“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.”

“Our impairments aren't what disable us ... society does that.”

A person with a cleft palate (PWACP) reports that at the college they attended there four people with cleft palate. Only the one with facial characteristics of cleft palate was treated as disabled.
Margo Victoria Bok and others in the BC Disability Caucus Facebook page:

“Government needs to act on making educational environments far more supportive for those in both k to 12 and post secondary A big part of that needs to be insisting that organizations address the prejudice and discrimination that is far too commonplace. People need to learn that we aren't less able than the nondisabled. Our impairments aren't what disable us ... society does that.”

“Yes, very true. I like the way she put it because the disabled are so seriously marginalized. Prejudices about us are accepted as truth by so many. So, it's especially tough for the disabled to find environments that are inclusive, supportive and accepting.”

Martha Nussbaum in Reason 2004:

On the other side, our society also has been thinking a lot about how to protect citizens from shame. One can see this in particular in recent public debates about citizens with disabilities, where much attention is given to how both employment and education can be non-stigmatizing. One of my questions is whether it is coherent to favor a restoration of shaming in criminal punishment, while seeking to protect all citizens from shame. I hold that there is no surface inconsistency in such a position, but that there is a deeper inconsistency, because an interest in shame in punishment is ultimately inconsistent with respect for the equal dignity of all citizens. (Emphasis added)

As one PWACP says, we aren't anti-social. Society is anti-us.

We need a new narrative. "Prejudices about us are accepted as truth by so many." A common experience can occur when we attend a party. Someone starts asking supposedly friendly questions, but the subtext is negative. They are rhetorical questions. People start edging away, but nobody in the social group objects, even though it is clear that the one person present who is different is being put on the hot seat. "Prejudice and discrimination ... is far too commonplace." The subtext is, "what's a misfit doing at a party?" It's a double standard. The mainstream wouldn't stand by and do nothing if a derogatory environment was being created for a racial minority.

The reciprocity principle expressed in the first post in this blog:

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. - Introduction: Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort

A Recent Book on the Civil Rights of the Disabled

This is a collection of notes, with comments, from What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement - Fred Pelka, 2012

In the first post of this weblog, we wrote:

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. 

 As Pelka writes, "People with disabilities are an oppressed minority with protected rights." (p. 3) He continues:

Robert Funk . . . has recounted the history of what he calls "the humanization of disabled people" in America as the journey of individuals with disabilities from "objects of pity and fear . . . who are incapable and neither expected nor willing to participate in or contribute to society" to a "disability rights movement" which maintains that "disabled people have the constitutional and human right to equal citizenship, that is, the right to be treated as a person worthy of dignity and respect." (p. 4)

Our first post continued:

People with cleft palates bear two stigmas: the stigma of disability; and the stigma of birth condition, which is considered guilt by many. An example of the latter from the 1st Century: Paraphrasing John 9:2, "Master, did this man sin . . . that he was born thus?"

Pelka:

Americans with disabilities have generally found themselves, as the activist Justin Dart Jr. put it, the nation's "poorest, most oppressed group." ...

"The persistent thread within the Christian tradition," writes theologian and sociologist Nancy Eiesland, "has been that disability is either divinely blessed or damned: the defiled evildoer or the spiritual superhero." ... [In parts of the third world] religious tradition regards disability as a form of "divine punishment" for alleged sinfuless. (p. 5)

Social attitudes can render the disabled the scapegoats of our society:

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson: "According to [Melvin] Lerner, the human need for order and predictability gives rise to the belief that people get what they deserve or that the way things are is the way they should be....if something 'bad'—like having a disability—happens to someone, then there must be some 'good' reason—like divine or moral justice, for its occurrence." ... it results in victim-blaming and scapegoating of those who are different. (p. 6)

In This is the Son of Kings, we suggested that the classic tragedy Oedipus the King paralleled the traditional treatment of a baby with a club foot disability in some Greek city-states. Pelka:

