Ableism: The Causes and Consequences of Disability Prejudice

Michelle R. Nario-Redmond

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119142133
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The first comprehensive volume to integrate social-scientific literature on the origins and manifestations of prejudice against disabled people

Ableism, prejudice against disabled people stereotyped as incompetent and dependent, can elicit a range of reactions that include fear, contempt, pity, and inspiration. Current literature—often narrowly focused on a specific aspect of the subject or limited in scope to psychoanalytic tradition—fails to examine the many origins and manifestations of ableism. Filling a significant gap in the field, Ableism: The Causes and Consequences of Disability Prejudice is the first work to synthesize classic and contemporary studies on the evolutionary, ideological, and cognitive-emotional sources of ableism. This comprehensive volume examines new manifestations of ableism, summarizes the state of research on disability prejudice, and explores real-world personal accounts and interventions to illustrate the various forms and impacts of ableism.

This important contribution to the field combines evidence from multiple theoretical perspectives, including published and unpublished work from both disabled and nondisabled constituents, on the causes, consequences, and elimination of disability prejudice. Each chapter places findings in the context of contemporary theories—identifying methodological limits and suggesting alternative interpretations. Topics include the evolutionary and existential origins of disability prejudice, cultural and impairment-specific stereotypes, interventions to reduce prejudice, and how to effect social change through collective action and advocacy. Adopting a holistic approach to the study of disability prejudice, this accessibly-written volume:

• Provides an inclusive, up-to-date exploration of the origins and expressions of ableism
• Addresses how to resist ableist practices, prioritize accessible policies, and create more equitable social relations with pages earmarked for activists and allies
• Focuses on interpersonal and intergroup analysis from a social-psychological perspective
• Integrates research from multiple disciplines to illustrate critical cognitive, affective and behavioral mechanisms and manifestations of ableism
• Suggests future research directions based on topics covered in each chapter

Ableism: The Causes and Consequences of Disability Prejudice is an important resource for social, community and rehabilitation psychologists, scholars and researchers of disability studies, and students, activists, and academics across political, sociological, and humanistic disciplines.

"This book is an excellent resource for both members of the academic field and lay readers seeking to know more about disability prejudice and ways to address it."

~ Charlotte Schreyer, Syracuse University, Published onH-Disability (September 2022)

1
Introduction: Defining Ableism

Ableism is when you say that I don't act disabled and expect me to take that as a compliment …

Ableism is when “whole” is a word reserved for the able‐bodied, or when you say that I'm beautiful despite my differences, and fail to recognize that I'm beautiful because of them …

Ableism is when you leave us to ripen and rot hanging from the vine because you refuse to bite into our fruit. Ableism is the fruit of your fears …

Ableism is when you assume I'm single … when you assume I'm a virgin, when you assume I hate my body because in your narrow mind how could I not? …

Ableism is when parents yank their kids away and tell them not to stare, automatically teaching them that disability is a dirty word …

Ableism is when you make plans that do not include accessible venues, accessible spaces, so it becomes easier to erase me from your list …

Ableism is when disabled parents are told they should not be parents …

Ableism is making heroes out of people who take disabled kids to the prom and never talk to them again because that one “good deed” is good for at least 10 years, if not a lifetime …

Ableism is a lifetime of isolation, a lifetime of segregation, a lifetime of untold stories of “Once upon a time there was a cripple who could” and for every cripple that could there was and is an able‐bodied person who should but doesn't …

Ableism is the fact that we can embarrass you just by sitting in the same room and breathing the same air …

Ableism is the way media portrays us as either objects of pity or inspiration …

Ableism is how you want to lock us in the closet and how you believe that giving us new labels like physically challenged and differently abled is no longer labeling us …

Ableism is making buses accessible but not the streets leading to the bus stop …

Ableism is when you say that if God hasn't healed me, it is only because I don't have enough faith …

Ableism is how your faith considers me a punishment from God, or how you try to pray my differences away as if they were demons …

Ableism is your ability to find reasons to push us aside to keeps us in cages, leave our struggles out of the history pages … pretend we never existed …

Ableism is when you think I don't have a disability because you can't see it …

Ableism is asking my friends what I would like to order because you fear not being able to communicate with me. Ableism is the fact that you don't even try …

Ableism is calling my needs “special” and then ignoring them …

Ableism is believing I need to be fixed. Ableism is you refusing to fix what's really broken …

Ableism is painting our lives like a tragic story …

Ableism is our story told by nondisabled voices captured through a nondisabled lens …

Ableism is you feeling like I should be grateful for the ramps and the parking spaces as if access was not a basic right …

Ableism is when you force unsolicited help upon me because, to you, it seemed like I needed it …

Ableism is you thinking that my asking for help gives you the right to decide for me …

Ableism is when you wish for a world without disabled people, and you say that to me and expect me to agree with you …

