Constructing the Myth of the Crack Baby May 21, 2013

Ta Nehisi Coates has a short blurb about about the crack baby ‘epidemic’ in the early 1980s in the US.  You can also watch a ten minute video / short documentary about it here.

a pregnant woman with one hand resting on her belly.

Coates mentions the influence of racism in how women were being prosecuted for being pregnant while addicted to cocaine. In fact, there’s a whole confluence of racism, classism, misogyny, and ableism that feed into the crack baby hysteria:
–the racism and classism that goes into poor WoC being more easily seen as irresponsible mothers who were recklessly endangering their unborn children
–the general misogyny that a woman’s health (like helping her with her addiction) is not nearly as important as the health of the her unborn child (so she should be prosecuted for potentially harming it.)
–the ableism that influence our standards of health.  Part of the hysteria was that babies would be born with physical and cognitive disabilities, which not only lead us to think of them as not being fully human, but we were then also concerned about all the extra money they disabled kids would cost us.  Because you know, the *tragedy* here is not that there are a bunch of women addicted to a dangerous drug, but that people’s taxes will go up from from all these costly, disabled babies.

Eek, it’s like a messed-up game of “spot how the -ism influences our moral concerns.”

Here’s hoping the Michael J Fox Show is awesome May 14, 2013

Induction suggests that it’s difficult to anticipate the quality of a TV show or movie based on the quality of the trailer (Watchmen, I am looking directly at you). So I’ll hedge what I say here to this: the trailer for the new pilot The Michael J Fox Show looks pretty awesome.

By all accounts it’s a show that will center around a disabled character (Mike Henry) portrayed by a disabled actor (Michael J Fox). As far as I know, that’s a first – at least on a mainstream US network. Of course, it’s unlikely that a show like this would be possible if Fox hadn’t been famous before he became disabled. But still, it’s a step in the right direction – and might pave the way for other, more varied representations of disability in TV and film. (A girl can dream, yeah?)

And from the looks of it, the show seems to be aiming for a great tone – one that laughs openly at ‘tragic overcomer’ tropes and embraces the everyday ups, downs, humor, and general ridiculousness that can come with being disabled. Here’s hoping it’s awesome. At the very least, I like the trailer.

Art Activism: Bedding Out April 10, 2013

Liz Crow, artist and activist, is starting a revolution from her bed.

BEDDING OUT emerges from the current welfare benefits overhaul, which threatens many with poverty and a propagandist campaign that has seen disability hate crime leap by 50%.

“I wear a public self that is energetic, dynamic and happening,” explains artist-activist Liz Crow. “I am also ill and spend much of life in bed. The private self is neither beautiful nor grownup, it does not win friends or accolades and I conceal it carefully.

“But for me, along with thousands more, this new system of benefits demands a reversal: my public self implies I don’t need support and must be denied, whilst my private self must be paraded as justification for the state’s support. For months, I have lain low for fear of being penalised, but the performer is beginning to re-emerge. Instead of letting fear determine who I am, I’d rather stare it in the face.” BEDDING OUT is a performance in which I take my private self and make it public, something I have not done in over 30 years. On this stage, for a period of 48 hours, I am performing the other side of my fractured self, my bed-life. Since the public me is so carefully constructed, this will be a kind of un-performing of my self.

“I want to show that what many people see as contradiction – what they call ‘fraud’ – is only the complexity of real life. This is not a work of tragedy, but of in/visibility and complication; a chance to perform my self without façade.”

Join her live over the next 48 hours!

Honderich on ableism March 26, 2013

Via The Leiter Report, The Guardian has a profile of Ted Honderich which includes the following:

Honderich may be in for further trouble with his revised edition of the Oxford Companion to Philosophy. He’s typically downbeat about his part in the original project. “I think I was only asked because I was considered reliable,” he says. “Other philosophers had said they would do it and then failed to deliver on deadline. I imagine they thought it wasn’t proper work for a philosopher.”

This time round, free from the constraints of the academic circus, he’s been free to make 300 additions, including “ableism” – “it basically means being condescending to cripples”.

 

Wow. Just fucking wow.