According to [Henri-Jacques] Stiker, the religious systems of Graeco-Roman antiquity were even less tolerant . . . In both ancient Athens and Sparta infants with disabilities were "exposed," taken "outside to an unknown location and [left to]...expire in a hole in the ground or drown in a course of water." The birth of disabled infants was believed to "signal the possibility of misfortunes and are [sic] explained by the anger of the gods. Deformed infants are exposed because they are harmful, maleficent. They implicate the group." (pp. 6-7)

In Internalized Discrimination: You're Not Supposed to SAY That, we suggested a powerful social pressure to remain silent. Pelka:

Robert Garland: "[The disabled were generally held in disdain] both by their families and by society at large. ... The disabled themselves were encouraged to feel a certain shame for their own physical condition." Disability rights activists today would call this "internalized oppression"—the absorption by oppressed people of the judgments and assumptions of the majority culture. p. 7

In the last note taken so far from Pelka's book:

Tim Cook: "Persons with disabilities were believed to simply not have the 'rights and liberties of normal people.'" (p. 11)

In a post November 26, 2014 we wrote:

“Spoiled Identity”: When the Disabled Are Not In “A State of Society” - In Pauline Maier's American Scripture we find:

In June 1776 the Virginia Convention ... amended the ... draft so it said that "all men are by nature equally free and independent" and had "certain inherent rights" ... "when they enter into a state of society." The statement ... freed the state of Virginia from an obligation to recognize and protect the inherent rights of slaves since ... slaves had never entered Virginia's society, which was confined to whites. - Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence, p. 193 (Emphasis added)

The post continues:
What is significant here is that the basic human rights—normal human rights—are not guaranteed simply because a person is human, but only if society accepts the person. The "spoiled identity" which sociologists recognize in such stigmatized people as the disabled, and especially those with birth defects, often means a specific lifetime exclusion from society. The results, as implied by the following defamatory passage from the Time Magazine web site, can be devastating:

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

The sociologist notes that the effect is reduced "life chances": 

Goffman [says] “The term stigma, then, will be used to refer to ... a special kind of relationship between attribute and stereotype” (2). [1] Observing that “the person with stigma is not quite human” (3), Goffman explains that the our unconscious assumptions lead us to “exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances.”

From Around the Web, Ctd

This follows on a post from July 2013.

Sarah Blahovec posts on disability issues.

The Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund has informative articles and was the source of some of the following links.

The U.S. Department of Education posts Dear Colleague letter regarding disability harassment:

When harassing conduct is sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive that it creates a hostile environment, it can violate a student's rights under the Section 504 and Title II regulations. A hostile environment may exist even if there are no tangible effects on the student where the harassment is serious enough to adversely affect the student's ability to participate in or benefit from the educational program. Examples of harassment that could create a hostile environment follow.

Several students continually remark out loud to other students during class that a student with dyslexia is "retarded" or "deaf and dumb" and does not belong in the class; as a result, the harassed student has difficulty doing work in class and her grades decline.

A student repeatedly places classroom furniture or other objects in the path of classmates who use wheelchairs, impeding the classmates' ability to enter the classroom.

A teacher subjects a student to inappropriate physical restraint because of conduct related to his disability, with the result that the student tries to avoid school through increased absences.7

A school administrator repeatedly denies a student with a disability access to lunch, field trips, assemblies, and extracurricular activities as punishment for taking time off from school for required related to the student's disability.

A professor repeatedly belittles and criticizes a student with a disability for using accommodations in class, with the result that the student is so discouraged that she has great difficulty performing in class and learning.

Students continually taunt or belittle a student with mental retardation by mocking and intimidating him so he does not participate in class.

When disability harassment limits or denies a student's ability to participate in or benefit from an educational institution's programs or activities, the institution must respond effectively. Where the institution learns that disability harassment may have occurred, the institution must investigate the incident(s) promptly and respond appropriately.

Disability Harassment Also May Deny a Free Appropriate Public Education

Disability harassment that adversely affects an elementary or secondary student's education may also be a denial of FAPE

How to File a Discrimination Complaint with the Office for Civil Rights:

Discrimination on the basis of disability is prohibited by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (Title II prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability by public entities, whether or not they receive federal financial assistance).

