“Thank you for calling me out and giving me this opportunity”

I once went to a local comedy act and the comedian referred to me in front of the audience. I waved him off, feeling very uncomfortable, and the woman with me said, “Don’t be hostile.”

Here’s possibly a better response.

The disabled person could stand up, and say, “I’m glad you called on me, because I’m an advocate for the civil rights of the disabled. We were left out of the civil rights revolution. Hardly anyone thinks we are in a protected class, although we get targeted all the time.

“There’s even a special derogatory catch-phrase for people like me: ‘I don’t care if it harelips the Governor.’ So please remember, we have exactly the same rights as everyone else, even if social events like this don’t act like we do. Sir, thank you for calling me out and giving me this opportunity.”

Disability forms may not state correctly what qualifies as disability

I have been asked to fill out a “Disability Status Certification” by the 55+ apartment complex where I live. It says “‘Disability’ is defined as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of an individual, such as not being able to care for oneself, performing manual tasks, walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, or learning.”

I added, “or a person who is perceived by others as having such impairment.” HUD.gov*

At the bottom of the one-page form I wrote:
(*) “This document stresses access disability. FHA.gov links to HUD.gov, which includes negative perception — stigma/social bias, which is the operative factor in my case.”

Last September, in Your landlord may not realize that the Fair Housing Act applies to such disabilities as cleft palate, the post notes that the person interviewing candidates for the housing complex appeared not to be aware that supervising Federal agencies such as FHA, HUD, ADA, and DOL regard physical conditions which affect appearance as qualifying disabilities.

The Rights the Disabled Have under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973

If you work for any entity which receives funds from the federal government, the following would seem to imply that disability discrimination by your employer violates federal law:

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973:

No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States, as defined in section 7(6), shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance. (Cited in What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement - Fred Pelka, 2012)

Wikipedia's article on Section 504 adds:

Codified as 29 U.S.C. 794.
According to this law, Individuals with Disabilities are:
"persons with a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activities."

 where

"Major life activities include caring for one's self, walking, seeing, hearing, speaking, breathing, working, performing manual tasks, and learning."

In a previous post we noted cases "where the august Court cruelly denied protection to disabled individuals even though the intent of the Americans With Disabilities Act should have been clear. As the Times noted, The court went wrong by “eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect” under the 1990 law." The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund website notes another case where Congress found it necessary to pass a law undoing unreasonably restrictive Supreme Court interpretation of Section 504 and other disability rights legislation:

The longest legislative battle was fought over the Civil Rights Restoration Act (CRRA), first introduced in 1984 and finally passed in 1988. The CRRA sought to overturn Grove City College v Bell, a Supreme Court decision that had significantly restricted the reach of all the statutes prohibiting race, ethnic origin, sex or disability discrimination by recipients of federal funds.

An important decision overturned was a case where the Court interpreted Section 504 as meaning that only clients of the departments of an entity which actually received federal funds had protection from disability discrimination. Under current law, because of the CRRA, protection applies to the entire agency. If a college's engineering department receives federal funds, students in the English department are also protected.

There was also foot-dragging on implementing Section 504:

Section 504 was the last sentence in the 1973 Act. However, initially Joseph Califano, U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, refused to sign meaningful regulations for Section 504. After an ultimatum and deadline, demonstrations took place in ten U.S. cities on April 5, 1977. The sit-in at the San Francisco Office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, led by Judith Heumann and organized by Kitty Cone, lasted until May 4, 1977, a total of 28 days. More than 150 demonstrators refused to disband. This action is the longest sit-in at a federal building to date. Joseph Califano signed the regulations on April 28, 1977.

The Reagan administration, in addition to attempting to weaken the Voting Rights Act, attempted to undermine Section 504 when it came into power:

Over the next several years, Section 504 was somewhat controversial because it afforded people with disabilities many rights similar to those for other minority groups in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Throughout the Reagan administration, efforts were made to weaken Section 504. Patrisha Wright and Evan Kemp, Jr. (of the Disability Rights Center) led a grassroots and lobbying campaign against this that generated more than 40,000 cards and letters. In 1984, the administration dropped its attempts to weaken Section 504.

When any governmental agency's employees discriminate against the disabled, they are acting in the name of the taxpayers who fund them. For example, public transit organizations receive substantial federal assistance. So does every state. We know of a case where a disabled person, having his driver's license renewed, heard the state photographer say, "Whiskey, cheese, harelip." That bigoted employee was acting as a proxy for the public. When he attempted to demean, degrade and intimidate a citizen making a required license application, he represented you and me.

