Foundations of Disability Studies

M. Wappett, K. Arndt, M. Wappett, K. Arndt

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137373526
• eBook ISBN: 9781137363787
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

A collection of eight essays by scholars who have published extensively within the disability studies literature, and who have helped build the field to its current state. Includes contributions from Robert Bogdan, Doug Biklen, Susan Schweik, and more.

CHAPTER 1

HANDICAPISM*

Robert Bogdan and Douglas Biklen

Handicapism Update (2013): We wrote “Handicapism” more than 35 years ago. We were young scholars who were also activists for societal change for people who were labeled “disabled.” That article and others we wrote with a similar theme were meant to clearly and forcefully contribute to reframing the discussion of disability from questions like “what’s wrong with people with disabilities,” to “what are the social forces that determine people with disabilities’ chances in life.” We wanted to push the discussion of disability beyond the approach that dominated the special education literature, the clinical approach, toward a stance that allowed people in the field to examine what was going on around them—attitudes, behaviors, and public policies that kept people with disability captured in a state of unfair and unequal treatment. We were not the first to champion this social point of view. Without using the term handicapism a few scholars, mainly in the field of sociology, had used a similar approach in their work. The implications of handicapism were making their way into public policy discussions, the courts, activist organizations, and popular culture. With “handicapism” we were just a few of the voices challenging the notion that disability was predominately a medical condition.

Did our approach tell the whole story? Did we neglect the clinical, behavioral, technical, and physical aspects of disability? Did we disregard people with disabilities voicing their own agendas? Our slant was not meant to be balanced in the sense of covering all aspects of disability; our intent was to champion a neglected arena of inquiry, to make people take notice of the civil rights, discriminatory, and stereotyping aspects of people’s experience. By using what was then a new and explosive word “handicapism,” we meant to be controversial. Confrontational yes, but deceptive no. We did not think our analysis was false or exaggerated, or that placing people with disabilities in the realm of a discriminated-against minority group was a conceptual stretch. Over the years since we wrote about handicapism, the ideas that it encompassed have been embraced by people in the Disability-Rights Movement as well as by scholars. Handicapism may not have launched the Disability Studies Movement but it certainly fits the line of inquiry in that field.

A lot has changed since 1977. “Handicapism in American” is both an historical document and a yardstick by which to measure where we are now. In 1977 being a scholar with a clear stated point of view was unusual; now it is quite acceptable and, in some circles, required. Some forms of stereotyping and discrimination have lessened. For example, exclusion from schools altogether is rare, the percentage of students attending regular classes has increased, and more students with disabilities are finding their way into higher education. Yet many negative practices still exist on a broad scale, including: the tendency of charities to infantilize and speak for people with disabilities; persistent widespread segregated schooling in many states; discrimination in employment; and belief by many in age-old myths (e.g., that people with autism prefer to be alone, and that adults can have “mental ages” of children). Moreover, for some segments of society, the lack of change is severe. For example, African American children and youth are twice as likely as their Caucasian peers to be labeled emotionally disturbed or intellectually impaired and significantly less likely to be included in regular classes once labeled.

In retrospect, the biggest gaps in our explication of handicapism in that article were in three areas as follows:

• Voice. The article did not focus sufficiently on the importance of supporting self-advocacy movements and the “nothing about us without us” theme of disability rights. That is one of the changes that has occurred since publication of “Handicapism In America”—although we ourselves had begun to work on this issue as early as the 1970s. People with disabilities have an expanded, if still too isolated, voice on social issues and professional practice that affect their lives.

• Political Economy. We could have said more about the political economy of disability services, for example by revealing the ways in which there has been profit: in segregating, isolating, silencing people with disabilities; in making disability the territory of specialists alone; and in funneling funding to programs rather than to people with disabilities directly.

• Double Discrimination. We should have emphasized the especially intense, even magnified form of handicapism experienced by people who were the targets of racism. Racial minorities were more vulnerable than others were in 1977—as they still are today—whether it be in housing discrimination, rates of school exclusion, labeling within the categories of emotional disturbance, and intellectual disability.

