Civility, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and the Civil Rights of the Disabled

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

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

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

Those who leverage stigma against those who are different from themselves benefit from the advantage created: It denies others access to goods or status or dignity or respect or civil liberties they themselves covet. - The Stigmatized Disabled and the Silent Privilege of the Normal

Here’s the problem if you are a non-African American parent: how do you voice your concern with these issues without being viewed as a racist by some (though not all) black parents at the school? Is there an underlying cultural issue that makes it more likely that kids who are non-Catholic and who come to the school from outside the neighborhood will end up having discipline problems? ... How do I demand safety for my kids without being tarred with the ugly “racist” label? It really is a tight rope walk. - A Nation Defined by White Supremacy? Ctd

Because discriminatory conduct is usually uncivil conduct, Molly Ivins' "Governor," above, or any other disabled person, has a strong interest in civility. The recent controversy over Ta-Nehisi Coates' "A Nation Defined by White Supremacy?" series of articles is thus of special interest to the disabled because in these articles TNC seems to have discarded functional evaluation of culture—particularly middle class culture—for an ad hominem validation of uncivil subcultures.

In "Other People's Pathologies", TNC writes,

It’s very nice to talk about “middle-class values” when that describes your small, limited world. But when your grandmother lives in one hood and your coworkers live another, you generally need something more than “middle-class values.” You need to be bilingual.

TNC's cite of Yoni Applebaum in "Black Pathology Crowdsourced" clarifies what he means:

Culture of Poverty is a label attached to a wide array of behaviors. There are behaviors—physical assertiveness—well-suited to that environment that may tend to inhibit success elsewhere.

This misleading critique of the civil culture of Western civilization—characterized by notably successful and peaceful societies—is familiar from the turbulent years of the counterculture. As David Lehman noted in Signs of the Times, “In a Marxist model of knowledge, the superstructure—the tangible products of culture—camouflages and reinforces the hidden reality of class warfare.”

"Physical assertiveness," contrary to TNC's subtle misdirection, is to be deprecated not because it is thought to pertain to an underclass, but because it is dysfunctional. Valuable sectors of any society—women, children, for example—can scarcely compete where the criterion is physical advantage. That is why bullying is in disrepute.

As part of this general theme Coates has been critiquing President Obama for calling for black parents to teach responsibility to their children. In Andrew Sullivan's blog The Dish, a bi-racial parent looks at both sides of the "assertiveness" and responsibility issues:

    It seems like the Dish posts on school suspensions and the argument between Coates and Chait regarding [it] are linked. Let me share an example.

    My kids go to a small Catholic school in the south suburbs of Chicago. I personally chose the school because it provided a solid Catholic education and it is diverse. Many of the schools in this area are all white or all black. I didn’t like either of those options for my kids. I grew up in a very diverse area and want my kids to experience the same thing.

    Unfortunately, discipline problems had progressively been on the rise before the principal resigned last summer. Also unfortunately, many of the kids who have been involved in these discipline problems are African American. They range from calling a teacher a bitch to bringing a knife to school to assaulting a much younger (and white) child in a bathroom.

    I’m bi-racial, so I have a kinda distinctive view of the dynamics within the community of the school, which unfortunately is often self segregating. I remember a school function where most white parents sat on one side of the gym while most black parents sat on the other. Since I hadn’t grown up around here and wasn’t used to such a thing, it was very jarring for me. I walk with comfort on both sides of the spectrum, but I would say most here don’t, for whatever reason. It has sometimes been very difficult to get black and white parents together for social events, such as fundraisers.

    The parents of students who live in the neighborhood of the school – which is upper-middle class to downright rich and mostly white – have been very disturbed by the recent discipline issues. There has been a call to be much harsher with punishment, and some want to make the school exclusively Catholic. But that really isn’t workable, because the school has suffered through enrollment declines in recent years due to the economy, and shutting some kids out would probably mean shutting down the school. Catholic schools all over the nation are shutting down in alarming numbers.

    Here’s the problem if you are a non-African American parent: how do you voice your concern with these issues without being viewed as a racist by some (though not all) black parents at the school? Is there an underlying cultural issue that makes it more likely that kids who are non-Catholic and who come to the school from outside the neighborhood will end up having discipline problems? I don’t know the answer, but it is worth thinking about. There are parents here who are racist, who revel in bringing up such issues behind closed doors at parties and such. But I’m not one of them. How do I demand safety for my kids without being tarred with the ugly “racist” label? It really is a tight rope walk.

