What someone targeted for being Muslim can teach those targeted for disability: The silence of the witnesses.

Tarunjit Singh Butalia on being harassed in the name of Christianity at a DMV office: “Despite being in a crowded room and others being able to hear this man harass me, no one intervened.”

“I privately spoke with a supervisor at the agency about the harassment I experienced — in what should have been a safe space open to everyone.

People of marginalized identities frequently experience hurtful and harmful situations when we’re merely trying to live our everyday lives.

I’ve learned from experience that teaching with facts to a strongly biased person in the moment of confrontation does not work.”

“I still worry that my DMV experience happened in public and around dozens of people. No one intervened, no one comforted me, no one confronted the aggressor who was screaming at me. I know these situations can be uncomfortable and, in the moment, sometimes people don’t know how to respond.

But what can you do when you encounter someone being harassed?”

“First, the person under attack needs solidarity. You can stand up and, instead of confronting the bigot, go to the person under duress, face them and block the sight of the bigot spewing hate. You can also offer words of support and ask if there’s anything you can do that would help them in the moment. None of this happened in my case.

Even after I completed my license renewal and walked across the waiting room to the door, not one person stepped up to say “I am sorry for what you went through.” That doesn’t mean folks in the room necessarily agreed with the screaming man. They just didn’t know what to do and how to react.” (Emphasis added)

“Unfortunately, inaction is one major reason bigots feel empowered to harm others. Next time you see this happen before you, step up and be an ally of the victim. The world runs because goodness exceeds evil.

Silence is complicity and feeds the normalization of hate. As is commonly said, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good people do nothing.” So please don’t be a part of the silent majority — instead, stand up, speak up and be an ally for those marginalized in our communities.” (Emphasis added)

/******/

I recently asked an in-law who works in higher education but keeps their law license current via pro bono cases if clefted people are in a protected class. To my surprise, they indicated that we are. “Sometimes people don’t know how to respond” to cleft phobia - or other disability discrimination - because they don’t realize that people having a disability have the same civil rights as women, minorities, and LGBTQ people.

“Inaction is one major reason bigots feel empowered to harm others.” There are powerful taboos against our speaking up for ourselves (I felt them when starting this blog years ago). We are supposed to be humble and apologetic. Sometimes “teaching with facts to a strongly biased person in the moment of confrontation” does not work. And sometimes they’re just messing with you because they think you’re afraid to violate the taboo, and it works to come back at them in no uncertain terms. Certainly bigots deserve to be surprised. (Emphasis added)

A reciprocity principle: If a remark or an action or an attitude would be seen as discriminatory if directed toward a minority, it is discriminatory for us. We have exactly the same civil rights, even if the justice system does not act as if we do.

What you can do when targeted by someone who thinks you aren’t in a protected class

 In June, 2013, this blog posted (Imagine That America Had Its Consciousness Raised), about What We Can Do.

Today, if someone gets on your case: HUD/FHA oversees the 55+ place I live. The application asked if I was disabled. Their sites say that disabled, “impaired in a major life function,” includes:

1. Speech
2. Eating
3. Appearance 
4. And considered to be disabled, which addresses prejudice and stigma.

So, if you don’t want to just let it go - sometimes the politic solution - you can point out that the United States Government considers you disabled, and frowns on targeting disabled people. Such targeting is discriminatory and could be a civil rights violation.

If others are standing by doing nothing, ask if they would let race, gender, or religious discrimination happen without objecting.

A day in the life

 Experiences I’ve had that maybe you have too.

One gets hired for a position, and does well in it. Sooner or later there’s an office shuffle, and there’s a new supervisor. They’re cleft phobic, and make life hell - but nobody seems to notice.(1)

A simple ride on the city bus system goes south. I once took a seat near the front of the bus opposite a scrawny woman in a wheelchair. As the bus got rolling, she got out one of those little dollar bottles of gin and commenced trying to open it. She asked passengers to help. When she asked me, I smiled and demurred. No drinking on Metro Transit. “You are weak!” she said, and started repeating it in a loud voice, verbal abuse that surely the driver could hear. (I wondered if I should suggest to the driver that the civil rights of a disabled person were being violated on government property - but decided not to bother.)