Thomas Szasz (1961), Erving Goffman (1963), Thomas Scheff (1966), Robert Scott (1969), and Dorothea and Benjamin Braginsky (1971) taught us to understand “handicap” categories as well as the term “handicap” itself as metaphors. They laid the groundwork for thinking about so-called handicapped people as societally created rather than as a natural or objective condition. These same authors and their associates in the interactionist or labeling school pointed to the importance of the quality and nature of how labelers interact with the labeled as a prerequisite for understanding handicap (see Davis, 1963; Goffman, 1961; Lemert, 1967; Wiseman, 1970). The interface of human service agencies and clients became an area in which social researchers could develop theoretical perspectives on how labels and definitions were applied (also see Bogdan, 1974; Gubrium, 1975).

While these researchers worked, parallel events occurred in the social action and political arenas. It is not clear who borrowed from whom, but the social construct/labeling school approach to handicap was manifested in a concern for issues of legal and human rights of those labeled handicapped (Gilhool, 1973; Kittrie, 1973). Now a strong “total institution” abolition movement is afoot and various peoples have formed handicap liberation groups. These include Disabled In Action, Mental Patients’ Liberation, National Federation of the Blind, The Center On Human Policy, The Mental Health Law Project, and the National Center for Law and the Handicapped (Biklen, 1974; Mental Health Law Project, 1973; National Committee for Citizens in Education, 1976).

In the field of human services, consumer activism and a new professional consciousness have spawned moral and legal imperatives such as due process, “least restrictive environments,” the right to treatment, delabeling, and normalization (Abeson, 1974; Wolfensberger, 1972; Wolfensberger and Zauha, 1973). At present, however, neither the social researchers/theorists nor the social activists have developed an adequate conceptual scheme by which to examine collectively labeling, the moral and legal developments, and the structural and cultural aspects of differential treatment of people defined as handicapped.

Our purpose is to introduce the concept of handicapism as a paradigm through which to understand the social experience of those who have previously been known as mentally ill, mentally retarded, deaf, crippled, alcoholic, addict, elderly, deformed, deviant, abnormal, disabled, and handicapped. Handicapism has many parallels to racism and sexism. We define it as a set of assumptions and practices that promote the differential and unequal treatment of people because of apparent or assumed physical, mental, or behavioral differences.¹ Three terms-prejudice, stereotype, and discrimination are inherent in our analysis.²

Prejudice is any oversimplified and overgeneralized belief about the characteristics of a group or category of people. Prejudice toward the so-called handicapped is indicated by such indicting assumptions as: they are innately incapable; they are naturally inferior (the mind set is “Thank God, I’m not you”); they have unique personalities, different senses, and different tolerances than the run-of-the-mill citizen; they have more in common with each other than with nonhandicapped persons and, therefore, they like to be with their own kind (see Goffman, 1963; Wright, 1960). These beliefs are the background assumptions for action toward people labeled handicapped; these beliefs are the essence of handicapism.

Whereas “prejudice” is the general disposition, stereotype refers to the specific content of the prejudice directed toward specific groups. The mentally retarded, for example, are believed to be childlike, to enjoy boring routine work, and to be oversexed (Wolfensberger, 1975). The elderly are said to have deteriorated intelligence and are presumed to be unhappy and undersexed. The mentally ill are expected to be erratic in their behavior, are considered dangerous and bizarre, especially during the full moon (see Biklen, 1976; Scheff, 1966). The deaf are considered terrific painters; the blind are supposed to be melancholic (see Jernigan, 1975; Scott, 1969); and supposedly, once an alcoholic always an alcoholic. While sets of stereotypes are often contradictory, they are nevertheless seriously regarded by a number of people and are used to justify particular modes of treatment. Thus, the retarded can be treated like children, the elderly ignored, and the mentally ill locked up.

Although inaccurate, a stereotype is often steadfastly maintained. The maintaining processes are themselves part of handicapism. First peers and culture support the transmission of stereotypes and therefore constantly reinforce them. Second, groups like the handicapped are isolated, have few opportunities for intimate relations to develop between themselves and the so called normal people, and consequently have little chance of disproving the stereotypes. Last, and perhaps most important, handicapped people are treated in ways that correspond to their stereotypes and are rewarded for living up to others’ image of them (see Lemert, 1951). Thus they learn the role of the handicapped and fall victim to the self-fulfilling prophecies (Merton, 1957).

