Dear majority, please stop telling me you stand with me

Two years ago Umair Haque wrote:

I hear it a dozen times a day. “Don’t worry!” say the kind and good people. “We’ll stand with you when the registries/camps/oppression come!”
What a noble sentiment. It is supposed to reassure people like me  —  a disabled brown guy. And yet. It doesn’t. Why not?
Let’s do some quick moral accounting, so we can see whether this grand declaration of solidarity carries any water.
Every single minority of any kind can tell you stories. Not just one, but many. Of being ridiculed, tormented, heckled, harassed, bullied, demeaned. From the very day that they entered the classroom, the playground, the boardroom, the office, the bus, the train, the cafe, the restaurant.

Haque does not resort to the easy condemnations progressives deploy — you’re evil because you’re white, able-bodied, privileged — but because as a member of the mainstream, the CW, the Conventional Wisdom tacitly allows you to discriminate without fearing any consequences; and you haven’t thought about it. You didn’t know you were doing it.

Well, you were, it was wrong, stop it. Haque continues:

Every single person — whether they are a woman, a person of color, a disabled person, gay, whatever — can tell you about countless incidents of abuse, big and small. There is not a single minority in this country that hasn’t experienced it.
Now. Where have you been, the good and kind majority, when all this was going on? There are three possibilities — and only three. You turned a blind eye. You egged it on. Or you were part of it. The incidents happened, right? So by definition, you did nothing to stop them, prevent them, mitigate them, ameliorate them.
You didn’t step in then. The millions of thens. And now you tell me that you will finally step in? Am I to believe this with a straight face?

Unfortunately, in the case of derogatory remarks, slights, or other discriminatory treatment, the mainstream responds to slurs or other expressions of social disapproval with the attitude, Why are you always embarrassing us? Why don’t you have the social skills to handle these situations? Why are you such a loser? Umair Haque adds:

The sentiment that “I will stand with you!” is just that. A sentiment. It is not a reality. You haven’t done it so far. So why would you start now? … But how good have you really been? As I said, you’ve failed to stand with me, us, a million times before, every single day of your life. ...
We got here precisely through the way of your negligence, and no other way. Through all these little dehumanizations. The grade school bully that cries “kike!” is not so different from a Trump. You stood by and watched then. Maybe you laughed. That is how we got here.
So how do we heal? We heal not by avoiding the truth, running away from the painful reality of our mistakes. But by facing them. ... I don’t want your kind sentiments. I don’t want to hear that you will stand with me when we both know you haven’t so far. I want something truer and harder. The admission, the acknowledgement that you did not, could not, would not, when you should have.

Does America's largest minority still have a "spoiled identity?"

This morning, Lisa Rose wrote,

“The federal definition of a hate crime includes any offense that "attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person."”
This selection is highlighted. Note that disability is excluded in her cite of federal law.

Later in her article Ms. Rose adds an uncited remark: “Additionally, any offense committed against an individual because of actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability is also a hate crime.”

For practical purposes, America's disabled, and particularly those with birth defects, have been left out of the civil rights revolution.

The Disability Rights Washington website does not list any of the terms for cleft palate (though it does list cerebral palsy).

We are America’s largest minority, according to the Department of Labor and the ADA. But we seem to have a "spoiled identity" (as seen below) in ways that other identities do not. Late night shows such as Stephen Colbert's regularly feature racial minorities, but I do not ever recall seeing a disabled person there.

From our blog post of July 6, 2014:

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 mainstream 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). [1] 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.”

Our society is becoming more identity-conscious, not less; to the detriment of universal justice.

“Our impairments aren't what disable us ... society does that.”

A person with a cleft palate (PWACP) reports that at the college they attended there four people with cleft palate. Only the one with facial characteristics of cleft palate was treated as disabled.
Margo Victoria Bok and others in the BC Disability Caucus Facebook page:

“Government needs to act on making educational environments far more supportive for those in both k to 12 and post secondary A big part of that needs to be insisting that organizations address the prejudice and discrimination that is far too commonplace. People need to learn that we aren't less able than the nondisabled. Our impairments aren't what disable us ... society does that.”

“Yes, very true. I like the way she put it because the disabled are so seriously marginalized. Prejudices about us are accepted as truth by so many. So, it's especially tough for the disabled to find environments that are inclusive, supportive and accepting.”

Martha Nussbaum in Reason 2004:

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. One of my questions is whether it is coherent to favor a restoration of shaming in criminal punishment, while seeking to protect all citizens from shame. I hold that there is no surface inconsistency in such a position, but that there is a deeper inconsistency, because an interest in shame in punishment is ultimately inconsistent with respect for the equal dignity of all citizens. (Emphasis added)

As one PWACP says, we aren't anti-social. Society is anti-us.

We need a new narrative. "Prejudices about us are accepted as truth by so many." A common experience can occur when we attend a party. Someone starts asking supposedly friendly questions, but the subtext is negative. They are rhetorical questions. People start edging away, but nobody in the social group objects, even though it is clear that the one person present who is different is being put on the hot seat. "Prejudice and discrimination ... is far too commonplace." The subtext is, "what's a misfit doing at a party?" It's a double standard. The mainstream wouldn't stand by and do nothing if a derogatory environment was being created for a racial minority.

The reciprocity principle expressed in the first post in this blog:

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