You go to a party, and someone asks you what seems to be a friendly question. This turns into derogatory rhetorical questions, and instead of a happy occasion, you find yourself on the hot seat - people backing away. Presumably this doesn’t happen with minorities, women, or LGBTQ people - people in a protected class.

A stranger remarks, “I knew a guy like you” - another person who was “different” - clefted.

Even government offices aren’t safe. I was meeting with an employment counselor when their co-worker nearby loudly joked about a moustached employee’s “hair lip.” A State Driver’s License photographer said, “Cheese, whiskey, harelip.”

You are admitted to the graduate school of a public university, and as soon as they see you there’s a chill. I experienced this in both a Midwestern and a West Coast university. (A city university just starting its graduate program acted the way higher education ought to act, and I had no difficulty getting a graduate degree there.) Are universities in the performative era afraid that having certain kinds of disabled people bearing their credentials out into the world would harm their reputations? 

These things add up. They constitute stigma, and result in what Sociologist Erving Goffman called “reduced life chances.”

/******/

(1) When I was working for the City Comptroller’s Office, I once came back from a week’s vacation to find co-workers acting a little strange. Finally, someone took me aside and said one of our people from across the hall had gone to my supervisor’s supervisor (a CPA, one of the ethical occupations) and complained about the way I was constantly being dressed down in front of everybody. The CPA said, “That’s a serious charge. It would need to be documented,” - and she pulled out a list of times and what was said.

It’s a strange life we the clefted live. Perhaps strangest is that we don’t talk about it.

In Public Man, Private Woman, the late Jean Bethke Elshtain said that in classical Greece, women did not have a public role. Women “did not have speeches,” was the way she put it.

Just to be a clefted person in a mainstream social gathering is anomalous. People go months without encountering one of us. They are quite unaware of what our lives are like, never knowing if the next stranger will be the one who does a number on us - finds a way to make it clear that they think misfits like us don’t belong.

The decent ones keep us at arm’s-length, carefully avoiding any sort of serious discussion. This is aided and abetted by the lack of a mode of discourse for engaging socially with a de facto subordinate, excluded, different subpopulation.

Example: On the way to a “soup dinner” occasionally hosted by an in-law, I made the mistake of making eye contact with a scrawny middle-aged woman in a wheelchair. When the bus started moving, she began trying to open one of those one-ounce bottles of gin. She asked one or two nearby passengers for assistance, then held the bottle out to me. I smiled regretfully (I used to work for the bus company, and it is illegal to consume alcohol on the bus).

She began verbal abuse. “You are weak,” over and over. Louder: “You are weak.” The bus driver could hear. (Should I have gone over to him and said, “a passenger is violating the civil rights of a disabled person right behind you?”)

I didn’t mention it at the partially family dinner either. Instead of arousing empathy, it would more likely have been seen as politicizing the occasion.

The massive social changes, which have made public conduct emphatically less civil, which have broken numerous guardrails concerning things which are not done because they violate the understood working of a functioning public space, are making things much worse for the stigmatized disabled. What the Founders called “toleration” has eroded, until the public feels it has a right not to see or hear anything whatsoever that might make them uncomfortable. Higher education, where the founding principle once was encountering new ideas that broadened the mind, now has an ever-expanding index prohibitorum of “hurtful” terms and conceptual positions.

This goes along with a rising belief that we shouldn’t have to deal with people whose differences make us feel uncomfortable, unless they’re in a protected class and we have to.

Near the end of a quarter century in my last apartment building, I was waiting in the lobby on Christmas Day for a family member. A young woman went through the lobby a couple times on the way to the laundry room. Then the apartment manager came out. She had complained about someone who shouldn’t be there.

It didn’t end with that. Someone messed with my door lock. “You’re the one” looks on the elevator. Someone figured out how to steal bandwidth from my hotspot.

People who hadn’t been born when I moved in believed that “the community” had the right to force whoever they didn’t like out.

We, like you, are as God made us. Please don’t target us for immutable conditions that we can’t change.

Term One for a discourse of the Fighting Disabled: “Cleftphobic,” “Cleftphobia.”

We were left out of the Civil Rights revolution. Tell people that.

Huffington Post: ““It’s natural to wish for life ‘to just get back to normal’ as a pandemic and economic crisis upend everything around us,” Obama said. “But we have to remember that for millions of Americans being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’ — whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park.””

