Your landlord may not realize that the Fair Housing Act applies to such disabilities as cleft palate

Recently I, assisted by my oldest son, was applying for an apartment in a 55-and-older complex which provides both subsidized and marketplace rate housing. In one of the many documents was a checkbox, Qualified as disabled under the Fair Housing Act (which applies to "federally-assisted housing programs and activities"). I asked the person administering the application process if people with cleft palate qualified as disabled under the FHA. They said they thought those with a cleft weren't. I asked, Do you mind if we look it up?

We found that the following section of the Fair Housing Act clearly includes cleft palate among the recognized disabilities - 1. “speech and hearing impairments”; 2. “Federal nondiscrimination laws define a person with a disability to include any (1) individual with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities … Major life activities include … speaking … or … (3) individual who is regarded as having such an impairment.” [(3) covers the stigma of cleft palate, discriminatory presuppositions about birth defects, or responding to a visible disability by attempting to demean, degrade, or intimidate the person who has a disability.]

An earlier post, The Rights the Disabled Have under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, notes that in most cases if the local or state government program you are using (such as a public university, or public transit) receives Federal money in any of its activities, it is required to follow Federal civil rights rules regarding the disabled.

An important decision overturned was a case where the Court interpreted Section 504 as meaning that only clients of the departments of an entity which actually received federal funds had protection from disability discrimination. Under current law, because of the CRRA, protection applies to the entire agency. If a college's engineering department receives federal funds, students in the English department are also protected.

FHA Main:

Federal nondiscrimination laws provide housing protections for individuals with disabilities. These protections apply in most private housing, state and local government housing, public housing and any other federally-assisted housing programs and activities. The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing and housing-related transactions because of disability. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. Titles II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability in all programs, services, and activities of public entities and by private entities that own, operate, or lease places of public accommodation.

The applicable passage:

Federal nondiscrimination laws define a person with a disability to include any (1) individual with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; (2) individual with a record of such impairment; or (3) individual who is regarded as having such an impairment.

In general, a physical or mental impairment includes, but is not limited to, examples of conditions such as orthopedic, visual, speech and hearing impairments, cerebral palsy, autism, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), developmental disabilities, mental illness, drug addiction, and alcoholism.

Some impairments are readily observable, while others may be invisible. Observable impairments may include, but are not limited to, blindness or low vision, deafness or being hard of hearing, mobility limitations, and other types of impairments with observable symptoms or effects, such as intellectual impairments (including some types of autism), neurological impairments (e.g., stroke, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, or brain injury), mental illness, or other diseases or conditions that affect major life activities or bodily functions.

The term “major life activities” includes those activities that are important to daily life. Major life activities include, for example, walking, speaking, hearing, seeing, breathing, working, learning, performing manual tasks, and caring for oneself.

Commentary: Under the FHA, the community in, for example, a retirement community, is not allowed to reject a person having a stigmatizing disability, such as a birth defect, on the basis of that birth defect, any more than that same community would be allowed to reject a person of color, on the basis of dislike of people of color. Public sentiment is not a sufficient reason to deny any person the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

This all-too-common disability incident responded to because of viral video

This, it seems, is how the story starts. Joshua Bote:
“"At this point, it is believed that the victim was invited out by some girls who are so-called 'friends' who are eventually the offenders in these disgusting incidents," [Jose] Jara said.”

What did the mainstream offenders instigate?
“"There were some things going on that these young ladies wanted her to do that she didn't," said police superintendent Eddie Johnson in a news conference before trailing off. "We'll leave it at that for right now."”

How did it actually get noticed?
USA TODAY: “Chicago police are investigating an assault after a video claiming to show a brutal attack on a teenage girl with disabilities went viral.”

What action was taken?
“Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told USA TODAY Thursday that two of the suspects are charged with aggravated battery, a felony. One was charged with mob action. The girls, who remain unidentified, are 13, 14 and 15.”