Whether the license applicant could have sought redress under Section 504 is unknown. Public action under Americans with Disabilities legislation and Section 504, to date, has been entirely about access, with notable success. Protection from discriminatory attitudes and acts designed to humiliate, marginalize, and disenfranchise the stigmatized disabled, hasn't even begun. As an earlier post cited:

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

The dream of the disabled is an American dream, that one day America will rise up and live out the meaning of its creed, that all are created equal.

A Shadow Existence

Imagine that you are an African American posing for your driver's license renewal photo and the photographer, a state employee, paid by your taxes, says, "Cheese, Whiskey, [n-word]." Would it be a civil rights violation?

This actually happened: A person with a cleft palate had the state photographer, in the same situation, say, "Cheese, Whiskey, Harelip." Was that a civil rights violation?

This actually happened: A pwacp was starting to cross a city street when he heard a voice talking. The voice was saying, "Nobody likes you, nobody wants you, go away." It was a guy leaning his head out the window of his van, which he had stopped in the middle of the intersection. Was that a civil rights violation?

Just this last Christmas: A pwacp was waiting in the lobby of his apartment building for his ride to a family celebration. Another tenant went through the lobby on an errand; the same tenant came through on another errand a few minutes later. Then the apartment manager came out, and said "Oh, you're waiting for your ride." The tenant had reported the disabled person (who is elderly) as "suspicious." Was that a civil rights violation?

When it comes to civil rights, the disabled often lead a shadow existence. What would almost certainly be treated as a civil rights violation if it happened to a "minority" becomes a different matter, somehow, when it happens to disabled people, as if justice has two different ways of looking at discrimination, depending on who you are.

Two years ago this blog recounted a case of discrimination against a little girl with cerebral palsy:

An Ohio man faces one month of jail time for teasing and taunting a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy after a video of the incident went viral.

On Nov. 27, Judge John A. Poulos of the Canton Municipal Court sentenced 43-year-old William Bailey to 29 days in jail. ...

William Bailey "was dragging his leg and patting his arm across his chest to pick his son Joseph up," said [Tricia] Knight. "I asked him to please stop doing this. 'My daughter can see you.' He then told his son to walk like the R-word." ...

The next day Knight posted the video on her Facebook page while [Knight's mother-in-law, Marie] Prince uploaded the video they called "Bus Stop Ignorance" to YouTube. Within days, the video went viral. ...

A local assistant city prosecutor observed:

"I think when we look at cases, there's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities ...." [What charge did the prosecutor use? "Menacing." Apparently no civil rights charge applies.]

The law has always been about what happens (i.e., was it a crime?), not who it happens to. Burglary is burglary, for example; and it's not supposed to matter if you're rich or poor, ethnic or "mainstream," able or disabled, a "person of faith" or otherwise.

But the Civil Rights Act (1) was implemented as protected class. It is not a law for everybody. It is a private law (literally, "privilege")(2) for those to whom it applies. Case in point, as reported in an earlier post:

Would the court system of a liberal society, sidestepping universal justice, treat "protected class" as a term at law? One has only to read the news:

Publication: The Spokesman Review - Publish date: March 2, 1996

A state judge supports an earlier court ruling giving Spokane restaurants the right to refuse service to Hells Angels wearing their club insignia.
Spokane County Superior Court Judge Neal Rielly, in a written ruling released Friday, says members of the biker gang aren't a "protected class" under state or federal discrimination laws.

 The enshrining of "protected class" in the law of the land (despite the first Justice Harlan's objection "Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens") has had sinister consequences for the disabled. The state driver's license photographer, above, probably wouldn't have used the n-word with an African American applicant. He did use the h-word with a disabled applicant.

The authors of the Civil Rights act probably never dreamed that exclusion from protected class would be taken by many as rendering a certain group of people "a stranger to [our] laws."(3) As Romer v. Evans later went on to suggest, such jurisdictive tactics can tend to "make them unequal to everyone else."

Welcome to civil rights American style. If you're disabled, you're not in the class protected from slurs and slights, "commenting and gesturing," bullying and menacing, and profiling. You're a second class citizen, and the mean and the bigoted (see above) have figured this out. Welcome to constant and pervasive marginalization. Welcome to "life" in the shadows.