Also, “for millions of Americans being treated differently on account of disability is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’.”

If I were to meet former President Obama, whom I whole-heartedly support, I would suggest that people having disabilities should also be part of the narrative.

I recently posted the following comment to a much-lauded anodyne article on a disability forum:

I see the [Forum] addressing access issues but not civil rights issues: The right of disabled people not to be demeaned, degraded and marginalized. The same people who wouldn’t think of commenting and gesturing about minorities, women and LGBTQ people often have no scruples about regarding disabled people as stigmatized and risible.
The narrative needs to be changed, something that bloggers with writing skills should be able to set about doing. A landmark civil rights case such as Brown v. Board of Education or Obergefell v. Hodges would help to raise consciousness.
We were left out of the Civil Rights revolution. Tell people that. Ask the ACLU if sometime it might think of making this an issue.
It is just as wrong to look cross-eyed at someone for being disabled as it is to give someone static for being a person of color.
So far as I know, the public does not know this. It’s time to change that.

Probably, “something that bloggers with writing skills should be able to set about doing” pissed them off.

Well, their trivializing, faux-activism pisses me off.

In the current narrative of “progressives,” people who look funny or move funny (the CPs, Cerebral Palsy, Cleft Palate) offend the Community, and under the rubric of Social Justice, the Community has the right to punish and expel those who offend it, unless they are part of progressivism’s favored classes.

But under Enlightenment liberalism, people who look funny or move funny are still part of The People, and as entitled to The Rights of Man as progressivism’s favored classes: minorities,(1) women, LGBTQ.

Justice Harlan’s Plessy dissent said that the U.S. Constitution "is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens."

The Fourteenth Amendment says everybody is entitled to “the equal protection of the laws.”

Even those the Community considers misfits.

Reciprocity Principle, from the first post on this blog:

A reciprocity principle: If a remark or an action or an attitude would be seen as discriminatory if directed toward a minority, it is discriminatory for us. We have exactly the same civil rights, even if the justice system does not act as if we do.

/*****/

(1) People having a disability are America’s largest minority, according to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Department of Labor, and the Centers for Disease Control, among others:

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html
“One in four people in United States has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control.”
http://www.adainfo.org/sites/default/files/Leadership-Network/Modules-1-5/5a-America-largMinorityFINAL.pdf
“America‘s largest minority”
http://www.dol.gov/odep/pubs/fact/diverse.htm
“As the nation's largest minority — comprising almost 50 million individuals”

“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.”

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".]

The Largest Minority

The US Office of Disability Employment Policy states:

Although the term is most often used to refer to differences among individuals such as ethnicity, gender, age and religion, diversity actually encompasses the infinite range of individuals' unique attributes and experiences. As the nation's largest minority — comprising almost 50 million individuals — people with disabilities contribute to diversity, and businesses can enhance their competitive edge by taking steps to ensure they are integrated into their workforce and customer base. (Emphasis added)

Comment: You'd never know it. The nation implements justice for minorities by several means: Protected class. Affirmative action. Heightened scrutiny concerning the effect of presumably neutral laws. Lawsuits concerning harassment, defamation, bullying, unequal pay, inequity in hiring practices, social exclusion. It is not that all these things necessarily belong in a liberal democratic society. In some cases they are inferior substitutes for justice. Protected class and heightened scrutiny look suspiciously like privilege.* Affirmative action, with its relationship to quotas and its adverse effect on merit hire and promotion, looks like favoritism.

But these are the currently operative ad hoc substitutes for actual justice. It is telling that people with disabilities are excluded. A news article from late 2012 concerning a child with cerebral palsy noted:

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Jennifer Fitzsimmons, the chief assistant city prosecutor in a rare case where legal action was taken

A year ago a courageous young woman with cerebral palsy wrote about the discriminatory reaction she often experiences in a supposedly progressive city:

I was born with cerebral palsy, and though I'm 30 years old, I didn't really accept that until I moved to Seattle last June. It was something I hid from, something I denied, and it was relatively easy to do so, because a lot of people seemed to notice other things about me before they noticed that. ... In Seattle, though, a lot of people seem to be a little unnerved by my disability, ... But I was caught entirely off guard by this sudden understanding that being alive in the only body I've got apparently makes some people uncomfortable in 2014, in one of America's most progressive cities. I moved here for books, coffee, writing, nature, food, even rain—not a daily crusade.

