The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the First Edition In THE ANATOMY OF PREJUDICE (1996),1 Elisabeth Young-Bruehl analyzes what she believes to be “the four prejudices that have dominated American life and reflection in the past half-century—anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and homophobia.”2 No reference is made to disability discrimination. Misrepresented as a health, economic, technical, or safety issue rather than discrimination, prejudice based on disability frequently remains unrecognized. Although disability bias impacts upon a great many people, often with devastating consequences, Young-Bruehl’s omission is not surprising. R. C. Smith, author of A Case About Amy (1996)3 —an analysis of the 1982 Supreme Court ruling that denied a public school accommodation of a full-time sign-language interpreter for Amy Rowley, an extremely intelligent, profoundly deaf child—observes: Unkind words against homosexuals, African-Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities at least prompt rebuke from people who, though not members of these stigmatized groups, still recognize the prejudice. But prejudice against individuals with disabilities commonly goes undetected by a general public too unaware of its own feelings to recognize what has been said or written as prejudicial.4 Perhaps this oversight stems from a collective fear of disability since everyone is subject to illness, accident, the declining powers of advanced age—all forms of human vulnerability. “Handicapism,” also referred to as “ableism,” is the only “ism” to which all human beings are susceptible.5 This denial of the reality of disability results in stereotypes that continue to prevail. Films present people with disabilities either condescendingly as “inspirational,” endeavoring to be as “normal” as possible by “overcoming” their limitations, or as disfigured monsters “slashing and hacking their way to box office success.”6 The inspirational figure hearkens back to Tiny Tim from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, a receptacle for the pity of those who did not have poor Tim’s misfortune. In fact, “in the nineteenth century notion of charity, afflicted [the term used at the time for the disabled] people might be said to be created in order to provide opportunities for Christian folk to exercise their Christian virtue .”7 In the process, the lucky nondisabled could surreptitiously celebrate their superiority while simultaneously imagining that, by means of their charity, they were imitating the life of Christ. When the authors of this book began their work over five years ago, the issue of disability rights had not yet entered into the public consciousness. Although President George Bush had signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, which gave people with disabilities many of the same civil rights won by other groups, the struggle of the disability community to secure these rights appeared to lack the drama of the struggles of African Americans or women and indeed did lack the media attention. Even the controversy regarding an appropriate memorial for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which did attract media attention, pointed to the surprising invisibility of disability and to a lack of awareness of the profound separation of images of power (the Presidency) and images of disability (the wheelchair). Disappointing as actor Christopher Reeve’s emphasis on spinal cord regeneration, rather than disability rights, has been to many in the disability community , his struggle—after an accident left him quadriplegic—did catch the attention of a public watching a superman who once flew, but now cannot walk, re-create his life. Until recently, the media did not seem cognizant of the significant number of people with disabilities in the United States (not to mention the rest of the world), nor the degree to which “invisible disabilities” such as psychiatric disorders, heart disease, diabetes, cancer , and learning disabilities predominate over visible ones. According to 1994–1995 data, over 20 percent of Americans—fifty-four million—were disabled, with almost half of them having severe disabilities.8 As a consequence of medical and technological progress, the disability and the aging populations will continue to grow. It is not surprising that as people age, the probability increases that they will become disabled, and the likelihood of that impairment being severe also increases. What is surprising is the prevalence of disability for specific age groups: almost one-fourth of people forty-five to fifty-four, over one-third of those fifty-five to sixty-four, almost one-half of those sixty-five to seventynine , and almost three quarters of those eighty years and above. The public’s avoidance of acknowledging the ever-threatening possibility—and after a certain...