“Prejudice” and “stereotype” point to the cognitive and ideological substance of handicapism. The concept of discrimination provides the structural and behavioral aspect. Unfair and unequal treatment of individuals or groups based on prejudice and stereotypes translates into discrimination. Standards of fairness and unfairness vary from society to society and from time to time as the social criteria for equality or discrimination change in accordance with social values. At one time, it was considered the natural state of slaves to labor in the fields for the economic benefit of others, and for married women to serve their husbands; the treatment they received was not thought to be unfair. Similarly, handicapped people are generally thought to experience relative equality in this society especially since the advent of various categorical social service programs. They are considered to occupy their rightful place and to receive deserved treatment. For example, few people question the practice of rescinding drivers’ licenses, fingerprinting, and taking mug shots of people admitted to state mental institutions despite the fact that there is no evidence that former patients of state mental hospitals are involved in any more accidents or commit more crimes than typical citizens (Ramadas, 1975; Scheff, 1966). It is equally common for public-school districts to segregate handicapped children into special classes and even separate “special” schools although there is no empirical evidence to support any benefit, either educational or social, that results from segregated services. These kinds of policies and practices discriminate against people with disabilities. They are part of handicapism.

In the remaining pages we will demonstrate how handicapism manifests itself in personal interaction, in the organizational structure of the larger society, and in human service policy and practices. Our purpose is to identify and illustrate handicapism in these spheres, and to demonstrate the usefulness of the concept as a paradigm for social scientists. We have based our discussion largely on current lawsuits, studies reported in the professional literature, and our own research and experiences in the area of social policy and disability.

Handicapism in Interpersonal Relations

Handicapism arises in the contacts between handicapped and so-called typical people as well as in the private conversations of typical people when the handicapped are not present. In face-to-face contacts, labeled and nonlabeled persons characteristically display anxiety and strain about how each will be perceived by the other (see Davis, 1961; Goffman, 1963; Wright, 1960). “The stigmatized individual may find that he feels unsure of how we normals will identify him and receive him” (Goffman, 1963). And the so-called normals feel that the stigmatized individual is too ready to read unintended meaning into our action. This self-conscious uneasiness results in a number of handicapist practices. For example, nonhandicapped persons avoid contact with “nonnormals.” When they are forced into contact they tend to seek the earliest possible conclusion. When there is contact there is also the tendency for the disability (the alleged difference) to take on tremendous significance in the nonhandicapped person’s mind: it becomes the master status (Davis, 1961). This often results in the nonhandicapped person either being overly gracious and overly sympathetic (“It must be hell to go through what you go through”) or patronizing (“What a lovely belt, did you make that all by yourself?”) or in some other ways be insensitive or ignore people with disabilities. One such behavior is to treat them like what Goffman (1963) calls “nonpersons.”

In casual contacts with the handicapped, normals tend to measure them against the stereotype and such contacts reinforce common stereotypes. An example may help to demonstrate this process. Recently a number of typical skiers observed a blind skier coming down the slope. They spoke about him and his “amazing feat.” They commented on how “truly remarkable” that he could have the courage and fortitude to do what must be exceptionally difficult for a person with...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Handicapism
• 2  Disability, Pain, and the Politics of Minority Identity
• 3  Historicizing Dis/Ability: Creating Normalcy, Containing Difference
• 4  Lost and Found in Space: The Geographical Imagination and Disability
• 5  Musical Becoming: Intellectual Disability and the Transformative Power of Music
• 6  Lomax’s Matrix: Disability, Solidarity, and the Black Power of 504
• 7  Toward a Postcolonial Neurology: Autism, Tito Mukhopadhyay, and a New Geo-Poetics of the Body
• 8  (Im)Material Citizens: Cognitive Disability, Race, and the Politics of Citizenship
• List of Contributors
• Index