(1) The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. - http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-act [Note that disability is left out.]
(2) The Google search for "privilege," under Word Origins, notes the word's roots as privus, "private," and lex, "law."
(3) We must conclude that Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to everyone else. This Colorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws. Amendment 2 violates the Equal Protection Clause, ... - Romer v. Evans [Note that deeming "a class of persons a stranger to its laws" is thought to "make them unequal to everyone else".]

A Writer on Living with Depression

It boiled down to this: I decided that my life, as I had known it, was over. I was never going to get back to the job I had when I was 25 years old, making $65,000. I was never going to get married and father children. It was time to put a fork in those dreams—I couldn't reclaim them. That me was dead and done, and I was reconciled to that. - Philip Dawdy, on his mental illness

A decade back, Philip Dawdy wrote an article for the Seattle Weekly about Rodney Plamondon's mental illness, and his own.

We post portions of his article in case they may provide perspective for people with disabilities related to his. Note that Dawdy finally resorted to a solution which went against much of the medical advice for people with his condition. While he claims that this worked for him, what he did was risky, and may well be the wrong approach for most others in a similar situation.

Dawdy begins:

He was in the hospital the day he learned he had been elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Rodney Plamondon looked for a while at the letter that told him this. He was pleased. He was the 22-year-old son of a long-haul truck driver. Rodney's future wouldn't involve driving a Kenworth.

This was good. He had dreams. He had aspirations of doing graduate work in the classics at an Ivy League school, of teaching after that. Or entering the Foreign Service. Getting into that honorary society wouldn't hurt his chances at either.

Rodney put the letter away. He had more pressing concerns.

He was, on this July 1984 day, in the psychiatric unit of a hospital in Boise, Idaho, his hometown. He was newly diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Rodney hadn't the slightest idea what this diagnosis meant for his world, but he knew that his life had changed dramatically.

Dawdy goes on to describe the effects of orthodox [drug] treatment on Rodney:

Rodney is still staring at the dark walls of the tunnel. In the past year, he's been in and out of psych units in Seattle eight times. He's lost pretty much everything—his furniture, his computer, his cat, and every scrap of fiction and poetry he had written over the past 20 years. He takes Haldol and Clozaril twice a day—powerful antipsychotics. Rodney sleeps 12 hours a day on average, sometimes 15. On his left cheek, there are flakes of skin where the pillowcase has rubbed him.

Some days, when he leaves the building, he looks as though he's been mugged and beaten. Those are his good days. Other times, the bad days, he's too paranoid to step outside.

"It happened to me that way, too," Dawdy wrote,

a psychotic break out of the blue during a twentysomething life that had been shaping up quite nicely. It was difficult to build a new life out of that. There were many, many setbacks. That's the absurd deal of mental illness: You get taken most commonly in your youth, when life is just beginning to gel. You get an illness that, in many cases, is so disabling that it strips you of the psychological and practical goods essential to a decent existence. Often you get kicked right out of the mainstream, no matter how solid a citizen you were before it all went bad.

What are you going to do about that?

You have three choices: kill yourself, lead a featureless existence, or fight back and extract some measure of revenge on that which laid you low. Rodney and I rejected options one and two. Option three is no cakewalk. It takes years of determined effort before you see light at the end of the tunnel, and as you feel your way along, you've got to do it all on blind faith that something good might happen. After 15 years, I'm finally beginning to see a faint glow.

Dawdy describes his eventual realization dramatically:

You will stay awake at night and gnaw on that problem, probably for years. You'll likely struggle with some level of suicidal tendency. You're broke, mentally, physically, and financially. Some in your family and circle of friends have cut off contact. Rodney hears from his father perhaps once a year, usually by letter (his mother died in 1987). You wind up hating yourself because these consequences seem thoroughly logical.

What makes things dicey is that what you've got is episodic. You can take your meds and keep appointments with every doctor and social worker under the sun and yet, nine months later, bam, here comes another round of mania. Hello, locked psych unit. Goodbye, job and apartment. Stabilize. Repeat.

I was beset by the same cycles during my 20s and 30s. Meds followed meds, 16 in all. Breakdowns followed breakdowns. Nothing seemed to work for very long. I lost jobs at a healthy clip.

Amidst this whirl of disorder, I learned three crucial things. One, I wasn't going to kill myself. Second, I had far more power over my fate than any doctor ever let on. Third, the existentialists weren't joking: The world is truly absurd.

