PhilosopherCrip

Yesterday, NY congressman Chuck Rangel referred to Sarah Palin as “disabled” during a news interview. His point was to highlight Palin’s gross inexperience and inadequacey when it comes to foreign policy. Later, he tried to backpedal and claimed that he meant to say Palin was “disadvantaged” and “is an obviously healthy person who in no way fits the description of disabled.”

I agree with Rangel that Palin isn’t qualified to be vice president and has been tokenized by the Republican party in a not-so-subtle attempt to appeal to the white, suburban, female demographic. What I have a hard time with is the notion that someone who DOES “fit the description of disabled” is somehow unworthy of our respect and lacking authority. Rangel’s comment — and pathetic attempt at retraction — was deeply ableist in that it hinged on the premise that people with disabilities deserve our pity and charity, but not our respect and obedience. We must be “kind” to someone who is disabled, but we should not take them seriously if they are in a position of authority. I would challenge Rangel to share what exactly he means by “the description of disabled.”

I’ve been kind of vague with most of my teachers and colleagues about how I am spending next week. I’m never exactly sure how folks will react to the idea of non-violent direct action civil disobedience. Sometimes, I get an amused chuckle when I explain to someone what ADAPT does. Other times, I get a reaction of disbelief, people thinking that oppression and the non-violent resistance that opposes it are historic relics. Another common response is condescending advice like “You can’t expect to get anywhere if you’re so angry like that. Why don’t you just ask them nicely for what you want?” Some of the people that are closest to me understand my motivations, but worry that my history of direct action activities may harm me or my career later down the line. The best explanation I know of what non-violent direct action is, how it works, and why marginalized groups use it is MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

Of course our situations are not exactly analogous, but there are many similarities in the systems of our oppression and how they are sustained by privaleged classes. One similarity is that we are often - condescendingly - told that we should tolerate our marginalization with a pleasant disposition and not rock the boat. The fact is, ADAPT is trying to address the fact that thousands upon thousands of people with disabilities are incarcerated in nursing homes against there will across the US because of the way benefit programs are set up. This situation is sustained by the deep pockets of the nursing home lobby, combined with the cultural bigotry and social ignorance of our country that says people with disabilities are not capable of integration and are better off segregated out of view. This combination means that negotiation with the power structure controlling this issue is an impossibility.

Martin Luther King's Mug Shot

The full text of MLK’s illuminating letter can be found at: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

In the meantime, this will get you started with an understanding of the reasoning behind why non-violent direct action is an essential tool: “You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.”

The human mind must categorize the objects it comes into contact with, thus developing expectations about this kind of object should it be encountered again. Arguably, this is the essence of any kind of learning we do as human beings. We could not function in the world if we could not recognize types of things and then act accordingly. Some of our categories and expectations were learned at a very young age, like not to touch a hot stove. It is useful to sometimes categorize people as well as objects and develop expectations of interaction with them. A very basic example would be the expectation that a member of the category “police officer” will pull you over for speeding.

Of course, this process of categorization and expectation can also be quite harmful when someone bases their expectations on flawed information about the thing they are categorizing. If someone’s only knowledge of polar bears came from Coca Cola ads, they would be in for some serious consequences if they jumped into a zoo exhibit in the hope of getting a cuddle. Of course, in this case, the only consequence experienced by the polar bear is that he gets an exotic lunch. Categories of THINGS are generally not harmed by flawed information that leads to false expectations. The reverse is true when folks develop flawed expectations about entire categories of PEOPLE because the members of that category are typically the ones that are harmed by individualized and institutionalized bigotry. The flawed categorization and expectation of people is perhaps even the definition of prejudice.

Just as Coca Cola commercials feed us false images of polar bears, many different cultural sources represent people with disabilities in inaccurate and harmful ways. People with dwarfism are often portrayed as comical, infantile, or even malicious. My friend Gary over at the blog Common Ground wrote a recent piece describing a situation where a modeling agency contacted the support/advocacy group Little People of America (LPA) to try and recruit 50 people with dwarfism to dress up as the character Chuckie from the Child’s Play film series and run around Manhattan to promote a new DVD release. It never occurred to this modeling agency rep that LPA was something more than a “talent pool” for her exploitation. This is one of many expressions of people’s expectations about dwarfism that have been tainted by bad information about us as a category of people.

Such mistakes in categorization and expectation are everyday occurrences in the lives of people with disabilities and their affects can range from annoying to tragic. Last week, I had just left the building I live in and was headed across campus for a meeting when a man on a bicycle stopped and asked if I was OK or if I needed any help. After checking to make sure that my fly was zipped and that I hadn’t dropped all of the papers out of my notebook, I told him that I was doing just fine. I don’t think I looked any more confused than usual, but this gentleman had some bad information about the category of person with disability and assumed that I must need help, just by virtue of the fact that I was traveling across campus in my power chair alone on a Wednesday afternoon. Perhaps he assumed I had wandered away from my caretakers at the nursing home. Joking aside, these kinds of expectations of dependence and helplessness are exactly what keep people with disabilities from being full members of society. The idea that our category is defined as helpless in the minds of the public places us in a subordinate role in society. We are not the category of person that is a business person or a teacher or a politician or a husband or an engineer or a mother or… a grad student on the way to a meeting with the prof he is TAing for this term.

Sometimes, such expectations are self fulfilling prophecies when a system is set up according to those expectations. For example, last week, I arrived to teach the afternoon discussion sections of the class I am TAing, only to find that the only way to reach the front of the lecture hall was down a flight of stairs. There were accessible seats in the back for students, but the expectation was not that the teacher would have a mobility disability. This case shows how the physically built environment itself can express the ignorant construction of categories and flawed expectations, making it much harder for members of that category to get away from those expectations. Because of the way the room was built, it was impossible for me to take on the traditional perch of the teacher. Such expectations are fulfilled every time a person with a disability is forced into a nursing home because their Medicaid refuses to pay for community attendant support or in the fact that Michigan Rehab Services will pay for someone’s re-training after they acquire a disability, as long as that re-training doesn’t include the pursuit of a college degree. It is expected that people with disabilities would be segregated in nursing homes or incapable of going to college, and so the systems are set up according to that expectation.

How do we resist these flawed category definitions and change people’s expectations of us? Employment law or Medicaid reform can only do so much. We need to redefine some categories if the apparatus of ableism is going to come tumbling down.