    This is why I welcome the president making these speeches. He has a credibility that people like me can’t possibly have, despite the fact that I’m very active at the school with both ends of the spectrum. At some point, people like me who are not racist should be able to point out issues like discipline problems at school or poor service at business establishments on the merits without having to worry about the race issue hanging over our heads. I don’t see that happening in the near future. Maybe Barack Obama can help. He’s surely trying, which I appreciate. I voted for the man twice on issues that have nothing to do with this one, but I do like his personal responsibility stance on this.

    I’ve always been a fan of TNC and his writing, especially his historical perspectives. But it seems to me lately that he has fallen to the Jackson/Sharpton point of view, which I find disappointing. Racism is definitely everywhere. I’ve seen it personally, having a father who was DARK brown. I’ve seen it in my own neighborhood from people who I’m friendly with (and from BOTH races). Still, it would seem like blaming the plight of African Americans today solely on white supremacy would be like blaming WWI on one cause. There can be more than one cause.

Coates' position seems to be faux “realism.” The existence of brutish, criminal 'hoods or subcultures does not delegitimize civility or middle class ethics, it illustrates the need for them.

TNC once saw the founders as “reluctant slaveholders.” (In "Why We Fight" he wrote, "Jefferson's generation were, to some extent, reluctant slaveholders. (I shudder writing that.)") He now appears to claim, as one observer said, "that George Washington’s presidency means nothing more than his being a slaveholder."


In Very Hard Choices Spider Robinson wrote, “'The Constitution and Bill of Rights are among the most enlightened political documents the human race has produced so far, and its people are, so help me, some of the kindest who have yet walked the earth. . . . So far nobody's ever been as ashamed of their own racism as we are.'” Ta-Nehisi Coates pretends that one half of the picture does not exist. There are still white supremacists, but to assert over and over, as Coates is doing, that that defines our multiracial society, is to fail to give credit to the most important fact. What he characterizes as a supremacist nation listened to Martin Luther King, then passed the Omnibus Civil Rights Act. If this had not happened, it is unlikely that Coates would be, as his employer states, "a national correspondent at The Atlantic."

Because on balance this is not a white supremacist nation, Coates has the platform from which he claims, as he seems to, that we are always and only racists.

Imagine That America Had Its Consciousness Raised (Repost)

This is a repost from June 27, 2013.

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

Needed:

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

In the News: Disability Discrimination, Ctd

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

It seems to me that the character of Imperial Germany after 1878 can best be caught in the term "illiberal." [[I am using the term as the dictionary defines it: "Not befitting a free man . . . not generous in respect to the opinions, rights, or liberties of others; narrow-minded." The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1967)]] - Fritz Stern, The Failure of Illiberalism, p. xvii

In our earlier post In the News: Disability Discrimination we neglected to note that the author of one of the selections, Elliot Hannon, titled it "Disney No Longer Lets Disabled Kids Cut the Line for Rides Because Some People Have No Soul." The soulless were "Families, fully capable of waiting in line like everyone else, ... scamming their way to the front of the line by, wait for it, hiring disabled–or perhaps more appropriately "disabled”–tour guides."
The National Review describes soullessness which ignores moral wrong taking place in front of one: "the averted gaze and a smothering of empathy."

WXYZ reported:

A Michigan teacher is under fire after one of her autistic students got his head stuck in a chair.
Instead of helping, she recorded it and seemed to mock the boy while he was trapped.
Fifth grade teacher Nicole McVey is accused of taunting the 11-year-old at Oaktree Elementary School in Goodrich.
At one point on the tape, she even asks the boy if he wants to be tasered.

The New York Daily News reported the same incident:

Michigan fifth-grade teacher Nicole McVey used a cellphone to record a 10-year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome who had gotten stuck in a chair at Oaktree Elementary School in Goodrich. The teacher and the school's principal seemingly teased the child and asked him if he wanted to be 'tasered' before the video was replayed in class and forwarded to other staff. ...

A Michigan teacher is under fire after she filmed herself and a school principal teasing a young autistic student who got stuck in a chair.
Nicole McVey is facing calls to quit Oaktree Elementary School, in Goodrich, after she stupidly recorded herself and boss Michael Ellis taunting the 10-year-old boy who has Asperger's syndrome.
The video shows the pupil struggling to free himself from the furniture.
In the background, fifth-grade teacher McVey is heard mocking the youngster before Ellis chips in and starts to do the same.