A complaint may be filed by mail, by email (ocr@ed.gov), or by online complaint form:  http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/complaintintro.html

Remember the reciprocity principle:

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. - Introduction: Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort

In the News: Disability Discrimination

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

A human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only. - James Agee

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. - Introduction: Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort

In Introduction: Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort I observed:

Our society, in part with the aid of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), is respectful with certain other types of disabilities. A couple years ago I used public transport in such European cities as Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, Munich, Paris, and Amsterdam. There was virtually no wheelchair accommodation. Characteristically, when I saw someone in a wheelchair, someone was along to help. Here, we wait patiently while a bus loads someone in a wheelchair (as decent people should). It is socially unacceptable to stare (again, as it should be). As with AIDS, an ethical public relations campaign has largely removed the stigma from these disabilities.

Not entirely. From Andrew Sullivan's Blog, two days ago:

John List and Uri Gneezy conducted a series of experiments to evaluate discrimination against disabled people seeking car repairs:

[W]e recruited several men between the ages of twenty-nine and forty-five to act as our secret agents. Half these men used wheelchairs and drove specially equipped vehicles. The other half were non-disabled, but in all cases the individuals hopped into a specially equipped vehicle for the disabled with a fresh ding on the side and headed to Chicago-area repair shops.

When our secret agents got to an auto repair shop they simply asked for a price quote to fix their car. What we found initially was shocking. The disabled were given quotes 30 percent higher than the quotes given to non-disabled for the exact same repair!

A more general case: 

As of today, if you’re disabled you can no longer go straight to the front of the line for all of your favorite rides at Disney World. It may sound like a callous joy-revoking move from the home of the Magic Kingdom, but, then again, the reason for the change is pretty appalling. Families, fully capable of waiting in line like everyone else, were scamming their way to the front of the line by, wait for it, hiring disabled–or perhaps more appropriately "disabled”–tour guides. The TODAY show went undercover this summer to expose the practice.

Here’s what they found:

Last May's investigation began with ads found on Craigslist in which tour guides bragged about their "disabled passes": "Let's cut the Disney lines together," "access to special entrances." Going undercover at Disneyland, the TODAY producer and his family hired two of those guides, with home video cameras rolling.

"I'm here to make sure everyone has fun at Disneyland and we get on as many rides as possible," one of the guides, named Mara, told the producer and his family. "I have a special card that's going to help us beat the lines." And she charged $50 to do it, getting them straight past long lines at such attractions as the Mad Tea Party ride. ...

When confronted one of the guides told TODAY: "We live in a capitalist country, and I don't feel like it's morally wrong."

This is a known moral two-step. Capitalism, of itself, is essentially amoral. As Dickens documented, in an earlier phase it cannibalized  its own work force through child labor. Our liberal society can tolerate capitalism only because it is heavily regulated. Morality is imposed on capitalism from outside by insider trading laws, the forty-hour work week, child labor laws, and various formal provisions against false advertising and fraud, among other strictures. The late journalist Henry Fairlie dissected this notion that "We live in a capitalist country" could in any sense be an ethical standard. In How Fares the Republic: The Liberal View of the Market:

For those who glorify “the market,” [Fairlie observed], “the purpose is always the same, to leave the economic realm in command over all others, to explain all human impulse, as it is expressed in the political process, in terms of nothing more than the ‘acquisitive instinct.’ ... they are in bondage to an economic view of human aspiration against which they have no defense once the supremacy of the political realm has been surrendered.”

We should always resist the triumph of the “economic view,” of the valorization of private gain at the expense of the public good, over the political and ethical realm.

On another weblog, In Retrospect: The Supreme Court and The Disabled documented a case in which the august Supreme Court slighted the disabled by interpreting away much of what little legal protection the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 provides:

In 2008, the year of Obama's first presidential election, the American Congress took action to remind the Supreme Court of the intent of existing disability employment law. Under the headline, Congress Passes Bill With Protections for Disabled, the New York Times wrote:

The bill expands the definition of disability and makes it easier for workers to prove discrimination. It explicitly rejects the strict standards used by the Supreme Court to determine who is disabled.

