The mother of a disabled woman reveals the pervasive disrespect for the largest minority

Frank Verpaelst of the Federation of Disabled Bloggers on Facebook:

“I sit here fuming in my chair after having read a recent message from a disabled friend, telling me a story of how her mother mused out loud “How can an able-bodied woman love a disabled man who has very short legs and no arms? He’s not a real man! How does she do it?””

Would her mother have said a racial minority was not a real man? Probably not, because we’ve had a civil rights revolution. But there’s unconscious acceptance of a double standard: it’s ok to express a slur about a disabled person in a way that disparaging a person of color is not. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t mention the disabled. Many feel that the idea that disabled people have the same rights as people of color would be racist, although Martin Luther King knew better, proclaiming, Injustice anywhere endangers justice everywhere.

The Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws applies to disabled people or it is meaningless.

Many people with disabilities have loving and supportive families who help them deal with a world which is often biased and unfriendly. Sadly, in this case the mother of a disabled woman exemplifies what is too often the reality of family discrimination. That’s what expressing a negative attitude about a disabled person to one’s disabled daughter conveys.