
coming our way slowed down to point and laugh at him. Later many people
explained to me that laughing is the behavior of embarrassment, and that
the Chinese were uncomfortable and embarrassed at seeing someone who
looked unusual and so different from the norm. (Emphasis added)
The rules of behavior in middle class America tend to prevent such openly discriminatory behavior on the street.* But as many of the previous posts on this weblog demonstrate, disability discrimination—a violation of our own professed values—is prevalent throughout our society. The sociologist notes that the effect is reduced "life chances":
Goffman [says] “The
term stigma, then, will be used to refer to ... a special kind
of relationship between attribute and stereotype” (2).
Observing that “the person with stigma is not quite human” (3), Goffman
explains that the our unconscious assumptions lead us to “exercise
varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often
unthinkingly, reduce his life chances.”
Goffman's work, dating from 1963, lists "racial ... minority" as a stigmatizing abnormality. In the last half century, our civil society, in a historic political, legal, and social effort, achieved a moral revolution which rendered the great sociologist's conclusion no longer correct. (See Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King, Selma, etc.)
At a party for state government employees in the sixties, an accountant apologized for driving a Falcon. "[N-word's] car," he said. He wouldn't say that today, because the underlying attitude is no longer socially acceptable.
Stigma is not fate. Nor is disability stigma "the way things are." As Imagine That America Had Its Consciousness Raised argued, such public measures as "A civil rights act for the disabled, since the disabled were omitted from the Civil Rights Act" could do for the stigmatized disabled what the Civil Rights Act did for racial minorities.
Consider stigma to be nothing more or less than prejudice dressed up in academic jargon.
(*) To
violate cultural values of equality and tolerance is the sign of a
bigoted individual, as in the "case law" epigraph above, or of a
subculture which does not share mainstream values concerning civility.
(A person with a cleft palate reports that, while waiting for a bus, he
noticed a group of minority youth pointing and snickering, giving each
other high fives, etc.)
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
First, tentative conclusions about the formal (omitted from civil rights) and informal (lax or hostile social standards) situation of the stigmatized disabled:
- Disability is not a protected class.
- Protected class sensitivity has largely substituted for the moral obligation to be just no matter who is being targeted.
- If a group isn't in a protected class then it is not necessary to worry about discriminating against its members; that is, Open Season on those (disadvantaged people who aren't a race or a gender) not covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
- Social standards (see Time Magazine's defamatory remark at the top of this article) have been substituted for the ethical standards of universal justice.
- The true significance of society's acceptance of the above Time Magazine remark isn't that is defamatory. It is that just about everybody understands that to be inflicted with the disability it refers to (or certain others) is to become a social outcast.
- For them, it is as if the civil rights revolution had never happened.
From About Dwarf Aware:
Here are some myths:
• Little people love poking fun at how they appear to others.
• Little people only date other little people.
• They must agree with being called a midget or treated as one because they are always on t.v. dressed up as funny characters.
• Dwarfs cannot handle themselves in the workplace; they scare clients away and are always absent. They need too much special equipment.
From a previous post about an article by a person with cerebral palsy:
Many
of those who quickly object to minority discrimination deny disability
discrimination even as it is happening right in front of them. As
commenter jacalope observes "The prevailing attitude seems to be that":
1. My disability isn't real
2. My disability is my own fault
3. If I tried harder I could just get over it
4. I'd magically get over it if I only tried my new acquaintance's latest diet/supplement/acupuncturist/exercise regimen
Why
are these discriminatory attitudes alive and well in what Sarah Nielsen
called a "progressive city?" Because, since the civil rights
revolution, discrimination against minorities is subject to punishment
under the laws. Social attitudes followed. "No colored need apply"
notices were replaced by affirmative action. Society got the message. No
one would think of telling a person of color, who described a
discriminatory incident or attitude, to "just get over it."
From "Maxwell," a person with a cleft palate:
He was renewing his driver's license when the state employee taking his picture said, "Cheese, whiskey, harelip."
He was attending a party in the home of his son and daughter-in-law, who are community college employees, when a guest who teaches at a community college started asking derogatory rhetorical questions about where he worked before retirement. The questions were such that other guests started backing away from the person the public college teacher was targeting. But none of the guests, most of whom were de facto state employees, objected to the teacher's discriminatory remarks, even when the teacher compared the disabled person to someone else they knew who was, in the teacher's words, "funny looking."
Not-in-a-protected class Open Season means that disabled people find themselves at risk of being publicly humiliated when they attend parties. In "Maxwell's" case, this meant that a party can prove unsafe even when it is comprised of two classes of people—his family, and employees of public institutions with strict anti-harassment policies—of whom one would expect better.