A common story. Mainstream people see a person with a disability, and because that person has a real or perceived disadvantage, somehow feel entitled to take liberties. If the “misfit” doesn't cooperate in being publicly degraded and humiliated, they are a bad sport. Can't take a joke. Offends the community and deserves to be punished.

Only difference, this time: Viral video, police can't dismiss it, and with the public eye on them, investigate.

America's largest minority, according to the Department of Labor and the ADA.

Still doesn't have its Brown v. Board of Education, its own landmark civil rights case.

Still doesn't know, when its members go about their daily business, if this is one of the days when there will be an incident.

A Partial List of the Disabled Among Us

(See analysis of social attitudes toward disabled characters at end.)

Stephen Hawking, first rank physicist, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease).

Oidipous Tyrannos, mythical star of the greatest drama (Oedipus Rex) of classical antiquity, talipes equinovarus (club foot).

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

A reasonable translation of "Oidipous Tyrannos," following Bacon’s interpretation, is "Clubfoot the Ruler." When a drama has a name of this form, as with "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" or even "Beauty and the Beast," there is a certain hint as to how the plot will go.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President. A polio survivor, he adroitly concealed that he could barely walk.

Michael J. Fox, who continued his acting career after he developed Parkinson's.

Michael Kinsley, founder of Slate Magazine, Parkinson's.

Helen Keller, blind and deaf.

John Nash, mathematician, schizophrenia.

See movie, A Beautiful Mind

Christy Brown, author, Cerebral Palsy.

See movie, My Left Foot

Demosthenes, classical era orator, stammer.

Vincent Van Gogh, painter, psychiatric illness.

Beethoven, composer, deaf.

Ray Charles, singer, blind.

Stevie Wonder, singer, blind.

Marlee Matlin, actress, deaf.

Peter Dinklage, actor, dwarfism.

Joaquin Phoenix, actor, cleft palate.

Jürgen Habermas, philosopher, cleft palate.

Stacy Keach, actor, cleft palate.

Flanner O’Connor, author, lupus.

Robert Pirsig, author, schizophrenia.

Sartre, philosopher, strabismus (exotropia).

Saul of Tarsus (the Biblical Saint Paul), had a “thorn in the flesh,” which was not described.

Sherman Alexie, author, hydrocephalus

Implied fictional disabled characters (other than Oidipous):

Beauty and the Beast

Boo Radley of To Kill a Mockingbird, psychiatric illness.

Of Mice and Men (Lenny Small, limited intelligence)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Tiresias in Oidipous, blind.

Forrest Gump (Crooked spine, I.Q 75)

Cyclops ("Circle Eye," i.e., One Eye)

Captain Hook (Missing hand)

Tiny Tim (possibly renal tubular acidosis (type 1), or rickets)

... And many more.

-*--

Apposite comments from the National Council of Teachers of English:
Are disabled people “pitiable, helpless, evil, super human, magically cured at the end, or dead?” Or are they complex individuals who enjoy their lives and have the same values, hopes, and aspirations as the mainstream?

Patricia Dunn:

Whether students are disabled or non-disabled themselves, they absorb impressions about characters like or unlike themselves from the books they read for school. So when they read books that feature characters with disabilities, what messages are they getting about disability? Does the story reinforce negative stereotypes (that disabled people are pitiable, helpless, evil, super human, magically cured at the end, or dead)?  Or does the text challenge negative stereotypes in its depiction of characters with impairments by showing that they are complex individuals, that they enjoy their lives and are as “normal” as non-disabled people, and that they have agency and voice?

She adds:

Works such  Johnson’s Accidents of Nature, Orr’s Peeling the Onion, and Alexie’s True Diary, written by authors with disabilities similar to those of their protagonists, depict these characters as fully developed individuals with agency, voice, and a critical attitude toward  their ableist societies.

Disabled people are America's largest minority, according to the Department of Labor and the website of the Americans with Disabilities Act. As well, a significant number of mainstream people will be disabled in later years, such as former President George H. W. Bush, wheelchair-bound in his last years. Disabled people are widely distributed among us; are powerful symbolic themes in some of our greatest works of literature; and are, in the final analysis, us.