I'd like to claim that one night I was visited with a revelation about how to grapple with this. It was a far lengthier process.

It boiled down to this: I decided that my life, as I had known it, was over. I was never going to get back to the job I had when I was 25 years old, making $65,000. I was never going to get married and father children. It was time to put a fork in those dreams—I couldn't reclaim them. That me was dead and done, and I was reconciled to that.

That kind of truth will set you free. It will free you to take the kind of risks you'd never take if you were trying to realign yourself with the life you once lived and the goals that once got you out of bed each morning.

Also, it freed me to be pushier with my doctors about what meds and how many of them I would take. I couldn't, for example, tolerate the amount of sleeping caused by antidepressants. My doctor reacted as if no patient had ever bossed him around before.

Dawdy's decision was to endure bouts of depression instead of taking antidepressants at the recommended level. "I can't approve of this, of course," his doctor said.

Here's what he lives with:

When I get my semiannual visits of depression, I can't leave my apartment for days at a time. I can't listen to music of any kind. It all becomes grating and metallic—not even Mozart can punch through that mental pea soup.

Dawdy reflects on our society's treatment of the mentally ill:

As a country, we've spent the past 40 years trying to figure out what to do with people like Rodney, for our sake as well as theirs.

In the 1960s, he'd have been confined at a state mental hospital. That isn't too humane and costs a fortune, so we've mostly backed off that reflexive reaction to the chronically mentally ill. By the mid-1980s, people like Rodney were being pushed onto the streets. We tried to de-institutionalize them on the cheap and failed to provide housing. Oops.

But soon after, all the Prozacs and Risperdals came onto the market. They were a better deal than restraints in a state hospital or the old psych meds like Thorazine or the hazards of the streets.

And that was that, we figured. The meds are a cure, and we're saving money by not hospitalizing these folks. Let them live among the rest of us and go to work in the morning and pay bills in the evening. Let's get as many of them as we can off the public dime.

So what's next for someone like Rodney, assuming he's reasonably lucky and stabilizes? The way things are now, probably not much.

Are you going to hire him? He's barely worked in the past five years, and frankly, the man is too smart to find much satisfaction in pushing a broom in an office building. Will your family take him in? His own family has spent the past 20 years spurning him. Want to marry him?

You know the answers.

I once worked with a nice guy who had Tourette's Syndrome. I was sitting in the break room with him when he suddenly said, "Hey [n-word] fat [n-word]." "Huh?" I said. He looked at me in surprise. Touretters are often unaware of their involuntary outbursts.

I ran into him in a Toys'R'Us years later. It was explained to the other customers that he wasn't in control of what he said. Many of them refused to accept this. They thought it was just an excuse to get away with unacceptable conduct.

What would it be like to have your id broadcasting to the world without your control?

Philip Dawdy's solution to his mental illness, if it actually was as he describes, is anecdotal. He does not, for instance, seem to imply that it would work for Rodney.

But public understanding and acceptance toward the afflicted can make life workable for many. The customers who took a moralistic approach to the guy with Tourette's weren't making anything better for anyone.

Followup: Courts and the Civil Rights of the Disabled

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Here is the article which followed the previous article, In Retrospect: The Supreme Court and The Disabled:

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities.

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

The previous article,  In Retrospect: The Supreme Court and The Disabled, was about judicially interpreting away the protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. It should be noted that the ADA is not a civil rights act. It refers only to barriers to the employability of people who can be productive members of society if reasonable accommodations are made in the workplace. The ADA does not even address such workplace civil rights matters as defamation of character or harassment. It says nothing about co-workers who attempt to degrade and intimidate employees who have, or are thought to have, a disability.

In this context, note a recent news item:

An Ohio man faces one month of jail time for teasing and taunting a 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy after a video of the incident went viral.

On Nov. 27, Judge John A. Poulos of the Canton Municipal Court sentenced 43-year-old William Bailey to 29 days in jail. ...

William Bailey "was dragging his leg and patting his arm across his chest to pick his son Joseph up," said [Tricia] Knight. "I asked him to please stop doing this. 'My daughter can see you.' He then told his son to walk like the R-word." ...

The next day Knight posted the video on her Facebook page while [Knight's mother-in-law, Marie] Prince uploaded the video they called "Bus Stop Ignorance" to YouTube. Within days, the video went viral. ...

