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.

What Happens When the Supreme Court of the U.S. Gets It Wrong?

Angela Van Etten: “When Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 they adopted the same definition of disability used in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. They expected that courts would follow Rehabilitation Act caselaw when deciding who is disabled. Shockingly this did not happen. Instead courts narrowly interpreted the disability definition leaving many ADA claimants without justice.

As a result, discrimination against people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, bipolar disorder, blood cancer, major depression, diabetes, epilepsy, learning disabilities, multiple sclerosis, and sleep apnea went unchecked.

A diabetic could be denied coverage due to the mitigating measure of taking insulin leading to the absurd result that an employer could refuse an accommodation request to take a break to administer insulin because the employee was not disabled!”

The Court has failed to give disability due consideration before. In 2013 this blog’s post In Retrospect: The Supreme Court and the Disabled noted, “ These … articles described case after case where the august Court cruelly denied protection to disabled individuals even though the intent of the Americans With Disabilities Act should have been clear. As the Times noted, The court went wrong by “eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect” under the 1990 law. Senator Tom Harkin: “The Supreme Court decisions have led to a supreme absurdity.” The question these articles brings to mind is, Why the needless cruelty of these excessively narrow interpretations?”

Reference: ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA)

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”

An overwhelmed health care system’s triage may discriminate against people with disabilities

The Atlantic states that people with disabilities may face not only “overt discrimination” in hospitals, but “implicit bias” from a prejudice about their quality of life.

As the philosopher Nietzsche remarks below, in times of stress, an eliminationist attitude residing in some of the mainstream rises to the surface.

Elaine Godfrey:

Daniel Florio … was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disorder that makes him unable to walk or use his arms. His disability makes him more vulnerable to the virus than most people, and he’s afraid of what will happen if he ends up in the hospital with a serious case. Intubated people cannot speak, and Florio would not be able to use gestures or otherwise communicate with his doctors. Given infection-prevention rules, his caregivers would likely not be allowed to accompany him.

She adds:

But Florio is afraid of something else too: the possibility that, if he contracts the virus, he could be denied lifesaving treatment because of his disability. And like other Americans with disabilities, he worries that could happen not just because of overt discrimination in hospitals, but also because of implicit bias. “People overwhelmingly believe that being disabled implies a worse quality of life than it does,” Florio said. If doctors act on those beliefs—wittingly or not—“what that means in practical terms is that people like us will die.”

In some states’ policies it appears that people with disabilities do not have an equal right to life in comparison with the mainstream:

Washington’s guidelines include considerations about a patient’s “baseline functional status,” which involves factors such as physical ability and cognition. … The Washington health department told me it’s updating its guidelines to make sure “its original intent of nondiscrimination” is “unequivocally clear.”

This bears uneasy resemblance to the presuppositions of eugenics advocates, and of proponents of the Will to Power who said that “in a certain state it is indecent to go on living.” The Antichrist declares, “The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And one shall help them to do so.”

Under the pandemic, a re-evaluation of “disability”

A Facebook post:
Things Covid has proved:

1. The job you were told couldn’t be done remotely can be done remotely 
2. Many disabled workers could have been working from home, but corporations just didn’t want them to 
3. Internet is a utility, not a luxury 
4. Universal healthcare is necessary 
5. Homelessness can be solved when it can affect the rich 
6. Childcare isn’t “doing nothing all day.”
7. Universal Credit is not enough to live on 
8. Wages have nothing to do with skills or value from fruit picker to nurse

Note No. 3

Was the greatest play of the classical era about a disabled person?

“Nor is that other point to be passed over, that the Sphinx was subdued by a lame man with club feet …” - Sir Francis Bacon, referring to Oedipous (“Swollen Foot”) and the Sphinx.

Oidipous Tyrannos (Oedipus Rex) can reasonably be translated, from Bacon’s perspective, as Clubfoot the Ruler. It then joins such dramas as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast, in which a titular character may be expected to wrestle with their disability in the plot.

Disabled people, as we know, are often treated badly. Oidipous’ parents arranged to have him “exposed,” to die.