Online hate against disabled people rising in England

Amy Walker, today, writes:

The charity [Leonard Cheshire, a health and welfare charity] called on global media companies, including Facebook, to take online disability hate crime more seriously and to protect users. It supported recommendations from MPs for government and social media companies to directly consult disabled people on digital strategies and hate crime law.

According to the report, online offenses are increasing, are under-reported, and disabled people are sometimes reluctant to speak out. Those who are targeted do not get social support; and those who discriminate against disabled people suffer no social consequences:

Neil Heslop, the chief executive, said: “Police are increasingly recording online offences, but we know it remains an under-reported area and that disabled people may have reservations about speaking out.

“We suspect many crimes remain under the radar, with survivors never getting support and perpetrators facing no consequences.”

The effect, Heslop said, can cause disabled people to experience stress and isolation. Mocking remarks and hurtful comments demean, degrade, and humiliate people with disabilities, lower their quality of life, and cause them to have “reduced life chances.”

Hate crimes against disabled people could lead to long-term fear, anxiety and isolation.

Janine Howard, who was supported by the charity’s advocacy services after experiencing online abuse, said: “People I don’t know take my photograph when I am out and about, they post it on social media for others to comment on.

“The comments are nasty, hurtful and leave me feeling frightened and angry. There is no escaping this online abuse if I want to use social media.”

A casebook on disability: Facial disfiguration

The first selection notes that in discussions of those whose civil rights are commonly violated, disabled people or often left out.
Jonathan Allen, on the deep divisions exposed by the fight over Rep. Ilhan Omar, in the form of “the list of groups targeted by hatred”: “Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., [noted] that Wiccans, Mormons and disabled people had been left out.” (Emphasis added)

Neil Steinberg, on the human discomfort occasioned by disfigured faces:

Disfigured faces can provoke a fear reaction, leading to bullying and other social tyranny:

Fear of people with facial disfigurements is a common phobia, yet, unlike other fears -- of height, of water, of the dark -- it is seldom discussed, perhaps because so much popular culture, from The Iliad to Saw V, pivots upon this fear. Perhaps it is assumed: of course you are afraid of the man without a face. Who wouldn't be?

Or perhaps because, unlike fear of high places, water or the dark, teratophobia -- fear of disfigured people or of giving birth to a disfigured baby, literally 'fear of monsters' -- has a living object: the injured, burnt, unusual-looking people themselves. Drawing attention to the flinching reaction they often receive, the stares and mockery that are a routine part of their daily lives, can seem an additional cruelty, the sort of vileness enjoyed by schoolyard bullies.

Identifying friend and foe has been a survival skill. A disfigured face, perhaps not seeming human at all, can trigger an instinctive fear:

Why are distorted faces so frightening? Freud classified certain objects as 'unheimlich,' a difficult-to-translate word akin to 'uncanny': strange, weird, unfamiliar. Waxwork dummies, dolls, mannequins can frighten us because we aren't immediately sure what we're looking at, whether it's human or not, and that causes anxiety. A surprisingly large part of the human brain is used to process faces. Identifying friend from foe at a distance was an essential survival skill on the savannah, and a damaged face is thought to somehow rattle this system. ...

The psychologist Irvin Rock demonstrated this in his landmark 1974 paper 'The perception of disoriented figures.' Rock showed that even photos of familiar faces -- famous people like Franklin D Roosevelt, for instance -- will look unsettling when flipped upside down. Just as, if you tip a square enough it stops being a square and starts becoming a diamond, so rotating a face makes it seem less like a face. The mind can't make immediate sense of the inverted features, and reacts with alarm. A bigger change, such as taking away the nose, transforms the face severely enough that it teeters on no longer seeming a human face at all, but something else.

The author himself, who thought he was prepared, experiences “horror”:

That isn't a theoretical example picked out of the air. On another visit to the Craniofacial Center, I enter Seelaus's examination room to be introduced to a patient. He turns in the chair, and is missing the middle part of his face. There are four magnetic posts where his nose will go, and below it, a void revealing smooth yellow plastic. My eyes lock on his eyes, I shake his hand and say some words.