If she had been a member of the recognized minorities—a protected ethnicity, race, gender, or sexual orientation—the response would have included a lot of people saying, in effect, Yes, we still need to do more about the civil rights of minorities. Instead, there was a lot of backlash.

Many of those who quickly object to minority discrimination deny disability discrimination even as it is happening right in front of them. As commenter jacalope observes "The prevailing attitude seems to be that":

1. My disability isn't real
2. My disability is my own fault
3. If I tried harder I could just get over it
4. I'd magically get over it if I only tried my new acquaintance's latest diet/supplement/acupuncturist/exercise regimen

Why are these discriminatory attitudes alive and well in what Sarah Nielson called a "progressive city?" Because, since the civil rights revolution, discrimination against the minorities addressed by that revolution is subject to punishment under the laws. Social attitudes followed. "No colored need apply" notices were replaced by affirmative action. Society got the message. No one would think of telling a person of color, who described a discriminatory incident or attitude, to "just get over it."

Who is covered and who isn't covered sends a message. There's no affirmative action for cerebral palsy, for cleft palate, for little people, or for all those who are born different (unless the difference is race or gender). "There's nothing out there regarding disabilities," said Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons, above. That is, there has apparently never been a landmark civil rights case regarding a disabled person.

Again, society got the message. anonymous:

So you reject:

empathy
normal Seattle passive-aggressiveness
an obviously crazy homeless person
someone who mistakenly talks to your boyfriend instead of you
a mother who was caught in a sudden confrontation

Honey, those are all things we all deal with. It's called the real world.

An article defaming those with birth defects has resided on the Time.com website for over a decade:

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

Again, the double standard is evident. Would the public have stood for the above remark if Ms. Ivins had used the n-word instead of the h-word? For that matter, would Time have published the article unedited with the n-word?

It's unthinkable. But in the case of the largest minority, it attracts no attention.
 
 (*) "Privilege": "Private Law"

The Targeted Minority that Got Left Out

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

First, tentative conclusions about the formal (omitted from civil rights) and informal (lax or hostile social standards) situation of the stigmatized disabled:

• Disability is not a protected class.
• Protected class sensitivity has largely substituted for the moral obligation to be just no matter who is being targeted.
• If a group isn't in a protected class then it is not necessary to worry about discriminating against its members; that is, Open Season on those (disadvantaged people who aren't a race or a gender) not covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Social standards (see Time Magazine's defamatory remark at the top of this article) have been substituted for the ethical standards of universal justice.
• The true significance of society's acceptance of the above Time Magazine remark isn't that is defamatory. It is that just about everybody understands that to be inflicted with the disability it refers to (or certain others) is to become a social outcast.
• For them, it is as if the civil rights revolution had never happened.

From About Dwarf Aware:

Here are some myths:
• Little people love poking fun at how they appear to others.
• Little people only date other little people.
• They must agree with being called a midget or treated as one because they are always on t.v. dressed up as funny characters.
• Dwarfs cannot handle themselves in the workplace; they scare clients away and are always absent. They need too much special equipment.

From a previous post about an article by a person with cerebral palsy:

Many of those who quickly object to minority discrimination deny disability discrimination even as it is happening right in front of them. As commenter jacalope observes "The prevailing attitude seems to be that":

1. My disability isn't real
2. My disability is my own fault
3. If I tried harder I could just get over it
4. I'd magically get over it if I only tried my new acquaintance's latest diet/supplement/acupuncturist/exercise regimen

Why are these discriminatory attitudes alive and well in what Sarah Nielsen called a "progressive city?" Because, since the civil rights revolution, discrimination against minorities is subject to punishment under the laws. Social attitudes followed. "No colored need apply" notices were replaced by affirmative action. Society got the message. No one would think of telling a person of color, who described a discriminatory incident or attitude, to "just get over it."

From "Maxwell," a person with a cleft palate:

He was renewing his driver's license when the state employee taking his picture said, "Cheese, whiskey, harelip."