A disabled Prince so mistreated might, in royal wrath, take gruesome retribution on those who wronged him. In Sophocles’ tragedy, Oidipous kills his father and entangles his mother in incest.

Aristotle’s pioneering work of literary criticism, The Poetics, treats Oidipous as Everyman, arguing that we undergo his extreme experiences vicariously, as “fear and pity.” We return to our everyday lives purged, a “catharsis” in which our spirits are temporarily uplifted out of their dreary banality.

In this disability tale, things are made better; that which was lost is found.

Sadly, two millennia of mainstream lit crit fail to deal with the great moral fact of the play: Oidipous’ parents tried to kill him when he was a helpless baby.

/*****/

A dramatization of this theme, This is the Son of Kings, was published in this blog in 2013.

Disability forms may not state correctly what qualifies as disability

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

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

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

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

Policy towards the stigmatized disabled such as those with Cerebral Palsy or Cleft Palate

[This is an unfinished draft of an email to an official of the 55+ apartment complex where I live, concerning disability discrimination that masquerades as normal social interaction. (As discussed previously in TPOCP, the civil rights revolution has not yet happened for disabled people; mainstream society usually turns a blind eye to disability discrimination; and many in the mainstream are often clever at contriving subtle forms of discrimination that appear to be deniable.)]

Manager:

I am a recent new resident of [your 55+ apartment complex] who has a cleft palate. While you were helping me fill out the application forms I answered the question, Are you disabled according to FHA criteria. An FHA website said people impaired in a major life function, one of which was ’speaking,’ are considered disabled, so I checked ‘disabled.’

A related HUD site used criteria similar to those at ADA.GOV, ‘impaired in a major life function, … or perceived as such,’ (emphasis added) thus including the stigma or prejudice of being perceived as disabled or defective (as in ‘birth defect’) among the criteria.

In order to participate in the life of the [apartment complex] community, I participated in a small group which plays Scrabble in the Community Room on Thursdays. Another group, which as I recall plays Pinochle, also uses the CR at the same time. In one of the games after Thanksgiving, I remarked on a couple of Scrabble linguistic peculiarities, something like ‘gript’ for ‘gripped,’ and not allowing other common inflections such as ’ing’ or ‘ed.’ The game finished. Suddenly the person who sets up the board and and puts it away left, saying they would come back after checking their pet, and close up.

Everyone else left, so I stayed, covering for the leader. After waiting quite a while I asked the Pinochle people, who were still playing, if the Scrabble game went on a certain shelf. By this time I was feeling embarrassed. Obviously something unusual had happened, and it focused negative attention on a resident who has a stigmatizing disability.

Before the next scheduled game I realized that it looked like I had been discredited and probably couldn’t continue participating in the game, so I haven’t.

My disability has its own defamatory tag line, ‘I don’t care if it [h-words] the governor.’ If the governor, after a lifetime in the mainstream, improbably woke up one morning with a cleft palate, they would find that repeatedly, what masquerades as normal social action turns out to marginalize, exclude, and disenfranchise them from the social groups that constitute our lives: the family, the classroom, the workplace, and the diversions of retirement.

Your landlord may not realize that the Fair Housing Act applies to such disabilities as cleft palate

Recently I, assisted by my oldest son, was applying for an apartment in a 55-and-older complex which provides both subsidized and marketplace rate housing. In one of the many documents was a checkbox, Qualified as disabled under the Fair Housing Act (which applies to "federally-assisted housing programs and activities"). I asked the person administering the application process if people with cleft palate qualified as disabled under the FHA. They said they thought those with a cleft weren't. I asked, Do you mind if we look it up?

We found that the following section of the Fair Housing Act clearly includes cleft palate among the recognized disabilities - 1. “speech and hearing impairments”; 2. “Federal nondiscrimination laws define a person with a disability to include any (1) individual with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities … Major life activities include … speaking … or … (3) individual who is regarded as having such an impairment.” [(3) covers the stigma of cleft palate, discriminatory presuppositions about birth defects, or responding to a visible disability by attempting to demean, degrade, or intimidate the person who has a disability.]