The above Dwarf Aware site lists facts which reveal prevalent derogatory expectations:
• Around 80% of babies born with dwarfism come from average stature parents.
• They are of the same intelligence as the more general public.
• They are surgeons, lawyers, teachers, athletes, artists, journalists, and almost every other profession you can think of.
• The unemployment rate is higher than any other able-bodied group of people.
• The “M” word, or “midget”, is offensive to most little people. It does not refer to any one type of dwarfism. It is just a bad word.
• My son has a disproportionate type of dwarfism, that means his upper arms and legs, for instance, are shorter than average. He is perfectly proportioned for who he is, but is not the same, proportion-wise as taller folks.
• Persons with Achondroplasia, (Achons), compare equally in intelligence, talent, and ability to get the job done.
• Achons have medical issues, but rarely ask for assistance. They do have the same life expectancy as anyone else.
Remedies suggested in earlier article Imagine That America Had Its Consciousness Raised:
Needed:
- A landmark disability discrimination civil rights case. ACLU, where are you? Ada.gov, where are you?
- Anti-defamation campaign (Time.com, take note!).
- A civil rights act for the disabled, since the disabled were omitted from the Civil Rights Act.
- A
disability ombudsman in each state and each school district to which
any adult, and any student, respectively, can go when disability
discrimination occurs.
- The addition of specific disability harassment language to the existing anti-harassment guidelines.
- For Shame! campaign.
- Ad showing a minority being bullied beside one showing disabled being bullied, saying one is just as wrong as the other.
- Spots showing celebrities saying “I'm against disability discrimination, are you?”
- Ad showing teacher rebuking student for slighting disabled classmate.
- A speech by a national leader citing instances of disability discrimination and calling for change.
- National leader describing incidents such as [Time Magazine's] remark as the product of irrational animus and calling for change.
- Counseling for the disabled, to deal with the pressure to feel shame, guilt, social inadequacy, etc.
- Proactive response training, such as how to respond if someone says, “How nice you're in the choir—it must help with your speech.”
- The
addition of ethical training to the training of physicians and other
medical staff, to remind them that it is unprofessional to treat
disability as a social sin rather than a morally neutral medical
condition.
- Institutions
(meeting places, organizations, "meet people like you" events, etc.) to
counteract the social isolation of many disabled people.
Medical discrimination is a surprisingly widespread problem. Not only support personnel but physicians themselves, in many cases, do not treat stigmatizing disabilities as morally neutral medical conditions (which is what their professions require). They treat disability—particularly when resulting from birth condition—as a mark of shame. In such cases the disabled patient is treated as if he or she should feel guilty, and anticipate substandard medical care as all they can expect under the circumstances.
Example: The visibly disabled elderly patient who found that his new physician, without giving a reason or offering a substitute, refused to continue his sleep medication.
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
A disability discrimination attorney suggested the Independence Chick blog as a resource for the readers of The Politics of Cleft Palate. As an example of the value of publications written from first-hand knowledge of disability in the United States today, see her post, Your Christmas Bonus: A List of Thought-Provoking Books from the Independence Zone! which includes:
Why I Burned my Book and Other Essays on Disability (nonfiction, author Paul Longmore, adults only)–Paul Longmore gives readers food for thought in this collection of disability-related essays on topics such as why the ADA was not the benchmark movement some thought it was, disability stereotypes in film and other media, and the criminally low expectations of people with disabilities in society.
and
Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve, and the Case Against Disability Rights (nonfiction, author Mary Johnson, adults only)–A landmark book exploring the truth behind the ADA, the case against disability rights, the case for disability rights, and the fact that our society, though “enlightened” in many other ways, consistently still fails to see disability as deserving of real civil rights legislation and attitudes.
The Introduction to The Politics of Cleft Palate, last June, agreed with Independence Chick on the ADA:
The Google search site:ada.gov civil rights
turns up references referring to the act as a civil rights act (and you
will also find "affirmative action" on ada.gov). The ADA is no such
thing. The ADA has done good work concerning accommodations for the
disabled in the workplace and in public transit; but neither it, nor any
other element of our decent society has done anything about defamatory
remarks (again, note the passage from a national magazine which begins this post), or about the inescapable climate of discrimination.
Independence Chick also discusses an issue explored in this weblog, the inability "to see disability as deserving of real civil rights legislation and attitudes."
Our treatment began with the "case law" note near the top of this post, which refers to the following 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."
We continued, in Courts and the Civil Rights of the Disabled, suggesting that the ad hoc mechanism of "protected class" left out the disabled:
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.