Disability and the Individual Achiever February 18, 2013

As Paralympian and Olympian Oscar Pistorius faces charges of premeditated murder, the media is filled with predictable hand-wringing about the knock-on effects for public perception of disability. This is, after all, a man who lead us to “redefine. . .disability” (The Mirror, The Australian). A man who “changed our perceptions of disability” (The Scotsman). A man who is “revered for overcoming his disability” (CBC).

I don’t doubt that Pistorius held a lofty position in the public psyche. And I don’t doubt that the shocking events of recent days will damage the public perception of disabled people. Nothing reinforces otherness quite like highly public murderous rampages. It’s not a question of what will happen. It’s a question of what should happen.

A worried commenter on a current events blog brought up what must be a common theme for many. She works in an after-school program for disabled children and opined “I always tell my kids ‘If Oscar can do it, you can do it! What do I tell them now?’”

I’m not sure what you should tell them now, because I’m not sure I can get into the headspace where it would’ve made sense to tell them “If Oscar can do it, you can do it!” in the first place. Oscar Pistorius is (or perhaps was) a track athlete, and a very good one. Most disabled kids aren’t going to grow up to be track athletes. Most disabled kids don’t want to grow up to be track athletes. I’m fairly sure that most non-disabled kids aren’t sitting in their after-school programs being told “If Usain Bolt can do it, you can do it!” What an odd thing that would be to say them.

But here we come to the crux of the issue: Oscar Pistorius wasn’t merely an athlete, he was a hero. He was a hero for the disabled and the non-disabled alike. We were all supposed to love him and, more importantly, to be inspired by him. As Justice Malala writes in The Guardian:

To be without legs, and to become the epitome of excellence in the very field where you are not supposed to excel: that is the stuff of legends. That is why many of us here, when talking about Pistorius, take on the hyperbole of sportswriters. We like an impossible story.

And we loved him for it. We adored him.

This image of the heroic overcomer is familiar. And it’s something that increased media coverage of the Paralympics – with all its focus on “human interest stories” – intensifies, much to the chagrin of some disabled people. Usain Bolt is a track athlete, and he’s allowed to simply be a track athlete. Oscar Pistorius was supposed to be an inspiration, a beacon of hope for future generations of disabled people, a testament that any adversity can be overcome through sheer determination.

That’s what we’re comfortable with, when it comes to disabled people. That’s what we like our stories to look like. Disabled people can be inspirational, or they can be pitiful. They can’t just be normal, everyday people. The man without legs who heroically overcame all odds to be a track star – we like that story. (We like it so much that we’ll conveniently cover up the previous domestic violence arrest, the public temper tantrums, the drunken boat crash, all to preserve the story we want.) The man without legs who desperately needs your charitable contribution to afford a new prosthesis so he can walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding – we like that story too. The man without legs who became an accountant but is facing some access barriers at work – we’re pretty uninterested in that story.

We want disability to be a story of the individual – of individual need or individual bravery. But for most disabled people, disability isn’t the story of the individual. Barriers to access are primarily social – they’re not a matter of individuals lacking guts or bravado. And no amount of individual charity will solve the social inequality that disabled people face each and every day. The longer we focus on the heroic individual achiever, the longer the everyday social ills are obscured.

Oscar Pistorius didn’t redefine conceptions of disability. He was (and may continue to be, depending on the verdict of his trial) an incredibly talented athlete, as are many other disabled people. But he fit very neatly into our accepted paradigms of disability. He was an inspiration, because that’s what we expect disabled people to be. And that doesn’t change anything.

Now that’s what I call access!! February 10, 2013

Awesome blog post from Benefit Scrounging Scum about the difference it makes when a place is really genuinely accessible:

Going through the front entrance, the main entrance of a beautiful old listed building felt like such a privilege, something I can’t remember doing since becoming disabled. It made me feel wanted, that I belonged there, that I could, even if only for a lunch, access somewhere on the same terms as everyone else.

There’s a video in the post showing how the fancy stone steps of the restaurant at One Great George Street retract to reveal a wheelchair lift.  It’s SO cool.  Listed buildings really need to start admitting that lack of access is about not spending the money, not about restrictions on alterations.  Clearly, if you want to make it work, you can!