An earlier post, The Rights the Disabled Have under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, notes that in most cases if the local or state government program you are using (such as a public university, or public transit) receives Federal money in any of its activities, it is required to follow Federal civil rights rules regarding the disabled.

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

FHA Main:

Federal nondiscrimination laws provide housing protections for individuals with disabilities. These protections apply in most private housing, state and local government housing, public housing and any other federally-assisted housing programs and activities. The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing and housing-related transactions because of disability. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. Titles II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability in all programs, services, and activities of public entities and by private entities that own, operate, or lease places of public accommodation.

The applicable passage:

Federal nondiscrimination laws define a person with a disability to include any (1) individual with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; (2) individual with a record of such impairment; or (3) individual who is regarded as having such an impairment.

In general, a physical or mental impairment includes, but is not limited to, examples of conditions such as orthopedic, visual, speech and hearing impairments, cerebral palsy, autism, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), developmental disabilities, mental illness, drug addiction, and alcoholism.

Some impairments are readily observable, while others may be invisible. Observable impairments may include, but are not limited to, blindness or low vision, deafness or being hard of hearing, mobility limitations, and other types of impairments with observable symptoms or effects, such as intellectual impairments (including some types of autism), neurological impairments (e.g., stroke, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, or brain injury), mental illness, or other diseases or conditions that affect major life activities or bodily functions.

The term “major life activities” includes those activities that are important to daily life. Major life activities include, for example, walking, speaking, hearing, seeing, breathing, working, learning, performing manual tasks, and caring for oneself.

Commentary: Under the FHA, the community in, for example, a retirement community, is not allowed to reject a person having a stigmatizing disability, such as a birth defect, on the basis of that birth defect, any more than that same community would be allowed to reject a person of color, on the basis of dislike of people of color. Public sentiment is not a sufficient reason to deny any person the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

This all-too-common disability incident responded to because of viral video

This, it seems, is how the story starts. Joshua Bote:
“"At this point, it is believed that the victim was invited out by some girls who are so-called 'friends' who are eventually the offenders in these disgusting incidents," [Jose] Jara said.”

What did the mainstream offenders instigate?
“"There were some things going on that these young ladies wanted her to do that she didn't," said police superintendent Eddie Johnson in a news conference before trailing off. "We'll leave it at that for right now."”

How did it actually get noticed?
USA TODAY: “Chicago police are investigating an assault after a video claiming to show a brutal attack on a teenage girl with disabilities went viral.”

What action was taken?
“Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told USA TODAY Thursday that two of the suspects are charged with aggravated battery, a felony. One was charged with mob action. The girls, who remain unidentified, are 13, 14 and 15.”

A common story. Mainstream people see a person with a disability, and because that person has a real or perceived disadvantage, somehow feel entitled to take liberties. If the “misfit” doesn't cooperate in being publicly degraded and humiliated, they are a bad sport. Can't take a joke. Offends the community and deserves to be punished.

Only difference, this time: Viral video, police can't dismiss it, and with the public eye on them, investigate.

America's largest minority, according to the Department of Labor and the ADA.

Still doesn't have its Brown v. Board of Education, its own landmark civil rights case.

Still doesn't know, when its members go about their daily business, if this is one of the days when there will be an incident.

A Partial List of the Disabled Among Us

(See analysis of social attitudes toward disabled characters at end.)

Stephen Hawking, first rank physicist, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease).

Oidipous Tyrannos, mythical star of the greatest drama (Oedipus Rex) of classical antiquity, talipes equinovarus (club foot).

"Nor is that other point to be passed over, that the Sphinx was subdued by a lame man with club feet …" - Sir Francis Bacon, Novum Organum

A reasonable translation of "Oidipous Tyrannos," following Bacon’s interpretation, is "Clubfoot the Ruler." When a drama has a name of this form, as with "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" or even "Beauty and the Beast," there is a certain hint as to how the plot will go.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President. A polio survivor, he adroitly concealed that he could barely walk.

Michael J. Fox, who continued his acting career after he developed Parkinson's.

Michael Kinsley, founder of Slate Magazine, Parkinson's.

Helen Keller, blind and deaf.

John Nash, mathematician, schizophrenia.