"I think when we look at cases, there's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But when there's nothing out there regarding disabilities, it took me a little bit longer to come to a decision." ...

As for whether this case presents a new precedent in Ohio is another debate.

"I don't know if it sets a precedent so much maybe as it begins a conversation between people," said [Jennifer] Fitzsimmons [the chief assistant city prosecutor for this case]. "I think conversation starts progress, and I think if it can bring something else to light, it would be good."

Disabled people are a targeted minority. We call them retards, harelips, and spastics; and we abuse little people, those with Downs Syndrome, the developmentally disabled, bipolar people, and many others.

We have had a civil rights revolution, embodied in the Omnibus Civil Rights Act of 1964. But note what Prosecutor Fitzsimmons said about the treatment of a little girl with cerebral palsy just a day or two ago: There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. The Civil Rights Act has made such "commenting and gesturing" unacceptable when it applies to those we call minorities, that is, those of a different race or ethnicity.

However, we have a double standard concerning discrimination against the disabled. We treat them as having stigma. For example, note the following passage:

A drawn-out impeachment process is our worst option: another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor.

This is from an article by the supposedly liberal columnist Molly Ivins, which appeared in the print edition of Time and has been on www.time.com for over a decade. It is obviously defamatory, and it seems to be clear evidence of a double standard. After all, would Time have printed it if the late Ms. Ivins had used the n-word rather than the h-word?

Above, we saw that William Bailey publicly humiliated a defenseless little girl, because she has cerebral palsy. He felt safe in doing so, with reason: This sort of thing happens all the time. After all, the nation's premiere news magazine defamed another group of disabled people, in print, and the nation has tacitly accepted this. It is as if, for the disabled, the civil rights revolution never happened.

How can this be? After all, justice–in this case, the freedom from marginalization and disenfranchisement–is, by definition, universal. As Martin Luther King said, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Perhaps the reason is that our civil rights revolution apparently was not implemented, as King thought it would be, as justice–which is universal–but as protected class, which is obviously not universal. (King did not dream that his children would be in a protected class. He said I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.) We–even the infamous William Bailey–know that there are certain kinds of things you don't say about those we call "minorities." That sense–can we call it a sense of right and wrong?–obviously did not kick in where a little girl with cerebral palsy was concerned, and it did not kick in in the case of Molly Ivins' supposed earthy humor regarding a birth defect.

Protected Class and the Courts:
Would the court system of a liberal society, sidestepping universal justice, treat "protected class" as a term at law? One has only to read the news:

Publication: The Spokesman Review - Publish date: March 2, 1996
A state judge supports an earlier court ruling giving Spokane restaurants the right to refuse service to Hells Angels wearing their club insignia.
Spokane County Superior Court Judge Neal Rielly, in a written ruling released Friday, says members of the biker gang aren't a "protected class" under state or federal discrimination laws.

And more recently in Illinois:

Plaintiffs Gary Kohlman and Allen Roberts are members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.*fn1 They contend that the Mayor of Midlothian (defendant Thomas Murawski), Midlothian's Police Chief (defendant Vince Schavone), and a Midlothian police officer (defendant Hal Kaufman) ordered restaurants and bars in Midlothian to refuse to serve the plaintiffs because of their membership in the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club and/or their wearing of Hells Angels insignia and logos. ...
Because no suspect class is at issue, the plaintiffs must allege that:
(1) they are members of a protected class; (2) who are otherwise similarly situated to members of an unprotected class; (3) who were treated differently from members of the unprotected class; (4) based on the defendants' discriminatory intent. 

In Plessy v. Ferguson, the first Justice Harlan wrote:

Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.  In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.

Yet we have among us people we see every day, who are members of a targeted minority, but are not, as Prosecutor Fitzsimmons' comment reveals, in a protected class (there do not seem to be civil rights cases regarding them). That should not make a difference in how we treat the disabled. But it does: The most horrifying aspect of Molly Ivins' offhand remark is that everybody understands it. If it was possible to "harelip" the governor, it is understood that person would be outside the protections* and considerations we afford those of "normal" identity.

(*) Addendum 11/20/13 - Ta-Nehisi Coates recently observed:

“Faggot,” like most slurs, is a word used to remove a group from the protections of society.

 (As in the slur deployed by the late Molly Ivins in the quote from Time.com at the beginning of this post.)