The varieties of disability February 8, 2013

We’ve just put up an extremely thoughtful, thought-provoking post over at Disabled Philosophers. It begins like this:

My disability is, for many, also a marker of identity. In the parlance of pop culture, I was “born in the wrong body.” In the words of the DSM, I have “evidence of a strong and persistent cross-gender identification.”. . . I realize that there are others in my situation who would shirk this description, and I am do not mean to imply that any transsexual or transgender individual is thereby disabled.

However, this is a physical condition for which I must constantly medicate myself and for which I’ve had significant surgeries. I live with the fear that my colleagues will discover my past history, which is a source of some not-insignificant anxiety.

While I’m sure that there are many trans folk who would object to the description of a trans body as a disability, and likewise that there are many disabled folk who would object along similar lines, this post encourages us to think carefully about what we classify as “disability” and which experiences are experiences of disability. I’m leaving comments open on this post for the time being, but I’d ask that everyone be courteous and kind. The policy at the Disabled Philosophers blog includes allowing people to report and interpret their own experiences. People may disagree with how to interpret that experience, but it’s imperative that we all be respectful in that disagreement.

Sandra Jensen: Why she kicks ass February 7, 2013

In a black and white photo, a woman stands outside by a table, microphone in hand. She has shoulder length straight hair and glasses. She is wearing a dress and sandals. She is smiling.

I found this short bio on tumblr and wanted to share it:

Sandra Jensen: Why she kicks ass

• She devoted lots of her time working as an advocate for the rights of people with disabilities; she worked part time as well as being heavily involved in volunteering.
• She was denied a heart-lung transplant by the Stanford University School of Medicine in California because she had Down syndrome. She then (along with supporters) began a very public battle, gaining nationwide attention arguing that Down syndrome should not be enough to automatically deprive a patient of a chance to survive, this resulted in her receiving the transplant (1996).
• She became the first person with Down Syndrome to ever receive a heart-lung transplant.

I’ll be over here in awe

 

I also found her obituary from 1997, which you can read here.

Jensen, an activist for disabled rights, served as president of a Sacramento disabled-rights group and was invited to watch then-President George Bush sign the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Despite her disabilities, Jensen lived on her own, graduating from high school and busing tables at the Capitol cafeteria.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about her or her story online, but I did find this report, which is taken from NYT and US News articles.

Pensioner dies after care agency shut down February 6, 2013

It’s difficult to know where to start with this. The bare facts, as reported by the BBC website, are that an eighty-year old woman was left without food, water, or medication for nine days after the company responsible for her care was raided and shut down by the UK Border Agency. Sadly, she later died in hospital. The agency, it seems, had been illegally employing folks without papers, although I don’t think that much has been officially confirmed. There are so many things about this tragedy that make me angry. First off, care work is one of the most poorly paid jobs going. A 2010 report by the Low Pay Commission found that 9% of care workers were paid less than the minimum wage. Many were not being reimbursed for their travel costs. No surprise there, as caring has been – and still is – associated with women, and what has traditionally been considered ‘women’s work’ is always more poorly paid than traditionally masculine roles, no matter how important it may be. In addition, few care workers are union members, and as private companies have taken over – and made to compete for – the provision of care, this has led to reduced pay and poorer working conditions. Second, migrants without papers are one of the most easily exploited groups of people – lacking any official means to support themselves, they have to take any work they are offered, and their illegal status means that they have no power over their pay or working conditions. They cannot join a union to fight for a better deal, and they cannot complain if their jobs fail to meet the legally required standards. Third, the existence of such a vulnerable group of people, living in the shadows of our society, makes it harder for those with papers. Their pay and working conditions are driven down by the exploitation of illegal migrants, and they must now compete for work with people who can be paid less, made to work longer hours, and so on – people whom, from a certain perspective, it makes more sense to employ. And there we have it: a matrix of oppression, which leads to the various sufferings of care workers, folks without papers, and those who require care.

The Ivory Tower has a lot of stairs and no ramp January 28, 2013

I’d encourage everyone to go and read the post we put up at Disabled Philosophers this morning from Raymond Aldred, a graduate student with muscular dystrophy. The kind of barriers Ray faces in the profession are immense, and – I suspect – largely invisible to your average non-disabled philosopher.