See movie, A Beautiful Mind

Christy Brown, author, Cerebral Palsy.

See movie, My Left Foot

Demosthenes, classical era orator, stammer.

Vincent Van Gogh, painter, psychiatric illness.

Beethoven, composer, deaf.

Ray Charles, singer, blind.

Stevie Wonder, singer, blind.

Marlee Matlin, actress, deaf.

Peter Dinklage, actor, dwarfism.

Joaquin Phoenix, actor, cleft palate.

Jürgen Habermas, philosopher, cleft palate.

Stacy Keach, actor, cleft palate.

Flanner O’Connor, author, lupus.

Robert Pirsig, author, schizophrenia.

Sartre, philosopher, strabismus (exotropia).

Saul of Tarsus (the Biblical Saint Paul), had a “thorn in the flesh,” which was not described.

Sherman Alexie, author, hydrocephalus

Implied fictional disabled characters (other than Oidipous):

Beauty and the Beast

Boo Radley of To Kill a Mockingbird, psychiatric illness.

Of Mice and Men (Lenny Small, limited intelligence)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Tiresias in Oidipous, blind.

Forrest Gump (Crooked spine, I.Q 75)

Cyclops ("Circle Eye," i.e., One Eye)

Captain Hook (Missing hand)

Tiny Tim (possibly renal tubular acidosis (type 1), or rickets)

... And many more.

-*--

Apposite comments from the National Council of Teachers of English:
Are disabled people “pitiable, helpless, evil, super human, magically cured at the end, or dead?” Or are they complex individuals who enjoy their lives and have the same values, hopes, and aspirations as the mainstream?

Patricia Dunn:

Whether students are disabled or non-disabled themselves, they absorb impressions about characters like or unlike themselves from the books they read for school. So when they read books that feature characters with disabilities, what messages are they getting about disability? Does the story reinforce negative stereotypes (that disabled people are pitiable, helpless, evil, super human, magically cured at the end, or dead)?  Or does the text challenge negative stereotypes in its depiction of characters with impairments by showing that they are complex individuals, that they enjoy their lives and are as “normal” as non-disabled people, and that they have agency and voice?

She adds:

Works such  Johnson’s Accidents of Nature, Orr’s Peeling the Onion, and Alexie’s True Diary, written by authors with disabilities similar to those of their protagonists, depict these characters as fully developed individuals with agency, voice, and a critical attitude toward  their ableist societies.

Disabled people are America's largest minority, according to the Department of Labor and the website of the Americans with Disabilities Act. As well, a significant number of mainstream people will be disabled in later years, such as former President George H. W. Bush, wheelchair-bound in his last years. Disabled people are widely distributed among us; are powerful symbolic themes in some of our greatest works of literature; and are, in the final analysis, us.

Online hate against disabled people rising in England

Amy Walker, today, writes:

The charity [Leonard Cheshire, a health and welfare charity] called on global media companies, including Facebook, to take online disability hate crime more seriously and to protect users. It supported recommendations from MPs for government and social media companies to directly consult disabled people on digital strategies and hate crime law.

According to the report, online offenses are increasing, are under-reported, and disabled people are sometimes reluctant to speak out. Those who are targeted do not get social support; and those who discriminate against disabled people suffer no social consequences:

Neil Heslop, the chief executive, said: “Police are increasingly recording online offences, but we know it remains an under-reported area and that disabled people may have reservations about speaking out.

“We suspect many crimes remain under the radar, with survivors never getting support and perpetrators facing no consequences.”

The effect, Heslop said, can cause disabled people to experience stress and isolation. Mocking remarks and hurtful comments demean, degrade, and humiliate people with disabilities, lower their quality of life, and cause them to have “reduced life chances.”

Hate crimes against disabled people could lead to long-term fear, anxiety and isolation.

Janine Howard, who was supported by the charity’s advocacy services after experiencing online abuse, said: “People I don’t know take my photograph when I am out and about, they post it on social media for others to comment on.

“The comments are nasty, hurtful and leave me feeling frightened and angry. There is no escaping this online abuse if I want to use social media.”

