What is the solution to the problem of people who target the disabled because it’s easy and there are seldom the consequences attendant on targeting minorities?

 A sentence from an IndependenceChick post:

“This shouldn’t have happened, and because you did it to this type of person, you revealed you have to get your kicks from mistreating someone we already think of as defenseless or weak or low.”

Commendably, much has been done by our society to assist what IndependenceChick calls those who are not TAB (Temporarily Able Bodied) with things like access (see the book, What We Have Done). But little has been done about discriminatory attitudes, commenting and gesturing, verbal abuse, and treating the person having a disability as an outsider. In some cases — those with cleft palate, and many of the non-neurotypical — those perceived by the community as “disabled” are able-bodied. They earn varsity letters in school, climb mountains, run marathons. But they don’t get an IEP, they aren’t part of an assistance  program, and as far as the disability discrimination of mainstream society is concerned, many are on their own.

If you Google “cleft palate,” for example, everything on the internet is about helping their parents (who certainly need the help). And there is nothing whatsoever for the clefted after they become adults.

There are social strictures for those who abuse people of color, women, and LGBTQ people. But concerning the stigma of disability, the civil rights revolution has not happened. Our society has, rightly, changed the narrative for the minorities in the first sentence of this paragraph, but for the disabled, America’s largest minority, a pervasive public prejudice often still prevents them from being able to enjoy normal lives.