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.