The Stigmatized Disabled and the Silent Privilege of the Normal

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

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

It seems to me that the character of Imperial Germany after 1878 can best be caught in the term "illiberal." [[I am using the term as the dictionary defines it: "Not befitting a free man . . . not generous in respect to the opinions, rights, or liberties of others; narrow-minded." The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1967)]] - Fritz Stern, The Failure of Illiberalism, p. xvii

Those who leverage stigma against those who are different from themselves benefit from the advantage created: It denies others access to goods or status or dignity or respect or civil liberties they themselves covet. - (Vide Infra)

Philip Guo recently wrote, in Silent Privilege: As an Asian male computer science major, everyone gave me the benefit of the doubt:

No one ever said to me, “Well, you only got into MIT because you're an Asian boy.” ... Instead of facing implicit bias or stereotype threat, I had the privilege of implicit endorsement. ...

Although I started off as a complete novice (like everyone once was), I never faced any micro-inequities that impeded my intellectual growth. ... And nobody ever got in the way of my learning—not even inadvertently—probably because I looked like the sort of person who would be good at such things. ...

In contrast, ask any computer science major who isn't from a majority demographic (i.e., white or Asian male), and I guarantee that he or she has encountered discouraging comments such as “You know, not everyone is cut out for computer science.” They probably still remember the words and actions that have hurt the most, even though those making the remarks often aren't trying to harm.

For example, one of my good friends took the Intro to Java course during freshman year and enjoyed it. She wanted to get better at Java GUI programming, so she got a summer research assistantship at the MIT Media Lab. However, instead of letting her build the GUI (like the job ad described), the supervisor assigned her the mind-numbing task of hand-transcribing audio clips all summer long. He assigned a new male student to build the GUI application. And it wasn't like that student was a programming prodigy—he was also a freshman with the same amount of (limited) experience that she had. The other student spent the summer getting better at GUI programming while she just grinded away mindlessly transcribing audio. As a result, she grew resentful and shied away from learning more CS.

He quotes Mary Rowe:

What makes micro-inequities particularly problematic is that they consist in micro-messages that are hard to recognize for victims, bystanders and perpetrators alike. When victims of micro-inequities do recognize the micro-messages … it is exceedingly hard to explain to others why these small behaviors can be a huge problem.

Or Andrew Sullivan in The Betrayal of Vets with PTSD:

Take a moment, if you have one, to read this wrenching, deeply moving and enraging testimony from one Marine veteran with a Purple Heart who returned home and became immobilized by post-traumatic stress. ... 

He swallowed a bottle of pills, and then somehow reached back to life and vomited them back up. What makes this story more than distressing is that part of what compounded his PTSD was the mockery and contempt of other service-members toward his condition. It was viewed as weakness not illness, even for a Purple Heart recipient:

I wondered if asking for help for my post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury was the smartest decision – after all, it had ended my career.

The way my leaders had treated me tore me up on the inside, and their words haunted me. They had convinced me that I was not a Marine in pain, but someone looking for free benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. At work, at home, in bed, all I could think about was how my career in the corps had ended in such a terrible, tasteless fashion, with my peers and leaders turning their backs on me because I had enrolled in treatment.

When he checked himself in to a mental health facility – the VA turned him down because he had two days left before he retired! – he was treated horribly. I don’t know about you, but this kind of story rips my heart out. It must not happen to anyone. The military has to make much more of an effort to destigmatize those psychologically traumatized by a war so intense for so many it has understandably altered them for ever. There is hope. But not if there is stigma.

Philip Guo does not put his observations in terms of stigma, but both these cases reflect the invisibility of those stigmatized by discriminatory foregone conclusions which linger in "normal" society; in the case of aspirants to programming positions, the comparative stigma of those who are not white or Asian males; in the case of those who have not been traumatized in service to their country, everybody who does not suffer from PTSD. In the case of the topic of this blog, the stigmatized disabled, discriminatory social foregone conclusions result in the situation described in a previous post, Reduced Life Chances. In each case, those who leverage stigma against those who are different from themselves benefit from the advantage created: It denies others access to goods or status or dignity or respect or civil liberties they themselves covet.