A half-hour later, standing on the elevated train platform, I still feel ... what? 'Harrowed' is the word that eventually comes to mind. Why? There was no surprise. I'm no longer a child but an adult, a newspaper reporter who has spent hours watching autopsies, operations, dissections in gross pathology labs. I was expecting this; it's what I came here for. What about his face was so unsettling?

Maybe seeing injured faces compels an observer to confront the random cruelty of life in a raw form. Maybe it's like peeling back the skin and seeing the skull underneath. Like glimpsing death. Maybe it touches some nameless atavistic horror. ...

Randall H James was born in Ohio in 1956. His first surgeries were done over the next couple of years at Cincinnati Children's Hospital by Dr Jacob Longacre, a pioneer in modern plastic surgery.

The teachers assumed I must be stupid.

Randy James, doctor

Our instincts often betray us into making an “automatic connection between inner person and outer appearance”:  “A disfigured person is a retard”:

"He was like a second father to me because I saw him so much," says James, who didn't celebrate a Christmas at home between the ages of 3 and 13. School holidays were for operations. Summers too.

When little Randy began school, his teachers in the city of Hamilton made a common mistake, the sort of automatic connection between inner person and outer appearance that has been the default assumption since history began.

"The teachers assumed I must be stupid," says James, who was put in a class with children who had learning disabilities -- until teachers realized that he was actually very bright, only shy, and missing an ear, which made it harder for him to hear. He was allowed to sit in the front of the room, where he could hear the teacher, and his grades soared. ...

The disability version of the Heckler's Veto: “You might make the students nervous”:

As a student at the University of Kentucky, James applied to be a residence hall adviser, someone who assists other students in navigating dorm life. The supervisor who rejected him candidly told him that his odd-looking ear could put others off.

"'You might make the students nervous,'" James recalls him saying, then paused, the pain still obvious after 40 years. "These were my classmates."

In the past, disfigured people were often subject to genocide: “A couple hundred years ago, people born with craniofacial conditions, they were just putting them in a bucket of water”:

We are a society where people thrive or fail -- in part, in large part -- because of appearance. The arrangement of your features goes far in deciding who you are attractive to, what jobs you get. Study after study shows that people associate good looks with good qualities, and impugn those who aren't attractive. Even babies do this, favoring large eyes, full lips, smooth skin. Billions of dollars are spent on plastic surgery by people who are in no way disfigured, just for that little extra boost they feel it gives to them, gilding the lilies of their attractiveness.

How do people with unusual appearances fit into such a world? For most of recorded history, children born with disfigurements were wonders, portents or punishments. If they were allowed to live. "A couple hundred years ago, people born with craniofacial conditions, they were just putting them in a bucket of water," said Dr David Reisberg, an oral plastic surgeon at the Craniofacial Center.

“Those that we call monsters are not so to God”:

But even then, astute observers saw beyond externalities. Michel de Montaigne in 1595 encountered a child conjoined to the half-torso, arms and legs of an undeveloped twin (what we would now call a parasitic twin), displayed by its father for money. Montaigne noted: "Those that we call monsters are not so to God, who sees in the immensity of His work the infinite forms that He has comprehended therein."

“With malice toward none, with charity for all,” said our kindest president.

Dwarf “Tossing”: Is it the business of the law to protect the dignity of the stigmatized?

Two days ago, National Review writer Katherine Timpf wrote:

A Washington state lawmaker has proposed legislation that would outlaw dwarf tossing, claiming that “it ridicules and demeans people with dwarfism.”
Dwarf tossing, by the way, is when a person with dwarfism volunteers to have someone throw him or her against a padded surface or Velcro wall, usually while wearing protective gear. Let me be clear: No one is forcing these dwarves to be thrown anywhere. Participation is completely and totally voluntary, and the dwarves who choose to participate are even usually paid for their performances, but the lawmaker — Republican state senator Mike Padden — wants to take this option to make a little extra cash away from them. ...
“There’s nothing funny about dwarf-tossing,” Padden said in a statement. “It ridicules and demeans people with dwarfism, and causes others to think of them as objects of public amusement.”

