Left out of the civil rights revolution: Blatant vs. subtle disability discrimination

 Civil rights discrimination against people having disabilities is made more difficult because in America disabled people were left out of the civil rights revolution. We aren’t, for practical purposes, in a protected class. There’s no landmark civil rights case such as Brown vs. Board of Education, for disabled people. And there’s seldom any social penalty for verbal abuse.

The San Diego Union Tribune on blatant vs. subtle disability discrimination:

Discrimination should be viewed as two types: the blatant and the subtle. The blatant discrimination are the types when it is very clear that a person with a disability is being denied their rights due to their disability. For example, a school that fails to provide a sign language interpreter requested by a Deaf student, or a wheelchair user who is told they are not “capable” of doing a job. There’s clear evidence and a paper trail to show the discrimination.

The subtle discrimination is exactly that, subtle, so that even a person with a disability is not entirely sure if they were discriminated against based on their disability. For example, a person with a disability who applies for a job but does not receive an interview because human resources do not look at resumes of someone who has a disability. They can always say that the candidate was simply not qualified for the job, but are careful to avoid mentioning disability as a reason.

Another instance of this subtle discrimination is how unprepared hospitals and health care were in addressing care for people with disabilities during the pandemic. Every health care system needs to have a plan in place for disasters that also includes how to provide care for people with disabilities in emergency situations, such as natural disasters, man-made disasters, terrorism, or a pandemic. Because of the subtle discrimination, a lot of outright discrimination has happened, such as people who are Deaf, who rightfully assumed that the hospital would not have access to a sign language interpreter on-site, who would try to bring a family member or a friend as an alternate to support communication, but were told that they were not allowed to bring anyone in, even someone who would enable their rights.