He was attending a party in the home of his son and daughter-in-law, who are community college employees, when a guest who teaches at a community college started asking derogatory rhetorical questions about where he worked before retirement. The questions were such that other guests started backing away from the person the public college teacher was targeting. But none of the guests, most of whom were de facto state employees, objected to the teacher's discriminatory remarks, even when the teacher compared the disabled person to someone else they knew who was, in the teacher's words, "funny looking."

Not-in-a-protected class Open Season means that disabled people find themselves at risk of being publicly humiliated when they attend parties. In "Maxwell's" case, this meant that a party can prove unsafe even when it is comprised of two classes of people—his family, and employees of public institutions with strict anti-harassment policies—of whom one would expect better.

The above Dwarf Aware site lists facts which reveal prevalent derogatory expectations:

• Around 80% of babies born with dwarfism come from average stature parents.
• They are of the same intelligence as the more general public.
• They are surgeons, lawyers, teachers, athletes, artists, journalists, and almost every other profession you can think of.
• The unemployment rate is higher than any other able-bodied group of people.
• The “M” word, or “midget”, is offensive to most little people. It does not refer to any one type of dwarfism. It is just a bad word.
• My son has a disproportionate type of dwarfism, that means his upper arms and legs, for instance, are shorter than average. He is perfectly proportioned for who he is, but is not the same, proportion-wise as taller folks.
• Persons with Achondroplasia, (Achons), compare equally in intelligence, talent, and ability to get the job done.
• Achons have medical issues, but rarely ask for assistance. They do have the same life expectancy as anyone else.

Remedies suggested in earlier article Imagine That America Had Its Consciousness Raised:

Needed:

• A landmark disability discrimination civil rights case. ACLU, where are you? Ada.gov, where are you?
• Anti-defamation campaign (Time.com, take note!).
• A civil rights act for the disabled, since the disabled were omitted from the Civil Rights Act.
• A disability ombudsman in each state and each school district to which any adult, and any student, respectively, can go when disability discrimination occurs.
• The addition of specific disability harassment language to the existing anti-harassment guidelines.
• For Shame! campaign.  
• Ad showing a minority being bullied beside one showing disabled being bullied, saying one is just as wrong as the other.
• Spots showing celebrities saying “I'm against disability discrimination, are you?”
• Ad showing teacher rebuking student for slighting disabled classmate. 
• A speech by a national leader citing instances of disability discrimination and calling for change. 
• National leader describing incidents such as [Time Magazine's] remark as the product of irrational animus and calling for change. 
• Counseling for the disabled, to deal with the pressure to feel shame, guilt, social inadequacy, etc.
• Proactive response training, such as how to respond if someone says, “How nice you're in the choir—it must help with your speech.”
• The addition of ethical training to the training of physicians and other medical staff, to remind them that it is unprofessional to treat disability as a social sin rather than a morally neutral medical condition.
• Institutions (meeting places, organizations, "meet people like you" events, etc.) to counteract the social isolation of many disabled people.

Medical discrimination is a surprisingly widespread problem. Not only support personnel but physicians themselves, in many cases, do not treat stigmatizing disabilities as morally neutral medical conditions (which is what their professions require). They treat disability—particularly when resulting from birth condition—as a mark of shame. In such cases the disabled patient is treated as if he or she should feel guilty, and anticipate substandard medical care as all they can expect under the circumstances.

Example: The visibly disabled elderly patient who found that his new physician, without giving a reason or offering a substitute, refused to continue his sleep medication.

Other Resources

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

A disability discrimination attorney suggested the Independence Chick blog as a resource for the readers of The Politics of Cleft Palate. As an example of the value of publications written from first-hand knowledge of disability in the United States today, see her post, Your Christmas Bonus: A List of Thought-Provoking Books from the Independence Zone! which includes:

Why I Burned my Book and Other Essays on Disability (nonfiction, author Paul Longmore, adults only)–Paul Longmore gives readers food for thought in this collection of disability-related essays on topics such as why the ADA was not the benchmark movement some thought it was, disability stereotypes in film and other media, and the criminally low expectations of people with disabilities in society.

and

Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve, and the Case Against Disability Rights (nonfiction, author Mary Johnson, adults only)–A landmark book exploring the truth behind the ADA, the case against disability rights, the case for disability rights, and the fact that our society, though “enlightened” in many other ways, consistently still fails to see disability as deserving of real civil rights legislation and attitudes.