Timpf added, “I know that the aim of this bill is supposed to be to help dwarves, but I think it’s actually kind of offensive to them, if anything. After all, saying that such a bill would be necessary is basically suggesting that dwarves are not capable of making the decision about whether or not to participate in these sorts of activities for themselves. It’s also taking away from dwarves the opportunity to make a little extra cash — an opportunity that some dwarves might really want to take advantage of.”

In Mother Jones, Stephanie Mencimer reports that the judge nominated to fill the vacancy left by Kavanaugh's ascension to the Supreme Court finds solicitude for the dignity of the disabled coercive:

Neomi Rao, Trump’s nominee to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the powerful DC Circuit, ... has written at least two law review articles and a blog post in which she defended dwarf-tossing. ...
[In parts of France]  a judge upheld such bans because of “considerations of human dignity.” Rao considers these laws an affront to individual liberty that fails to recognize the right of the dwarf to be tossed. In one article, she wrote that the decision in France upholding the dwarf-tossing ban was an example of “dignity as coercion” and that it “demonstrates how concepts of dignity can be used to coerce individuals by forcing upon them a particular understanding of dignity.”

There are real-world consequences. John Sainsbury, in 2012:

In an incident that recently came to light, Martin Henderson, a 37-year-old British dwarf, was out celebrating his birthday when he was suddenly picked up and thrown by a "hooded thug" while trying to enjoy a cigarette outside a pub in Wincanton, Somerset. He is now confined for much of the time to a wheelchair. Police believe the perpetrator was inspired by reports about the alleged antics of [recreational dwarf tossers.]

Sainsbury continues, "There are issues of human dignity involved as well. If you toss one dwarf as if he were a mere object, doesn't that degrade the entire dwarf community?"

Civil rights is the protection of the autonomy and dignity of everyone, even the powerless. The contrary of dignity is humiliation, and the humiliation of the disabled is a familiar form of attempting to degrade, demean, and marginalize those who are different.

Social deprivation of dignity is often the first step in eroding the civil rights of the disabled. “You’re ridiculous, so don’t expect to be treated as if you aren’t.” Humiliation, the process of contriving to rob disabled people of ordinary human dignity, is social murder. Forever after, wherever the humiliation is known about, the victim attempts to participate in society under the burden of a spoiled identity, subject to the slights and slurs and open contempt of those who one once thought were friends.

The Rights the Disabled Have under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

If you work for any entity which receives funds from the federal government, the following would seem to imply that disability discrimination by your employer violates federal law:

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973:

No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States, as defined in section 7(6), shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. (Cited in What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement - Fred Pelka, 2012)

Wikipedia's article on Section 504 adds:

Codified as 29 U.S.C. 794.
According to this law, Individuals with Disabilities are:
"persons with a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities."

 where

"Major life activities include caring for one's self, walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, working, performing manual tasks, and learning."

In a previous post we noted cases "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." The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund website notes another case where Congress found it necessary to pass a law undoing unreasonably restrictive Supreme Court interpretation of Section 504 and other disability rights legislation:

The longest legislative battle was fought over the Civil Rights Restoration Act (CRRA), first introduced in 1984 and finally passed in 1988. The CRRA sought to overturn Grove City College v Bell, a Supreme Court decision that had significantly restricted the reach of all the statutes prohibiting race, ethnic origin, sex or disability discrimination by recipients of federal funds.

An important decision overturned was a case where the Court interpreted Section 504 as meaning that only clients of the departments of an entity which actually received federal funds had protection from disability discrimination. Under current law, because of the CRRA, protection applies to the entire agency. If a college's engineering department receives federal funds, students in the English department are also protected.