Comment: Teacher education curricula are supposed to be training those in the classroom to faithfully exercise the responsibilities of a public service profession. How do such heartless people escape their scrutiny?

The Christian Science Monitor  notes:

Disability rights advocates say harassment of disabled students goes underreported, along with even more extreme practices, such as secluding and isolating students. It indicates a troubling lack of knowledge on the part of some educators about how to handle the behaviors of students with special needs, they say. ...

“We don’t often see schools take that kind of action,” [Attorney Mark] McWilliams says about the swift moves [requested resignation] against the principal and the teacher. “They don’t do it lightly … [but] there should be a significant response to civil rights violations and mistreatment in schools.”

The Huffington Post reports:

Police officers in Southern California are under fire for allegations that they beat, shocked and arrested a deaf man who was trying to use sign language to communicate with them. ...

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, contains a harrowing account of what happened on the night in question. According to the complaint, Meister was retrieving his personal belongings from the back porch of a home from which he had just moved when he was approached by two police officers who had been alerted by neighbors about "suspicious" activity.

Meister began signing from the home's backyard, and the officers gestured for him to join them on the other side of the fence. Meister "trusted" that the officers could see he was deaf and began walking toward them, signing to tell them about how he had permission to retrieve his own belongings from a friends' house, says the suit. But as soon as Meister was at an arms' length, the officers grabbed Meister's wrists and spun him around to face the other way. Because arms, hands and facial expression are the primary means of communication in American Sign Language, Meister then pulled his hands away from the officers and hopped back over the fence, to give himself another chance to explain what he was doing at the home. That's when things got violent.

The suit claims that police pushed Meister up against the wall, put him in a choke hold and then kneed him twice in the abdomen. One officer then punched him in the face repeatedly, while another officer shot Meister with Taser darts. Once he was on the ground, says the suit, officers kicked and elbowed Meister repeatedly while another officer shocked him a second time with the Taser. After a second choke hold and third Taser shock, Meister was finally unconscious and officers handcuffed and arrested him.

Although the Hawthorne PD initially arrested Meister for assaulting police officers, the charges were eventually dismissed.

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

I was talking to Eric J. Miller, a law professor at Loyola Law School, for a magazine piece the other day. He made the point that ... providing correct information ... helps us understand what ideal policy might look like -- even if we don't get there:

The political sphere is where you engage with your humanity. You have not merely a right, you have an obligation to participate, to make sure the people, as a whole, are able to make good decisions, and pass good laws and treat you as a human. And if one group subjugates another, if it says 'You can talk about anything you want, except everything that matters to you,' then you are not a full member of the polity.

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

"Normal," "decent" society tacitly admits that the disability cohort are a targeted minority (as in the quote by the late "liberal" columnist Ms. Ivins which begins this post), but has failed to provide the civil rights remedies enacted for other persecuted groups. "There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities." - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

If you struggle with disability prejudice against autism, deafness, cleft palate, developmental disability, or other conditions, "you can talk [with your friends] about anything you want, except everything that matters to you." That is one of the ways normal decent society keeps you in your place.

The Stigmatized Disabled and the Silent Privilege of the Normal

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

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

It seems to me that the character of Imperial Germany after 1878 can best be caught in the term "illiberal." [[I am using the term as the dictionary defines it: "Not befitting a free man . . . not generous in respect to the opinions, rights, or liberties of others; narrow-minded." The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1967)]] - Fritz Stern, The Failure of Illiberalism, p. xvii

Those who leverage stigma against those who are different from themselves benefit from the advantage created: It denies others access to goods or status or dignity or respect or civil liberties they themselves covet. - (Vide Infra)

Philip Guo recently wrote, in Silent Privilege: As an Asian male computer science major, everyone gave me the benefit of the doubt:

No one ever said to me, “Well, you only got into MIT because you're an Asian boy.” ... Instead of facing implicit bias or stereotype threat, I had the privilege of implicit endorsement. ...

Although I started off as a complete novice (like everyone once was), I never faced any micro-inequities that impeded my intellectual growth. ... And nobody ever got in the way of my learning—not even inadvertently—probably because I looked like the sort of person who would be good at such things. ...

In contrast, ask any computer science major who isn't from a majority demographic (i.e., white or Asian male), and I guarantee that he or she has encountered discouraging comments such as “You know, not everyone is cut out for computer science.” They probably still remember the words and actions that have hurt the most, even though those making the remarks often aren't trying to harm.