The Introduction to The Politics of Cleft Palate, last June, agreed with Independence Chick on the ADA:

The Google search site:ada.gov civil rights turns up references referring to the act as a civil rights act (and you will also find "affirmative action" on ada.gov). The ADA is no such thing. The ADA has done good work concerning accommodations for the disabled in the workplace and in public transit; but neither it, nor any other element of our decent society has done anything about defamatory remarks (again, note the passage from a national magazine which begins this post), or about the inescapable climate of discrimination.

Independence Chick also discusses an issue explored in this weblog, the inability "to see disability as deserving of real civil rights legislation and attitudes."

Our treatment began with the "case law" note near the top of this post, which refers to the following 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."

We continued, in Courts and the Civil Rights of the Disabled, suggesting that the ad hoc mechanism of "protected class" left out the disabled:

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.

Independence Chick in turn references the site Disability is Natural, whose resource list includes:

http://secondchancetolive.wordpress.com is hosted by Craig Phillips, "a traumatic/acquired brain injury survivor, with a message of encouragement, motivation, empowerment, and hope."

www.sarahstup.com is hosted by an accomplished teen writer and artist who has autism.

Comments about Article from Seattleite with Cerebral Palsy Reveal Prevailing Attitudes

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

In the previous post, Sarah Nielsen on Cerebral Palsy Discrimination in a Progressive City, we discussed an article in "The Stranger" by Sarah Nielsen, a newcomer to Seattle who has cerebral palsy. Many of the early comments tend to corroborate the central issue revealed by the article: as contrasted with discrimination against minorities covered by the Civil Rights Act, in many cases disability discrimination is still practiced openly. The double standard present in the late Molly Ivins's remark above (would time.com have published it if she'd used the n-word instead of the h-word?) showed up in the early comments. [The names of the critical commenters--except for the two pulled for "trolling"--are in Ms. Nielsen's article. We here refer to them as "anonymous."]

Many of those who quickly object to minority discrimination deny disability discrimination even as it is happening right in front of them. As commenter jacalope observes "The prevailing attitude seems to be that":

1. My disability isn't real
2. My disability is my own fault
3. If I tried harder I could just get over it
4. I'd magically get over it if I only tried my new acquaintance's latest diet/supplement/acupuncturist/exercise regimen

Why are these discriminatory attitudes alive and well in what Sarah Nielsen called a "progressive city?" Because, since the civil rights revolution, discrimination against minorities is subject to punishment under the laws. Social attitudes followed. "No colored need apply" notices were replaced by affirmative action. Society got the message. No one would think of telling a person of color, who described a discriminatory incident or attitude, to "just get over it."

Who is covered and who isn't covered sends a message. There's no affirmative action for cerebral palsy, for cleft palate, for little people, or for all those who are born different (unless the difference is race or gender). "There's nothing out there regarding disabilities," said Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons, above. That is, there has apparently never been a landmark civil rights case regarding a disabled person.

Again, society got the message. anonymous:

So you reject:

empathy
normal Seattle passive-aggressiveness
an obviously crazy homeless person
someone who mistakenly talks to your boyfriend instead of you
a mother who was caught in a sudden confrontation

Honey, those are all things we all deal with. It's called the real world.

In Internalized Discrimination: You're Not Supposed to SAY That, we wrote:

"Normal," "decent" society tacitly admits that the disability cohort are a targeted minority (as in the quote by the late "liberal" columnist Ms. Ivins which begins this post), but has failed to provide the civil rights remedies enacted for other persecuted groups. "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 just-world hypothesis works, in part, by blaming the stigmatized disabled for the pervasive social targeting which marginalizes and disenfranchises them. "A familiar experience of our people is the case where our family, friends, or co-workers imply that we should have done better, considering our background; and completely ignore the crucial fact of our lives: Discriminatory social attitudes reduce our "life chances." It is considered divisive and socially unacceptable to speak out about our situation, even though people like Ms. Ivins can allude to our second-class citizen status in full confidence that this is readily understood by their readership.
 
We who write this remember that most of our lives we ourselves kept silent. And there is an internal struggle against convention every time we [speak out as Sarah Nielsen did].