The bill declares that the court went wrong by “eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect” under the 1990 law.

“The Supreme Court misconstrued our intent,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House Democratic leader. “Our intent was to be inclusive.” ...

Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, the chief sponsor of the bill, said: “The Supreme Court decisions have led to a supreme absurdity, a Catch-22 situation. The more successful a person is at coping with a disability, the more likely it is the court will find that they are no longer disabled and therefore no longer covered under the A.D.A.”

The first post in this weblog specified an emphasis on the subset of the disabled who are especially stigmatized, generally because the disability results from a birth condition:

While the primary focus will be as the blog title suggests, this blog is about all of us who bear stigma because we are physically different—little people (Google "dwarf tossing"), those we call retards, those we call spastics, those we label with the h-word, as the late Ms. Ivins does above, and others—who are, as her folksy phrase implies, pervasively targeted in our society. These pages are about the civil rights of this Disability Cohort. This weblog seeks to document the current "I don't care" climate of disability discrimination, and to propose solutions.

But as the above examples reveal, there persists general disability discrimation among the "normal," "decent" people of our post-civil-rights-revolution society. For some possible remedies, see: Imagine That America Had Its Consciousness Raised

A Member of the Stigmatized Disabled Writes to His Family

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. [Vide infra]

"X" wrote the following to his sister, the member of his family he thought most open-minded:

Dear __:
  The following is a copy of an e-mail I just sent to my son. The incident I refer to near the end occurred at a party at [my son's] residence. It was the last time I saw him and may partially explain why this is so.
  I will give a very brief account of the incident. A guest, someone I'd never seen before, started asking intrusive questions when she discovered I wasn't a community college teacher like most of the people there. She persisted even when it was clear that I was uncomfortable with what seemed to be an insinuation that I didn't belong there. When she managed to work in a reference to someone she knew who was also--her exact words--"funny looking," the two guests to my left were visibly shocked. My son and my daughter-in-law were sitting right there at the table while this happened.
  The following e-mail may explain things my family seems not to understand. Or it may not.