For example, one of my good friends took the Intro to Java course during freshman year and enjoyed it. She wanted to get better at Java GUI programming, so she got a summer research assistantship at the MIT Media Lab. However, instead of letting her build the GUI (like the job ad described), the supervisor assigned her the mind-numbing task of hand-transcribing audio clips all summer long. He assigned a new male student to build the GUI application. And it wasn't like that student was a programming prodigy—he was also a freshman with the same amount of (limited) experience that she had. The other student spent the summer getting better at GUI programming while she just grinded away mindlessly transcribing audio. As a result, she grew resentful and shied away from learning more CS.

He quotes Mary Rowe:

What makes micro-inequities particularly problematic is that they consist in micro-messages that are hard to recognize for victims, bystanders and perpetrators alike. When victims of micro-inequities do recognize the micro-messages … it is exceedingly hard to explain to others why these small behaviors can be a huge problem.

Or Andrew Sullivan in The Betrayal of Vets with PTSD:

Take a moment, if you have one, to read this wrenching, deeply moving and enraging testimony from one Marine veteran with a Purple Heart who returned home and became immobilized by post-traumatic stress. ... 

He swallowed a bottle of pills, and then somehow reached back to life and vomited them back up. What makes this story more than distressing is that part of what compounded his PTSD was the mockery and contempt of other service-members toward his condition. It was viewed as weakness not illness, even for a Purple Heart recipient:

I wondered if asking for help for my post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury was the smartest decision – after all, it had ended my career.

The way my leaders had treated me tore me up on the inside, and their words haunted me. They had convinced me that I was not a Marine in pain, but someone looking for free benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. At work, at home, in bed, all I could think about was how my career in the corps had ended in such a terrible, tasteless fashion, with my peers and leaders turning their backs on me because I had enrolled in treatment.

When he checked himself in to a mental health facility – the VA turned him down because he had two days left before he retired! – he was treated horribly. I don’t know about you, but this kind of story rips my heart out. It must not happen to anyone. The military has to make much more of an effort to destigmatize those psychologically traumatized by a war so intense for so many it has understandably altered them for ever. There is hope. But not if there is stigma.

Philip Guo does not put his observations in terms of stigma, but both these cases reflect the invisibility of those stigmatized by discriminatory foregone conclusions which linger in "normal" society; in the case of aspirants to programming positions, the comparative stigma of those who are not white or Asian males; in the case of those who have not been traumatized in service to their country, everybody who does not suffer from PTSD. In the case of the topic of this blog, the stigmatized disabled, discriminatory social foregone conclusions result in the situation described in a previous post, Reduced Life Chances. In each case, those who leverage stigma against those who are different from themselves benefit from the advantage created: It denies others access to goods or status or dignity or respect or civil liberties they themselves covet.

Followup: Courts and the Civil Rights of the Disabled

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

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

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

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

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

In this context, note a recent news item:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And more recently in Illinois:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Retrospect: The Supreme Court and The Disabled

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

The last post, In The News: Disability Discrimination, noted:

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. Here is a repost of that article:

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.”

In an effort to clarify the intent of Congress, the bill says, “The definition of disability in this act shall be construed in favor of broad coverage.”

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, the principal Republican sponsor in the House, said, “Courts have focused too heavily on whether individuals are covered by the law, rather than on whether discrimination occurred.” ...

“This is one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation of our time,” said Representative Jim Langevin, Democrat of Rhode Island, who uses a wheelchair.
Lawrence Z. Lorber, a labor law specialist who represents employers, said the bill would change the outcome of “a slew of cases that were thrown out of court in the past.” Now, he said, “employees who have cancer or diabetes or learning disabilities will get their day in court and are more likely to get accommodations from employers.”

Lawmakers said that people with epilepsy, diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis and other ailments had been improperly denied protection because their conditions could be controlled by medications or other measures. In a Texas case, for example, a federal judge said a worker with epilepsy was not disabled because he was taking medications that reduced his seizures.
In deciding whether a person is disabled, the bill says, courts should not consider the effects of “mitigating measures” like prescription drugs, hearing aids and artificial limbs. Moreover, it says, “an impairment that is episodic or in remission is a disability if it would substantially limit a major life activity when active.”

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.”

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, said the bill, by establishing more generous coverage and protection, “will make a real difference in the lives of real people.”