Concerning denial and silence, in the article under discussion Sarah Nielsen wrote, "It was something I hid from, something I denied, and it was relatively easy to do so, because a lot of people seemed to notice other things about me before they noticed that."

As commenter Someone_nice observes:

Some of these comments are just proving your point. Sarah, keep your chin up. Many of us out here applaud your honesty.

Commenter clashfan adds:

Exploding at a homeless man? He started screaming first, and she was scared for her and her boyfriend's safety. I'd be angry, too, if someone accosted me like that. Her reaction was appropriate.

But the negative comments reveal that our liberated society has an underside which is seldom talked about. There is a substantial subclass for which it is as if the civil rights revolution never happened. They are not protected, and the following commenters felt free to make degrading accusations in print: In the following, commenter anonymous punishes Ms. Nielsen for speaking out about discrimination by accusing her of greed and egotism:

Yeah, kind of an odd little mishmash of interactions. It sounds like more people in Seattle are acknowledging your disability than you are used to from other places you've lived. I'd tend to agree with #9 that these all seem like things you'd be able to deal with at 30 years old. You want some real Seattle attitude? I think you're just using your disability as an excuse to write an article. Probably even had plans for an entire memoir before the bookstore clerk shot that down.

Another demeans her writing skills with a series of non sequiturs:

I am disappointed in this piece, as it promises, but does not deliver. First, we are teased with:

"I'm from New Orleans, where anything goes..."

Then: "...but nearly every time I step out of the house, some weird shit goes down..."

If a person tells me they are from a place where "anything goes", and then proceeds to tell me about some "weird shit" that has gone down, I am expecting...really WEIRD SHIT. Like: "holy CRAP I can't believe what I am hearing!"

What was the weird shit? This: "Then she looked at me with sad eyes. 'But cerebral palsy is a reality, too.' "

No. That is not weird shit. That is just an awkward social encounter.

"Its Like You've Never Seen Someone With Subpar Social Skills."

For the record, I'm impressed by what Sarah Nielsen accomplished with this article. It is not that easy to write about these matters. She did it with grace and style:

@33 -- Awww, thank you!!

Really appreciate your support, and what you said about the memoir made me smile.

As for New Yorkers, it doesn't actually surprise me. A lot of my closest are East Coasters, and while they might seem a little abrupt on the surface, the kindness at the core is very real.

Thanks again, for reading and for sharing your thoughts! - SarahMN

Sarah Nielsen on Cerebral Palsy Discrimination in a Progressive City

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

The April 30, '14 issue of "The Stranger" includes "It's Like You've Never Seen Someone with Cerebral Palsy Before" by Sarah Nielsen.

She begins:

I was born with cerebral palsy, and though I'm 30 years old, I didn't really accept that until I moved to Seattle last June. It was something I hid from, something I denied, and it was relatively easy to do so, because a lot of people seemed to notice other things about me before they noticed that. ... In Seattle, though, a lot of people seem to be a little unnerved by my disability, ... But I was caught entirely off guard by this sudden understanding that being alive in the only body I've got apparently makes some people uncomfortable in 2014, in one of America's most progressive cities. I moved here for books, coffee, writing, nature, food, even rain—not a daily crusade.

Ms. Nielsen contrasts other cities:

I'm from New Orleans, where anything goes, and I spent a long stretch in New Mexico, where anything goes but less flamboyantly so. The other side of my family is from the Midwest, where nobody really focuses on bodies one way or the other. Even when I walked around for long stretches in fitness-obsessed San Francisco, no one flinched at me or explained me away from their kids.

It would be good to know what others from these areas have to say about tolerance in those places. In A Dissenter's Notes, it is argued that a difference between progressives and liberals is that progressives are generally influenced by social standards, while liberals are influenced by more universal standards of justice. To the extent that disability seems to offend social standards of conforming appearance, progressives may indeed react in the way that Sarah Nielsen describes. While progressives are careful to avoid offending members of a protected class, the exclusion of disability in general from the list of protected groups can leave the disabled unprotected from disability discrimination by progressives.

As Sarah Nielsen concludes her article:

To accept someone is to listen to them. In Seattle, I've felt dismissed as confrontational, or been outright ignored, when I've tried to correct strangers' assumptions about myself. I would love to feel listened to, and to know that the questions I get come from curiosity, not fear.

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.)