There was also foot-dragging on implementing Section 504:

Section 504 was the last sentence in the 1973 Act. However, initially Joseph Califano, U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, refused to sign meaningful regulations for Section 504. After an ultimatum and deadline, demonstrations took place in ten U.S. cities on April 5, 1977. The sit-in at the San Francisco Office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, led by Judith Heumann and organized by Kitty Cone, lasted until May 4, 1977, a total of 28 days. More than 150 demonstrators refused to disband. This action is the longest sit-in at a federal building to date. Joseph Califano signed the regulations on April 28, 1977.

The Reagan administration, in addition to attempting to weaken the Voting Rights Act, attempted to undermine Section 504 when it came into power:

Over the next several years, Section 504 was somewhat controversial because it afforded people with disabilities many rights similar to those for other minority groups in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Throughout the Reagan administration, efforts were made to weaken Section 504. Patrisha Wright and Evan Kemp, Jr. (of the Disability Rights Center) led a grassroots and lobbying campaign against this that generated more than 40,000 cards and letters. In 1984, the administration dropped its attempts to weaken Section 504.

When any governmental agency's employees discriminate against the disabled, they are acting in the name of the taxpayers who fund them. For example, public transit organizations receive substantial federal assistance. So does every state. We know of a case where a disabled person, having his driver's license renewed, heard the state photographer say, "Whiskey, cheese, harelip." That bigoted employee was acting as a proxy for the public. When he attempted to demean, degrade and intimidate a citizen making a required license application, he represented you and me.

Whether the license applicant could have sought redress under Section 504 is unknown. Public action under Americans with Disabilities legislation and Section 504, to date, has been entirely about access, with notable success. Protection from discriminatory attitudes and acts designed to humiliate, marginalize, and disenfranchise the stigmatized disabled, hasn't even begun. As an earlier post cited:

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 dream of the disabled is an American dream, that one day America will rise up and live out the meaning of its creed, that all are created equal.

The values of the left often discriminate against the stigmatized disabled

The politics of identity [POI] is the politics of approved identities, primarily "minorities," women, LGBTQ people, and subcultures at the present time.(1) But the nation's largest minority, the disabled, have a socially "spoiled identity," as Erving Goffman wrote.

Under the liberal principle that all people are created equal, this is a problem. Egalitarianism would not allow approved identities and disapproved identities. This is clearly not equality. To tag anyone as having a disapproved identity because of the group they were born into would be prejudicial discrimination under the principles of liberalism.

Theoretically, the politics of identity is about identities which produce targeting. "Minorities," women, LGBTQ people, and subcultures, are the identities progressives valorize because these groups have historically been the victims of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. A disabled person of whatever race, gender, or class is targeted because disability stigma is spoiled identity. Because the disabled also have historically been targeted, the politics of identity would be expected to work to the advantage of people with disabilities as well.

That's not what actually happens. More typically, when members of the left see a white male (for example) who is one of the CPs (stigmatized by Cerebral Palsy or Cleft Palate), they remember that white males should be punished for racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. Here's an example:

At a party I, a white male CP attended, an East Asian community college teacher started asking intrusive questions when she discovered I wasn't a community college teacher like most of the people there. She persisted even when it was clear that I was uncomfortable with what seemed to be an insinuation that I didn't belong there. When she managed to work in a reference to someone she knew who was also--her exact words--"funny looking," the two guests to my left were visibly shocked.

I was shocked for a different reason. None of the teachers and instructors there expressed social disapproval at seeing a person with a birth defect demeaned and degraded by a colleague. What they saw was what they considered a "minority" giving a member of an oppressor group what he deserved.

This is an example of the way the left concept of justice for "minority" identities can produce a miscarriage of justice in the case of disability.

Another very touchy problem is that members of other cultures and ethnicities can be even more inclined to discriminate against disabled people than the American mainstream. From a disability blog:

"Al in Texas": I am not being critical of our growing foreign population, but the views regarding people with disabilities outside the USA can be harsh and I am seeing more of that pop up in my daily life than I ever have.

As one of the CPs, I sometimes hear someone mutter, "pendejo," as I make my way down the aisle of a crowded bus.

