Friday, May 29, 2020

We were left out of the Civil Rights revolution. Tell people that.

Huffington Post: ““It’s natural to wish for life ‘to just get back to normal’ as a pandemic and economic crisis upend everything around us,” Obama said. “But we have to remember that for millions of Americans being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’ — whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park.””

Also, “for millions of Americans being treated differently on account of disability is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’.”

If I were to meet former President Obama, whom I whole-heartedly support, I would suggest that people having disabilities should also be part of the narrative.

I recently posted the following comment to a much-lauded anodyne article on a disability forum:
I see the [Forum] addressing access issues but not civil rights issues: The right of disabled people not to be demeaned, degraded and marginalized. The same people who wouldn’t think of commenting and gesturing about minorities, women and LGBTQ people often have no scruples about regarding disabled people as stigmatized and risible.
The narrative needs to be changed, something that bloggers with writing skills should be able to set about doing. A landmark civil rights case such as Brown v. Board of Education or Obergefell v. Hodges would help to raise consciousness.
We were left out of the Civil Rights revolution. Tell people that. Ask the ACLU if sometime it might think of making this an issue.
It is just as wrong to look cross-eyed at someone for being disabled as it is to give someone static for being a person of color.
So far as I know, the public does not know this. It’s time to change that.
Probably, “something that bloggers with writing skills should be able to set about doing” pissed them off.

Well, their trivializing, faux-activism pisses me off.

In the current narrative of “progressives,” people who look funny or move funny (the CPs, Cerebral Palsy, Cleft Palate) offend the Community, and under the rubric of Social Justice, the Community has the right to punish and expel those who offend it, unless they are part of progressivism’s favored classes.

But under Enlightenment liberalism, people who look funny or move funny are still part of The People, and as entitled to The Rights of Man as progressivism’s favored classes: minorities,(1) women, LGBTQ.

Justice Harlan’s Plessy dissent said that the U.S. Constitution "is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens."

The Fourteenth Amendment says everybody is entitled to “the equal protection of the laws.”

Even those the Community considers misfits.

Reciprocity Principle, from the first post on this blog:
A 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.

/*****/

(1) People having a disability are America’s largest minority, according to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Department of Labor, and the Centers for Disease Control, among others:
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html
“One in four people in United States has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control.”
http://www.adainfo.org/sites/default/files/Leadership-Network/Modules-1-5/5a-America-largMinorityFINAL.pdf
“America‘s largest minority”
http://www.dol.gov/odep/pubs/fact/diverse.htm
“As the nation's largest minority — comprising almost 50 million individuals”

No comments:

Post a Comment