__:
  The issue is the discrimination against my people. My position is that a double standard is not acceptable, and in consequence I am no more to be expected to accept discrimination than an African American would be.
  We have examples of this double standard in the press. The phrase, "I don't care if it harelips the governor" is clearly defamatory. If this is not clear, ask yourself if it would be defamatory of the n-word was substituted for the h-word. The phrase appeared in the print edition of Time a dozen years ago, it is in the blockbuster movie "Casino," and in modified form in the classic movie "Dr. Strangelove."
  Would the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, and Jesse Jackson have allowed this if the phrase was "I don't care if it [n-word's] the governor?" If the answer is no, then the phrase constitutes an unmistakable example of a case where our normal, decent, respectable society displays a double standard concerning defamation of my people, as contrasted with defamation of African Americans. Just as other discriminatory behavior does, defamation of character degrades and intimidates the people it targets. The [a government agency] anti-harassment policy prohibits any effort to "degrade and intimidate" an employee. And respectable society acts as if it does know that "I don't care if it harelips the governor" (which still appears on time.com in an article by the supposedly liberal columnist Molly Ivins) is discrimination.
  This is my first point. Respectable society--not only the conservative right, but equally the supposedly liberal left, which is silent on this issue--accepts discrimination against certain groups, including my people. Respectable society's conscience was raised concerning people of color and women, but it has never been raised concerning other people, including those with cleft palates. There is still a civil rights battle to be waged. Defamation of character is targeting, and it is, as documented above, still socially acceptable to target my people, even though such discrimination, as Sociologist Erving Goffman said in Stigma, causes my people to have reduced "life chances."
  Respectable society, that is, discriminates against my people, and because this discrimination is not recognized, it is invisible. It is socially acceptable, and because it is acceptable, there is often backlash against anyone who draws attention to it. If a person with a cleft palate objects to any aspect of the pervasive, unconscious discrimination against us, he or she is blamed, and accused of something, such as being "anti-social."
  In this sense, since discriminatory conduct is always unjust and unethical, regardless of whether it is socially acceptable, respectable society's acceptance of the above defamation of my people is unjust and unethical. It is, to put a word to it, indecent. As a consequence, to be decent, every person has to make their own ethical decisions. One can't say, "it's all right because it is socially acceptable." The history of the socially acceptable demonstrates this. It was socially acceptable, when I was in high school, to be racist in Mississippi. It was socially acceptable, when my dad was in college, to be anti-Semitic in Hitler Germany. If you are conformist, you almost certainly violate universal ethical standards of decency. If you have the habit of adulating the recognized leaders of your in-group, you will likely be emulating unrecognized discriminatory behavior.
  My second point is that decent people object to all discriminatory conduct, even if such objection results in their incurring social disapproval. They have the moral courage to resist social pressure.
  I have several examples of this, and I will give you one of them: One day, when I was a cashier at Toys R Us, a businesswoman and her ten-ish son came to my counter. When he saw me the boy, without thinking, made a sound like a raspberry, but more sloppy and mucous-y. His mother immediately realized what he had done and, while the line waited, she knelt down in her suit to his level and explained to him why decent people did not do what he had just done. It took her awhile, because she recognized that this could be an important event in her son's life as a morally autonomous, responsible person.
  In a subsequent e-mail I will describe to you an incident in which what was unmistakable discriminatory behavior against your father occurred right in front of you. It has been treated as if it was socially acceptable, that is, as if it didn't happen. This is why I wrote that I don't see you as "marching to the sound of a different drummer when social values are debased and venal."
  Your response to my last e-mail, your catalog of your virtues, doesn't address this issue, which M.L. King described as the situation where "good people stand by and do nothing."
  My people live socially isolated, embattled lives because "respectable" society defines away defamation of character and other discriminatory behavior. In the above example, a well-dressed woman who was a total stranger showed courage and decency as soon as she saw discriminatory behavior taking place. Is it too much to ask that my family do as much when it sees social wrongdoing against their own flesh and blood?

"X" relates that his sister's and his son's response was breast-beating sympathy with the plight of his people. He adds that subsequently they doubled down on the behavior he had described to them.

To cite the first post in this weblog, Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort:

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.

Introduction: Social Attitudes and the Disability Cohort

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

 Because of the sensitive nature of this weblog, it is published under a pen name: John M. Halberg. While the primary focus will be as the blog title suggests, this blog is about all of us who bear stigma because we are physically different—little people (Google "dwarf tossing"), those we call retards, those we call spastics, those we label with the h-word, as the late Ms. Ivins does above, and others—who are, as her folksy phrase implies, pervasively targeted in our society. These pages are about the civil rights of this Disability Cohort. This weblog seeks to document the current "I don't care" climate of disability discrimination, and to propose solutions.

A Google search for "cleft palate blog" shows posts mainly about children, and advice to parents of children with this birth condition. These are valuable and needed, but there is an absence of material about the civil rights of these children when they grow up, about the current social attitudes towards those with clefts, and about the rest of the Disability Cohort. What follows are initial observations, interspersed with comments (treated as "anonymous" even when they aren't) found on other weblogs:

People with cleft palates bear two stigmas: the stigma of disability; and the stigma of birth condition, which is considered guilt by many. An example of the latter from the 1st Century: Paraphrasing John 9:2, "Master, did this man sin . . . that he was born thus?"

Anonymous - This is sweet i have a cleft lip and palate also and i had an amazing doctor i am 18 and not many people can tell i was born with it :) the only thing i would like to warn your is when he goes to school he may get made fun of cause i did a lot eventually it will stop once the kids mature but some remarks can be hurtful i was never angry abt being born with this i actually like being different in this way....my little brother has it and i am giving him advice all the time about the bullying espeacially.