The Washington Post wrote:

Rights for the Disabled: IT WENT largely unnoticed in a week of economic upheaval, but Congress approved one of the more momentous pieces of civil rights legislation in recent years. The bill, passed overwhelmingly in the House and by unanimous consent in the Senate, will significantly broaden protections for the disabled. It instructs the Supreme Court to act "in favor of broad coverage," a distinction that should make it easier for disabled workers to claim discrimination. By explicitly arguing for a less constrictive interpretation, lawmakers sought to restore the intent of the original Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990; the Supreme Court has imposed a consistently narrow interpretation of the ADA. President Bush has said that he will sign the bill into law despite previous concerns that the legislation would spur excess litigation.

The legislation is the result of two years of remarkable cooperation between business groups and disability rights organizations. The compromise strikes a balance as it guarantees rights for workers with "actual or perceived impairments." For example, airlines can no longer discriminate against prospective pilots if the applicants employ "mitigating measures," such as corrective eyewear. ... [The bill protects intermittently disabled workers who can] prove they have a disability that "would substantially limit a major life activity when active." The bill will also provide protection, for the first time, to workers with serious ailments such as diabetes, epilepsy and cancer.

Business and disability groups are pleased with the final version of the bill and said that collaborating on the legislation should reduce the number of lawsuits over its implementation. The direct language of the bill, and the laudable cooperation that forged it, should also improve employment levels for the disabled. Two out of three people with significant disabilities are unemployed, a disturbing statistic that disability organizations say is unchanged from when the original ADA became law. This time, Congress's intent is clear, and we hope the courts follow it.

These two 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. As Senator Tom Harkin said: “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? One would almost conclude that the only thing supreme about this Court is its supreme indifference to what matters in the lives of real people.

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

Internalized Discrimination: You're Not Supposed to SAY That

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

And my feeling wasn’t righteousness or pride in having told the truth, it was horror that I had committed such a faux pas, and that if things like that happened you just weren’t supposed to talk about them. And you certainly weren’t supposed to announce it at a dinner party. Kate Christensen

The political sphere is where you engage with your humanity. You have not merely a right, you have an obligation to participate, to make sure the people, as a whole, are able to make good decisions, and pass good laws and treat you as a human. And if one group subjugates another, if it says 'You can talk about anything you want, except everything that matters to you,' then you are not a full member of the polity. - Eric J. Miller (Emphasis Added)

The averted gaze and a smothering of empathy - Matthew Scully

The editors of this weblog have looked for other blogs about the stigmatized disabled, that are actually by the stigmatized disabled rather than by those who help us, and so far have not found any. If they exist, they are rare and not well known. The reason is not hard to find. "Normal," "decent" society tacitly admits that the disability cohort are a targeted minority (as in the quote by the late "liberal" columnist Ms. Ivins which begins this post), but has failed to provide the civil rights remedies enacted for other persecuted groups. "There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities." - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons
The just-world hypothesis works, in part, by blaming the stigmatized disabled for the pervasive social targeting which marginalizes and disenfranchises them. "A familiar experience of our people is the case where our family, friends, or co-workers imply that we should have done better, considering our background; and completely ignore the crucial fact of our lives: Discriminatory social attitudes reduce our life chances." It is considered divisive and socially unacceptable to speak out about our situation, even though people like Ms. Ivins can allude to our second-class citizen status in full confidence that this is readily understood by their readership.
We who write this remember that most of our lives we ourselves kept silent. And there is an internal struggle against convention every time we add another post to this weblog. A struggle, like that described below, against the tendency to feel guilty about having been honest about a situation which is widely covered up:

Novelist Kate Christensen, author of the memoir Blue Plate Special, talks to Dave Davies about exposing her father’s abuse:

I remember looking up at the group of grownups [at a dinner party], and feeling an upwelling of anger at my father. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I don’t even know where it came from, what caused me to blurt out, ‘My father hit my mother and she cried,’ to the group.

And there was a silence, and my father was ashen, and there was a sort of collective in-drawing of breath from the people in the group, and I realized that was just not cool, what I had just said. And on the way home my father yelled at me for it, and said, ‘Don’t ever do that again! Don’t ever say something like that in front of my friends! You just really embarrassed me, and everyone was horrified and you should never do that again.’

And my feeling wasn’t righteousness or pride in having told the truth, it was horror that I had committed such a faux pas, and that if things like that happened you just weren’t supposed to talk about them. And you certainly weren’t supposed to announce it at a dinner party. - Blue Plate Special

But if we do not attempt a narrative of liberation, who will?