Ableism is when you say that if you became disabled, you would want to die …

Ableism is wishing you could help us die, or wishing you didn't have to help us live …

Ableism is believing disabled people are better off dead …

(Selections from “Naming Ableism” byMaria Palacios 2017. Full poem)

While research on ageism, heterosexism, and anti‐fat attitudes has been steadily increasing, the study of ableism or disability prejudice is still in its infancy (Corrigan 2014). First referenced over 35 years ago in the women's news journal Off Our Backs (House 1981), ableism is an uncomfortable subject, a difficult dialogue, and not just because people feel bad for those who happen to be blind, deaf, or living with chronic physical, intellectual, or mental health conditions. Disappointment, disregard, discomfort, and distain are provoked, in part, because disability is a group that anyone can join – at any time. This can be scary, especially for those less familiar with diverse disabled people.

However, this book was designed to provoke difficult dialogues about disability – a social status that incites both hostile and benevolent forms of prejudice – and a group that provokes stereotypes of incompetence and dependency, and behaviors that range from staring and unwanted assistance to abandonment, dehumanization, and hate crimes. As illustrated in the opening poem by educator, author, and activist Maria Palacios, sometimes these prejudices are motivated by fear and contempt – at other times pity, inspiration, and compassion are involved as well. Extending the multitude of volumes on racism, sexism, and intergroup prejudice more generally, this book is among the first to integrate the social scientific literature on the origins and manifestations of prejudice against disabled people as a social group writ large – a group that confronts pervasive discrimination for the right to live independently, to work, and to parent.

More than one billion people in the world live with some form of disability, of whom nearly 200 million experience considerable difficulties in functioning. In the years ahead, disability will be an even greater concern because its prevalence is on the rise. This is due to ageing populations and the higher risk of disability in older people as well as the global increase in chronic health conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and mental health disorders.

World Health Organization (WHO 2011, p. 5)

The Largest Minority Group: Who Qualifies?

Disability is a membership status on the rise both globally and in the United States (WHO 2011). One in five people currently qualify as living with disability,¹ and many more will acquire the status on either a permanent or temporary basis, the longer they live (Fujiura and Rutkowski‐Kmitta 2001). Yet, for reasons this book will tackle head on, disability is a status that seems avoidable – even preventable – unlike old age and the inevitability of death. People don't like to think about disability. Some even characterize it as a fate worse than death: “I'd rather be dead than disabled,” is a comment that continues to resonate in popular discourse (Reynolds 2017).

Though surprising to some, disabled people make up the largest minority group in the United States, with 19% of the population or 56.7 million disabled people identified by the US Census (Brault 2012). But the census underestimates the population since it does not count institutionalized people with disabilities incarcerated in prisons or in nursing homes.² Some people are born into disability with conditions like Down syndrome, dwarfism, or other congenital impairments.³ The vast majority of impairments, however (e.g. cerebral palsy, amputation, brain injury, multiple sclerosis), occur after birth, through accidental injury or the progression of disease (Vos et al. 2016). Furthermore, fractured limbs, concussions, low vision, hearing loss, and depression are quite common throughout the lifecycle, and many people experience multiple disabling conditions that vary in appearance and severity (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2013). According to US projections, given a 75‐year life expectancy, newborns will average 11 years with disabilities that limit their activities, and those who live past 75 can expect an additional four to five years of disability (Melzer et al. 2000; Zola 1993). When it comes to disability – it's more a question of when it will happen – not if. I've often wondered whether the open‐enrollment nature of disability is part of the reason ableism has been such a contentious topic, even among the experts who study stereotyping and prejudice.

In 2003, there were no fewer than 67 US federal statutory definitions of disability.

(Krahn et al. 2015, p. S199)

The concept of disability itself is highly contested (McDermott and Turk 2011). Who qualifies as disabled (and who doesn't) continues to be a moving target since defining characteristics change depending on the source, setting, and historical time period. For example, the same person who is considered disabled at school may not qualify as disabled at work. Different organizations have different inclusion criteria. Some people qualify as disabled if diagnosed with a specific impairment (e.g. autism, spina bifida, depression). Yet, a diagnosis alone does not predict a person's ability to function in different settings or with particular accommodations. People with the same exact diagnoses can differ widely in terms of their functional abilities, prognosis, and predictability of symptoms.

Not only can the same impairment result in very different limitations for different people, but very different impairments can produce similar limitations: both heart and back problems can reduce mobility. For this reason, many definitions of disability focus on age‐specific activity restrictions related to self‐care (e.g. bathing, dressing) and other activities of daily living (e.g. managing money, shopping). Questions about activity restrictions typically focus on what people cannot do (e.g. “Can you get outside the home?”), which fail to account for the use of technologies and other modifications like the availability of ramps to and from a wheelchair user's des...