Unpublished Remarks from a Disabled Person on the West Coast, Part 1

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul - Walt Whitman, Preface to first edition of Leaves of Grass

To be decent, every person has to make their own ethical decisions. . . . If you are conformist, you almost certainly violate universal ethical standards of decency.

The following were conveyed to the authors of this blog by one of the stigmatized disabled:

Transit Route 359 from downtown past one of the city's lake parks, in the Year of Our Lord 2006, uses 60-ft New Flyer hi-floor coaches which have long seats facing each other at the front. I like these seats, and as I sit in one of them one spring afternoon, relaxed, anticipating the view of the canal and the coastal mountains when the route crosses the bridge, I commit the error of an unguarded glance at a woman directly across from me. She is looking straight at me with a grim, angry expression, so that I almost recoil. You should be ashamed, it seems to say.

 Although she has caught me by surprise, I am not actually surprised; and though in a sense I understand what is happening, in another sense I never quite do understand these incidents. She probably wouldn't look at a minority that way, or for that matter a person in a wheelchair. The era when help wanted ads contained phrases such as "No colored," or "No handicaps need apply" has passed. But as for us--for my kind--it's as if the civil rights revolution has never happened.

 It is a few months earlier. A passenger waiting on a bench at a downtown bus stop is looking fixedly at a spot a couple of inches below my eyes. A few minutes later I glance back. Her gaze is still locked. Now I face her: sometimes this will cause such people to realize what they are doing, and they will look away. But not this time.

   I sometimes think that we are the symbolic people. Sociologists have studied us, and the philosophers have mentioned us in their remarks about the human condition; Shakespeare refers to us by our familiar epithet, but with his usual charity, in "King Lear" ("This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. He begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock. He gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth.") and in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" ("And the blots of Nature's hand Shall not in their issue stand; Never mole, hare lip, nor scar, Nor mark prodigious, such as are Despised in nativity, Shall upon their children be"). We are similarly mentioned, but unkindly, in the movie "Casino," in an article by the "liberal" columnist Molly Ivins at time.com, and Mark Twain makes cruel sport of us in Huckleberry Finn. ("Mary Jane's nineteen, Susan's fifteen, and Joanna's about fourteen--that's the one that gives herself to good works and has a hare-lip.")
   It is some years back. I'm waiting by an elevator at City Hall, where I work for the City. Someone from another department points at me and says something to a waiting minority, whose eyes widen in shock as she looks at me. He repeats it, louder this time, so I can hear it. "Harelip," he says. "Harelip."

Did He Do the Right Thing?

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

This is the first of what are intended to be a series of examples of disability discrimination. The society which openly defames certain types of disability, as in the example from a national magazine at the top of this post, encourages shame. This "normal" society conditions the stigmatized to believe that they are in fact worse than other people and have no right to defend themselves.

This example, in which the person targeted did something to counteract the discrimination, may be atypical in that sense:

"Bill" is in his high school PE volleyball class. He experiences very little bullying as such in this school; on the other hand he sometimes overhears himself referred to as "doink-doink" and "bose-nose."
As he is about to serve, someone yells, "Serve the ball, doink-doink." Bill pauses and says, "What's my name?"
The heckler smirks.
Bill looks at the heckler and says, "What's my name?"
"Bill."
And Bill serves the ball.

Notes:

This could have turned out badly for "Bill." The other players could have piled on; for example, "Shut up and serve."
Or they could have expressed disapproval of the prejudiced heckler; for example, "Knock it off, Art."
Or the other players may have been giving Bill the chance to show that he could handle the situation.

How about the PE teacher? He was a public employee. He acted, or didn't act, in the name of the people of the school district. Would it have been better if he had said, "Art, see me in my office after the game"?

The above example shows characteristic elements of disability discrimination.

1. A member of the stigmatized disabled.
2. A malicious targeter.
3. A person (teacher, host, leader, officer, etc.) in some sense responsible for public order.
4. Bystanders, audience, witnesses.

It is probably evident that No. 2 is not uninvolved. But what about the rest?
Suppose that "Bill," instead of being the only disabled person in the game, was the only racial minority in the game; and that Art had used the n-word? If this had been a race discrimination incident rather than a disability discrimination incident, would we think it was OK for the teacher and the bystanders to stand by and do nothing?

Qui tacet contire videtur. He who stands by remains silent is seen to consent.