Independence Chick in turn references the site Disability is Natural, whose resource list includes:
http://secondchancetolive.wordpress.com is hosted by Craig Phillips, "a traumatic/acquired brain injury survivor, with a message of encouragement, motivation, empowerment, and hope."
www.sarahstup.com is hosted by an accomplished teen writer and artist who has autism.
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
In the previous post, Sarah Nielsen on Cerebral Palsy Discrimination in a Progressive City, we discussed an article in "The Stranger" by Sarah Nielsen, a newcomer to Seattle who has cerebral palsy. Many of the early comments tend to corroborate the central issue revealed by the article: as contrasted with discrimination against minorities covered by the Civil Rights Act, in many cases disability discrimination is still practiced openly. The double standard present in the late Molly Ivins's remark above (would time.com have published it if she'd used the n-word instead of the h-word?) showed up in the early comments. [The names of the critical commenters--except for the two pulled for "trolling"--are in Ms. Nielsen's article. We here refer to them as "anonymous."]
Many of those who quickly object to minority discrimination deny disability discrimination even as it is happening right in front of them. As commenter jacalope observes "The prevailing attitude seems to be that":
1. My disability isn't real
2. My disability is my own fault
3. If I tried harder I could just get over it
4. I'd magically get over it if I only tried my new acquaintance's latest diet/supplement/acupuncturist/exercise regimen
Why are these discriminatory attitudes alive and well in what Sarah Nielsen called a "progressive city?" Because, since the civil rights revolution, discrimination against minorities is subject to punishment under the laws. Social attitudes followed. "No colored need apply" notices were replaced by affirmative action. Society got the message. No one would think of telling a person of color, who described a discriminatory incident or attitude, to "just get over it."
Who is covered and who isn't covered sends a message. There's no affirmative action for cerebral palsy, for cleft palate, for little people, or for all those who are born different (unless the difference is race or gender). "There's nothing out there regarding
disabilities," said Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons, above. That is, there has apparently never been a landmark civil rights case regarding a disabled person.
Again, society got the message. anonymous:
So you reject:
empathy
normal Seattle passive-aggressiveness
an obviously crazy homeless person
someone who mistakenly talks to your boyfriend instead of you
a mother who was caught in a sudden confrontation
Honey, those are all things we all deal with. It's called the real world.
In Internalized Discrimination: You're Not Supposed to SAY That, we wrote:
"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 [speak out as Sarah Nielsen did].
Concerning denial and silence, in the article under discussion Sarah Nielsen wrote, "It was something I hid from, something I denied, and it was relatively easy to do so, because a lot of people seemed to notice other things about me before they noticed that."
As commenter Someone_nice observes:
Some of these comments are just proving your point. Sarah, keep your chin up. Many of us out here applaud your honesty.
Commenter clashfan adds:
Exploding at a homeless man? He started screaming first, and she was scared for her and her boyfriend's safety. I'd be angry, too, if someone accosted me like that. Her reaction was appropriate.
But the negative comments reveal that our liberated society has an underside which is seldom talked about. There is a substantial subclass for which it is as if the civil rights revolution never happened. They are not protected, and the following commenters felt free to make degrading accusations in print: In the following, commenter anonymous punishes Ms. Nielsen for speaking out about discrimination by accusing her of greed and egotism:
Yeah, kind of an odd little mishmash of interactions. It sounds like more people in Seattle are acknowledging your disability than you are used to from other places you've lived. I'd tend to agree with #9 that these all seem like things you'd be able to deal with at 30 years old. You want some real Seattle attitude? I think you're just using your disability as an excuse to write an article. Probably even had plans for an entire memoir before the bookstore clerk shot that down.
Another demeans her writing skills with a series of non sequiturs:
I am disappointed in this piece, as it promises, but does not deliver. First, we are teased with:
"I'm from New Orleans, where anything goes..."
Then: "...but nearly every time I step out of the house, some weird shit goes down..."
If a person tells me they are from a place where "anything goes", and then proceeds to tell me about some "weird shit" that has gone down, I am expecting...really WEIRD SHIT. Like: "holy CRAP I can't believe what I am hearing!"
What was the weird shit? This: "Then she looked at me with sad eyes. 'But cerebral palsy is a reality, too.' "
No. That is not weird shit. That is just an awkward social encounter.
"Its Like You've Never Seen Someone With Subpar Social Skills."
For the record, I'm impressed by what Sarah Nielsen accomplished with this article. It is not that easy to write about these matters. She did it with grace and style:
@33 -- Awww, thank you!!
Really appreciate your support, and what you said about the memoir made me smile.
As for New Yorkers, it doesn't actually surprise me. A lot of my closest are East Coasters, and while they might seem a little abrupt on the surface, the kindness at the core is very real.
Thanks again, for reading and for sharing your thoughts! - SarahMN