Our society, in part with the aid of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), is respectful with certain other types of disabilities. A couple years ago I used public transport in such European cities as Berlin, Budapest, Vienna, Munich, Paris, and Amsterdam. There was virtually no wheelchair accommodation. Characteristically, when I saw someone in a wheelchair, someone was along to help. Here, we wait patiently while a bus loads someone in a wheelchair (as decent people should). It is socially unacceptable to stare (again, as it should be). As with AIDS, an ethical public relations campaign has largely removed the stigma from these disabilities. It can be done.

The attitude revealed by the Time.com passage which begins this post endangers the mental health of the stigmatized disabled. A courageous artist, Sarah Marie Love, posted:

Being born and growing up with a deformity isn’t easy, as people can use this as an excuse to be a bully. Name calling was a huge problem for me at school, and this made me weary of those around me in all social issues. The most hurtful comment I received was whilst I was having dinner at my Secondary school. A very stupid boy in a year above me called me Bubba. He was a character in the film Forest Gump whose bottom lip stuck out far due to having “big gums.” I hated people commenting on the way I looked. As far as I am concerned it was no ones business and one day I wouldn’t have that intrusive lip, but reminding me of this didn’t take away the hurt I felt inside. Also, people (including adults) thought they had right to remind me every day that my lip stuck out. Walking past down the street or in the school corridor I would often see people pushing their lip out in a way to make fun of me.
When the new cleft unit opened at Guys Hospital I began to see the unit’s psychotherapist. I found her a great help, as I also suffered from General Anxiety Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It isn’t clear if dealing with the bullying and constant treatment was the course of my mental health problems, but I learned that research has showed that a higher percentage of children with harelip and cleft palate are more likely to than those who don’t. (Emphasis added.)

Some of the comments, including the following, are in response to Ms. Love's post:

Anonymous - Hi Sarah! Just read your amazing article on your life with a cleft lip and palate. You sound amazingly self confident and well adjusted and I am happy for you. My son was also born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate and is beautiful. He however despises the appearance of his lip which is protruding somewhat and his upper lip is scarred. He is an introvert and a very sensitive child. I wish him all the happiness and God"s blessings in life, but need help to build his self confidence and to equip him with tools to cope in the outside world. He seems to be scared to go to the "big" school and I am not sure whether I should hold him back for another year to protect him against bullies.
I t seems as if there will never be enough a mother can do to help a child who experience him/herself as different. What do you suggest?

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.

Anonymous - to Toetie. hi my name is Kiranmai but people call me Karen.. i was born with a cleft and lip pallet also. i am know 14 years old and going to turn 15 soon. this is my story. before when i was just lilttle kid i didn't think i was different or anything there some school who have kids that bully and there some that most r okay with. i wasn't bullied until i got to middle school. but there was little problems in 5th grade. i didn't relize i was born with this condition as soon i as began to grow up and i then notice mt face was different then other. no matter what you do even if u send ur son to school there is no chance that he will not get bullied. i am stilling being bullied i come home cry and sometimes my parents see and ask me y. everyone stares at me they all make fun of me once they look at my face they all say UHHGGG!!! theres no way to stop that.. i even feel like sucide. everyone child who is born with a condition like this or other that is part of out will be bullied. theres is no chance he will not. some day he has to face throuh but he will have nice friends who will care for him like i have they always say don't think of other they just dont get what im going throuh. best of luck for him. im about to get my surgery this dec. i will be 15 then.. so i hope u understood no matter if u held him back once he go bak he will still be the one to be stared and bullied..the teachers and concerls just gives the kids warning but sometime their there to help but most of all year there not.

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. Just look at the anguish in the above comments.

Anonymous - hi sarah. i read your article. I have a cleft lip palate, sometimes it feels torture for the rest of my life. but life must go on. :) even i've undergone 3major operations still have speech problem. :) but its okey.. i love my life now. well i should. :) i will link u on my blog hope ull do the same. thanks sarah. :)

I'll conclude with quotes from Courts and the Civil Rights of the Disabled (also cited above):

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." ...

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. ...

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. ...

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.