Writer James Fallows observed this in China:

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.

And the treatment I experienced at the hands of an East Asian community college teacher, above, may be an illustration of the "harsh" effect that some immigrants and refugees can have on America's largest minority.We all welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free to this great land, but as "Al in Texas" observed, that does not excuse prejudicial "views regarding people with disabilities."

Here again, the values of the left exacerbate the problem. "Minorities," women, LGBTQ people, and subcultures are valorized; funny looking awkward people who offend us by making us feel uncomfortable do not have the support of the community. And democracy, says these values, is the will of the community.

(1) The Politics of Identity tends to produce ad hominem argument. Here Andrew Sullivan's observation concerning campus left values may be apropos:

Unashamed resort to ad hominem fallacy on campus now: "The idea that only a member of a minority group can speak about racism or homophobia, or that only women can discuss sexual harassment. The only reason this should be the case is if we think someone’s identity is more important than the argument they might want to make."

Other Discrimination Also Masquerades as Normal Social Interaction Ctd. (reprinted)

Virtually everything in the following description of routine (and "socially" legitimized) sexual harassment  is also typical of disability discrimination.

As the United States moves toward its four-year presidential election, routine social abuse of a vulnerable segment of the population has become an issue in the candidacy of one of the abusers, Republican candidate Donald Trump. A recent article by Michelle Goldberg calls him A Human Trigger. Mr. Trump uses the Big Lie technique; projects his bigotry onto his victims; leverages Conventional Wisdom's denial of the reality of gender marginalization; and often leaves his victims' disoriented and doubting the reality of their own experience:

Like many abusers, Trump is so shamelessly, fluently dishonest that listening to him can be disorienting. “One of the hallmarks of an abusive person is that they do not ever take responsibility for their behavior, ever,” [Kristen] Slesar says. “It is always the other person’s fault, or it never happened.” Abusers, she says, can crowd out their victims’ sense of reality: “In conversation and arguments with this person who is so able to change reality or deny reality and shift blame and responsibility, the victim ends up doubting [herself], getting really confused, feeling really unstable.

The Big Lie deserves its own examination, because the phrase originates with another authoritarian who understood that routine bigoted error of conventional social thought can be used to corrupt the political instincts of a large segment of the public. Wikipedia explained:

A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

The following selection from Mein Kampf describes techniques familiar to those who have followed the rhetoric of the Republican candidate's campaign—appeal to emotion in defiance of evidence and reason; belief that no one could be so shameless as to perpetrate such fraudulent claims; and "sensible" recourse to the opinion that there must be "some other explanation":

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.

What women experience in the Trumpian abusive subculture parallels what the disabled experience — particularly the denial — but nobody is quoting us. As the previous article in this series argued:

This is all too familiar to those of us who are disabled. We wonder why "funny things" keep happening to us. We feel vaguely guilty—that we must have done something wrong. Eventually, we reluctantly come to realize that it isn't us. The problem is "normal" social attitudes toward those who bear stigma. But when we attempt to talk this over with our "friends" and family, they pooh-pooh our concerns ... It is all in our heads. We are only imagining that we are the target of unjustified social disapproval. To think that way is to be disloyal to the community. Our attitude is antisocial—no wonder those around us disapprove of us (this is the stigma Catch-22).

Ms. Goldberg continues:

Marie, a 30-year-old massage therapist in Virginia [says] "The truths that we experience as women are denied. It really brings out the victim mindset: These things keep happening, but nobody will actually say that they’re happening, nobody will acknowledge anything is happening ..."

Years ago, in Internalized Discrimination: You're Not Supposed to SAY That, this was the situation:

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 [feel we ought to speak out]. A struggle, ... against the tendency to feel guilty about having been honest about a situation which is widely covered up.

As the emergence of a 2005 tape revealed that a major political party's presidential candidate treats half the population as a group of people who may readily be subjugated, demeaned, degraded, and abused, what On Liberty calls "social tyranny" (approximately page 3) is still alive and well.

 

For women, and for the disabled.