Dwarf “Tossing”: Is it the business of the law to protect the dignity of the stigmatized?

Two days ago, National Review writer Katherine Timpf wrote:

A Washington state lawmaker has proposed legislation that would outlaw dwarf tossing, claiming that “it ridicules and demeans people with dwarfism.”
Dwarf tossing, by the way, is when a person with dwarfism volunteers to have someone throw him or her against a padded surface or Velcro wall, usually while wearing protective gear. Let me be clear: No one is forcing these dwarves to be thrown anywhere. Participation is completely and totally voluntary, and the dwarves who choose to participate are even usually paid for their performances, but the lawmaker — Republican state senator Mike Padden — wants to take this option to make a little extra cash away from them. ...
“There’s nothing funny about dwarf-tossing,” Padden said in a statement. “It ridicules and demeans people with dwarfism, and causes others to think of them as objects of public amusement.”

Timpf added, “I know that the aim of this bill is supposed to be to help dwarves, but I think it’s actually kind of offensive to them, if anything. After all, saying that such a bill would be necessary is basically suggesting that dwarves are not capable of making the decision about whether or not to participate in these sorts of activities for themselves. It’s also taking away from dwarves the opportunity to make a little extra cash — an opportunity that some dwarves might really want to take advantage of.”

In Mother Jones, Stephanie Mencimer reports that the judge nominated to fill the vacancy left by Kavanaugh's ascension to the Supreme Court finds solicitude for the dignity of the disabled coercive:

Neomi Rao, Trump’s nominee to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the powerful DC Circuit, ... has written at least two law review articles and a blog post in which she defended dwarf-tossing. ...
[In parts of France]  a judge upheld such bans because of “considerations of human dignity.” Rao considers these laws an affront to individual liberty that fails to recognize the right of the dwarf to be tossed. In one article, she wrote that the decision in France upholding the dwarf-tossing ban was an example of “dignity as coercion” and that it “demonstrates how concepts of dignity can be used to coerce individuals by forcing upon them a particular understanding of dignity.”

There are real-world consequences. John Sainsbury, in 2012:

In an incident that recently came to light, Martin Henderson, a 37-year-old British dwarf, was out celebrating his birthday when he was suddenly picked up and thrown by a "hooded thug" while trying to enjoy a cigarette outside a pub in Wincanton, Somerset. He is now confined for much of the time to a wheelchair. Police believe the perpetrator was inspired by reports about the alleged antics of [recreational dwarf tossers.]

Sainsbury continues, "There are issues of human dignity involved as well. If you toss one dwarf as if he were a mere object, doesn't that degrade the entire dwarf community?"

Civil rights is the protection of the autonomy and dignity of everyone, even the powerless. The contrary of dignity is humiliation, and the humiliation of the disabled is a familiar form of attempting to degrade, demean, and marginalize those who are different.

Social deprivation of dignity is often the first step in eroding the civil rights of the disabled. “You’re ridiculous, so don’t expect to be treated as if you aren’t.” Humiliation, the process of contriving to rob disabled people of ordinary human dignity, is social murder. Forever after, wherever the humiliation is known about, the victim attempts to participate in society under the burden of a spoiled identity, subject to the slights and slurs and open contempt of those who one once thought were friends.

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

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

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973:

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

Wikipedia's article on Section 504 adds:

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

 where

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

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

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

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

There was also foot-dragging on implementing Section 504:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The values of the left often discriminate against the stigmatized disabled

The politics of identity [POI] is the politics of approved identities, primarily "minorities," women, LGBTQ people, and subcultures at the present time.(1) But the nation's largest minority, the disabled, have a socially "spoiled identity," as Erving Goffman wrote.

Under the liberal principle that all people are created equal, this is a problem. Egalitarianism would not allow approved identities and disapproved identities. This is clearly not equality. To tag anyone as having a disapproved identity because of the group they were born into would be prejudicial discrimination under the principles of liberalism.

Theoretically, the politics of identity is about identities which produce targeting. "Minorities," women, LGBTQ people, and subcultures, are the identities progressives valorize because these groups have historically been the victims of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. A disabled person of whatever race, gender, or class is targeted because disability stigma is spoiled identity. Because the disabled also have historically been targeted, the politics of identity would be expected to work to the advantage of people with disabilities as well.

