The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation

Notes

Notes Preface to the Updated Edition 1. References to James Weisman from interview, June 24, 2009. Additional references to Weisman on pp. 57, 61–62, 79, 95, 107, 111, 112, and 208–9. 2. Chief Justice John Roberts has epilepsy, but he does not appear to self-identify as an epileptic. 3. “Making Disability Work,” New York Times, December 9, 2010. “Government actuaries forecast that the disability trust fund will run out of money by 2018” (Motoko Rich, “Disabled, but Looking for Work,” New York Times, April 7, 2011). 4. See Ariela Gross, What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008); and Daniel J. Scharfstein, The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (New York: Penguin Press, 2011). 5. The IBOT was manufactured jointly by Johnson and Johnson and Independence Technology. Preface to the First Edition 1. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, The Anatomy of Prejudice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996). 2. Paul Robinson in “Intolerance,” New York Times, Sunday, May 19, 1996, sec. 7, p. 41, reviewed YoungBruehl ’s The Anatomy of Prejudice. Emphasis added. In their excellent history of the gay rights movement in America, Out For Good (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), authors Dudley Clendenin and Adam Nagomey refer to the movement as “the last great struggle for equal rights in American history to this point” (p. 13). AIDS is prominently discussed in their book, but there is no mention of the Americans with Disabilities Act or other disability legislation relevant to people with HIV or AIDS. The authors link the gay rights movement to other struggles for equal rights—by African Americans, women, Native Americans— but not to the disability community. Although they call the gay and lesbian population an “invisible people,” equally invisible are people with disabilities whose goals are much the same. 3. R. C. Smith, A Case About Amy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). See Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley, 102 S.Ct. 3034 (1982). 4. R. C. Smith, “An Audience for Amy,” Ragged Edge, May/June 1998, 31–32. 5. In his catalogue of isms, comparable to racism, Andrew Hacker, professor of political science at Queens College of the City University of New York, includes handicapism. See Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York: Scribners, 1992), 20. 6. Paul Longmore’s presentation, Disability Studies Colloquium, New York City Hunter College School of Social Work, December 5, 1997. Longmore refers to With a Song in My Heart as an “inspirational” film, Nightmare on Elm Street as a “horror” film, and My Left Foot as a “realistic” film about a person with a disability, reflecting Christy Brown’s “fierce lifelong battle against condescension and contempt.” See also Martin F. Norden, The Cinema of Isolation: The History of Physical Disability in the Movies (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994). 7. Peter Hall, “Inventing the Poster Child,” the first part of a four-part program, “Beyond Affliction: The Disability History Project,” National Public Radio. The program was aired at different times in various parts of the country during the week of May 4, 1998. 8. John M. McNeil, “Current Population Reports: Americans with Disabilities 1994–95,” published by U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, August 1997, 1–2. Unless otherwise indicated, statistical data is from this source. 9. “Follow-up to 1994 Research,” Ragged Edge, September/October 1998, 5–6. Reference to the 1998 Harris Poll by Louis Harris and Associates for the National Organization on Disability from this source. 10. The three 1999 employment cases are Sutton v. United Airlines, Inc., 119 S.Ct. 2139; Murphy v. United Parcel Service, Inc., 119 S.Ct. 2133, and Albertson’s Inc. v. Kirkingburg, 119 S.Ct. 2162. The U.S. Court of Appeals in the Garrett case held for the plaintiff, 193 F3d 1214 (11th Cir. 1999), but the State of Alabama has appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court’s decision in the Kimel case can be found in 120 S.Ct. 631 (2000). In City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997), the Supreme Court held that under the Fourteenth Amendment , Congress may enact civil rights legislation only if the statute is designed to remedy a history of unconstitutional conduct and if the remedy is proportionate to the history of such violations. Prominent disability rights attorney Stephen Gold fears that the new federalism evident in the Kimel...