That's not what actually happens. More typically, when members of the left see a white male (for example) who is one of the CPs (stigmatized by Cerebral Palsy or Cleft Palate), they remember that white males should be punished for racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. Here's an example:

At a party I, a white male CP attended, an East Asian community college teacher 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.

I was shocked for a different reason. None of the teachers and instructors there expressed social disapproval at seeing a person with a birth defect demeaned and degraded by a colleague. What they saw was what they considered a "minority" giving a member of an oppressor group what he deserved.

This is an example of the way the left concept of justice for "minority" identities can produce a miscarriage of justice in the case of disability.

Another very touchy problem is that members of other cultures and ethnicities can be even more inclined to discriminate against disabled people than the American mainstream. From a disability blog:

"Al in Texas": I am not being critical of our growing foreign population, but the views regarding people with disabilities outside the USA can be harsh and I am seeing more of that pop up in my daily life than I ever have.

As one of the CPs, I sometimes hear someone mutter, "pendejo," as I make my way down the aisle of a crowded bus.

Writer James Fallows observed this in China:

The real story here is about the situation of dwarves in China. Airen, 矮人, or small people. When we lived in Shanghai a few years ago, I happened to be walking behind a dwarf, on a lane near where we lived. Everyone coming our way slowed down to point and laugh at him. Later many people explained to me that laughing is the behavior of embarrassment, and that the Chinese were uncomfortable and embarrassed at seeing someone who looked unusual and so different from the norm.

And the treatment I experienced at the hands of an East Asian community college teacher, above, may be an illustration of the "harsh" effect that some immigrants and refugees can have on America's largest minority.We all welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free to this great land, but as "Al in Texas" observed, that does not excuse prejudicial "views regarding people with disabilities."

Here again, the values of the left exacerbate the problem. "Minorities," women, LGBTQ people, and subcultures are valorized; funny looking awkward people who offend us by making us feel uncomfortable do not have the support of the community. And democracy, says these values, is the will of the community.

(1) The Politics of Identity tends to produce ad hominem argument. Here Andrew Sullivan's observation concerning campus left values may be apropos:

Unashamed resort to ad hominem fallacy on campus now: "The idea that only a member of a minority group can speak about racism or homophobia, or that only women can discuss sexual harassment. The only reason this should be the case is if we think someone’s identity is more important than the argument they might want to make."

Other Discrimination Also Masquerades as Normal Social Interaction Ctd. (reprinted)

Virtually everything in the following description of routine (and "socially" legitimized) sexual harassment  is also typical of disability discrimination.

As the United States moves toward its four-year presidential election, routine social abuse of a vulnerable segment of the population has become an issue in the candidacy of one of the abusers, Republican candidate Donald Trump. A recent article by Michelle Goldberg calls him A Human Trigger. Mr. Trump uses the Big Lie technique; projects his bigotry onto his victims; leverages Conventional Wisdom's denial of the reality of gender marginalization; and often leaves his victims' disoriented and doubting the reality of their own experience:

Like many abusers, Trump is so shamelessly, fluently dishonest that listening to him can be disorienting. “One of the hallmarks of an abusive person is that they do not ever take responsibility for their behavior, ever,” [Kristen] Slesar says. “It is always the other person’s fault, or it never happened.” Abusers, she says, can crowd out their victims’ sense of reality: “In conversation and arguments with this person who is so able to change reality or deny reality and shift blame and responsibility, the victim ends up doubting [herself], getting really confused, feeling really unstable.

The Big Lie deserves its own examination, because the phrase originates with another authoritarian who understood that routine bigoted error of conventional social thought can be used to corrupt the political instincts of a large segment of the public. Wikipedia explained:

A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

The following selection from Mein Kampf describes techniques familiar to those who have followed the rhetoric of the Republican candidate's campaign—appeal to emotion in defiance of evidence and reason; belief that no one could be so shameless as to perpetrate such fraudulent claims; and "sensible" recourse to the opinion that there must be "some other explanation":

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.

What women experience in the Trumpian abusive subculture parallels what the disabled experience — particularly the denial — but nobody is quoting us. As the previous article in this series argued:

This is all too familiar to those of us who are disabled. We wonder why "funny things" keep happening to us. We feel vaguely guilty—that we must have done something wrong. Eventually, we reluctantly come to realize that it isn't us. The problem is "normal" social attitudes toward those who bear stigma. But when we attempt to talk this over with our "friends" and family, they pooh-pooh our concerns ... It is all in our heads. We are only imagining that we are the target of unjustified social disapproval. To think that way is to be disloyal to the community. Our attitude is antisocial—no wonder those around us disapprove of us (this is the stigma Catch-22).

Ms. Goldberg continues:

Marie, a 30-year-old massage therapist in Virginia [says] "The truths that we experience as women are denied. It really brings out the victim mindset: These things keep happening, but nobody will actually say that they’re happening, nobody will acknowledge anything is happening ..."

Years ago, in Internalized Discrimination: You're Not Supposed to SAY That, this was the situation:

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 [feel we ought to speak out]. A struggle, ... against the tendency to feel guilty about having been honest about a situation which is widely covered up.

As the emergence of a 2005 tape revealed that a major political party's presidential candidate treats half the population as a group of people who may readily be subjugated, demeaned, degraded, and abused, what On Liberty calls "social tyranny" (approximately page 3) is still alive and well.

 

For women, and for the disabled.

Does America's largest minority still have a "spoiled identity?"

This morning, Lisa Rose wrote,

“The federal definition of a hate crime includes any offense that "attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person."”
This selection is highlighted. Note that disability is excluded in her cite of federal law.

Later in her article Ms. Rose adds an uncited remark: “Additionally, any offense committed against an individual because of actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability is also a hate crime.”

For practical purposes, America's disabled, and particularly those with birth defects, have been left out of the civil rights revolution.

The Disability Rights Washington website does not list any of the terms for cleft palate (though it does list cerebral palsy).

We are America’s largest minority, according to the Department of Labor and the ADA. But we seem to have a "spoiled identity" (as seen below) in ways that other identities do not. Late night shows such as Stephen Colbert's regularly feature racial minorities, but I do not ever recall seeing a disabled person there.

From our blog post of July 6, 2014:

In Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote:

The dwarf, the disfigured, the blind man, the homosexual, the ex-mental patient and the member of a racial or religious minority all share one characteristic: they are all socially "abnormal", and therefore in danger of being considered less than human. Whether ordinary people react by rejection, by over-hearty acceptance or by plain embarrassment, their main concern is with such an individual's deviance, not with the whole of his personality. "Stigma" is a study of situations where normal and abnormal meet, and of the ways in which a stigmatized person can develop a more positive social and personal identity. (Emphasis added)

An entry by Deborah Fallows in James Fallows' column three years ago illustrates this:

The real story here is about the situation of dwarves in China. Airen, 矮人, or small people. When we lived in Shanghai a few years ago, I happened to be walking behind a dwarf, on a lane near where we lived. Everyone coming our way slowed down to point and laugh at him. Later many people explained to me that laughing is the behavior of embarrassment, and that the Chinese were uncomfortable and embarrassed at seeing someone who looked unusual and so different from the norm. (Emphasis added)

The rules of behavior in mainstream America tend to prevent such openly discriminatory behavior on the street. But as many of the previous posts on this weblog demonstrate, disability discrimination—a violation of our own professed values—is prevalent throughout our society. 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.”

Our society is becoming more identity-conscious, not less; to the detriment of universal justice.

“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

"It is for us the living to pick up the burdens"

In 2015 we posted A Writer on Living with Depression, an eloquent article on mental illness by a disabled person. Following is a eulogy written about his mother, Adeline Williams (not her real name) by a man who, still in his teens, was serving in the Navy at Pearl Harbor when Japan attacked on December 7, 1941. He was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent most of the rest of his life institutionalized. Later in life Mrs. Williams cared for him; and as she approached her nineties, he cared for her. Lincoln advised using "the very clearest, shortest, and most direct language." This is how it's done:

We are gathered here to bury the earthly remains of Adeline Williams.

In life she was a pillar of strength to all who knew her.

Twice widowed she passed on at the age of 92.

In life she was mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.

We can do no more than thank God for her life and for many of us the life she and her husbands in sequence of life gave to us.

Her life was not easy. She worked much of her life and in so doing inspired others to be creative like her.

For that we thank God for her. That she fulfilled the needs of life and gave love at the same time we are grateful to her and thankful to God who caused her to be.

We in tribute to her can do no more than treasure the memory of her and her philosophy of love.

Now we place her body in burial.

It is for us the living to pick up the burdens she in infirmity of old age and transition to spiritual existence lay down.

May God give us wisdom in so doing.

Amen

 The relative who supplied this passage wrote, "__________ as I knew him was always a kind, decent man. Schizophrenia robbed him of love, friends, marriage, children, and a career. He didn't deserve the half-life of institutionalization it condemned him to.

The eulogy he wrote showed that his spirit survived the terrible tribulations of his life. We should all honor his courage in the face of adversity."

Other Discrimination Also Masquerades as Normal Social Interaction Ctd.

Virtually everything in the following description of routine (and "socially" legitimized) sexual harassment  is also typical of disability discrimination.

As the United States moves toward its four-year presidential election, routine social abuse of a vulnerable segment of the population has become an issue in the candidacy of one of the abusers, Republican candidate Donald Trump. A recent article by Michelle Goldberg calls him A Human Trigger. Mr. Trump uses the Big Lie technique; projects his bigotry onto his victims; leverages Conventional Wisdom's denial of the reality of gender marginalization; and often leaves his victims' disoriented and doubting the reality of their own experience:

Like many abusers, Trump is so shamelessly, fluently dishonest that listening to him can be disorienting. “One of the hallmarks of an abusive person is that they do not ever take responsibility for their behavior, ever,” [Kristen] Slesar says. “It is always the other person’s fault, or it never happened.” Abusers, she says, can crowd out their victims’ sense of reality: “In conversation and arguments with this person who is so able to change reality or deny reality and shift blame and responsibility, the victim ends up doubting [herself], getting really confused, feeling really unstable.

The Big Lie deserves its own examination, because the phrase originates with another authoritarian who understood that routine bigoted error of conventional social thought can be used to corrupt the political instincts of a large segment of the public. Wikipedia explained:

A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

The following selection from Mein Kampf describes techniques familiar to those who have followed the rhetoric of the Republican candidate's campaign—appeal to emotion in defiance of evidence and reason; belief that no one could be so shameless as to perpetrate such fraudulent claims; and "sensible" recourse to the opinion that there must be "some other explanation":

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.

What women experience in the Trumpian abusive subculture parallels what the disabled experience — particularly the denial — but nobody is quoting us. As the previous article in this series argued:

This is all too familiar to those of us who are disabled. We wonder why "funny things" keep happening to us. We feel vaguely guilty—that we must have done something wrong. Eventually, we reluctantly come to realize that it isn't us. The problem is "normal" social attitudes toward those who bear stigma. But when we attempt to talk this over with our "friends" and family, they pooh-pooh our concerns ... It is all in our heads. We are only imagining that we are the target of unjustified social disapproval. To think that way is to be disloyal to the community. Our attitude is antisocial—no wonder those around us disapprove of us (this is the stigma Catch-22).

Ms. Goldberg continues:

Marie, a 30-year-old massage therapist in Virginia [says] "The truths that we experience as women are denied. It really brings out the victim mindset: These things keep happening, but nobody will actually say that they’re happening, nobody will acknowledge anything is happening ..."

Three years ago, in Internalized Discrimination: You're Not Supposed to SAY That, this was the situation:

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 [feel we ought to speak out]. A struggle, ... against the tendency to feel guilty about having been honest about a situation which is widely covered up.

As the emergence of a 2005 tape revealed that a major political party's presidential candidate treats half the population as a group of people who may readily be subjugated, demeaned, degraded, and abused, what On Liberty calls "social tyranny" (approximately page 3) is still alive and well.

 

For women, and for the disabled.