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Handicap as a Social Construct
William Roth
A
lthough there is clearly a biological difference be-tween the disabled and the able-bodied, this is notthe decisive difference between the two groups. Hand-icap is a social construction. There is a biological sub-stratum, but what it means to be handicapped to othersand to oneself is overwhelmingly social and decisivelypolitical.A black is biologically different from a white. The hairmay be kinkier. There is likely to be more melanin in theskin. The nose may be flatter. Resistance to malaria maybe enhanced, as may susceptibility to sickle-cell anemia.With the exception of greater susceptibility to sickle-cellanemia, none of these biological differences cause theblack distress. But in a social context, biological differ-ence is a flag signaling the likelihood of certain conductby parts of white society. Such behavior, beliefs, andactions have been called racism. It is racism, a social andpolitical artifact, rather than the biology of race, whichcauses the black distress, unhappiness, and a predisposi-tion toward poverty and those maladies that attend pov-erty. For example, blacks pay more money into SocialSecurity than they take out, an index of premature mor-tality that derives in large measure from the social andpolitical construction of race.A similar situation exists with sex. Obviously, menand women are biologically different. A woman can bearchildren, a man cannot. The shape of the genitals andlater the secondary sex characteristics are different. Butit is not such biological difference which distresses thewoman. Here, too, sexual difference acts as a flag. Here,too, society makes of difference that social and politicalartifact labeled "sexism," which indeed causes womeneconomic, psychological, even physical pain. Thatwomen, on the average, earn about 60 percent of whatmen do is one measure of this social and political differ-ence.The biological difference associated with a handicap,however, may itself occasion distress at times. Yet here,too, biology is important far beyond itself. Here, too,biological difference is a flag signaling the most distres-sing sorts of social and political artifact rendered all themore distressing because it is so easy to think thembiologically necessary--as indeed, once upon a time,many thought that sexism reflected the natural biology ofwomen and racism the natural biology of blacks. Whilesometimes hidden, what society does with the biologicaldifference of handicap is far-ranging and deep, leading
inter alia
to poor education, training for failure, de-sexualization, unemployment or underemployment,loneliness, greater likelihood of psychological complica-tion, a history of learned inferiority, the awkwardglances of others, discrimination of all sorts--indeed,even a definition of being through negation:
not
able-bodied,
not
able to function in certain ways,
not
as agile,
not
as intelligent,
not
as flexible,
not
as firm,
not
with afuture.It seems hard for society to accept difference withoutsomehow ranking it, thinking of it as inferior, deficient,dysfunctional. We seem to find it difficult to distinguishbetween difference and inequality. People are acceptedas equal insofar as they are like the rest of us. It is to belamented if blacks must act like whites in order toachieve equality, if women must emulate men, and ifdisabled people must aspire to able-bodied behaviorand values. To expect sameness is unjust not only to theminority group from which sameness is expected, but tothat society which has much to learn from the diversitythat the members of these groups articulate.Disabled people are talking, not only through words,but through gestures, legislation, litigation, politicalpresence, and other modes of political and social com-munication. Having started to think of themselves as apolitically and socially constructed and disenfranchisedminority, the disabled, like other minority groups, areusing the knowledge of their stigmatized identity tochange themselves and the society in which they exist.To change society, to rewrite a social contract of oppres-sion, is to emancipate oneself.Changes in public policy are necessary. It is importantthat policy makers listen and understand before wastingdollars on non-optimal programs. What kinds of hous-ing, transportation, education are appropriate for hand-icapped people? For the first time such issues have beenbrought to the agenda and consciousness of public pol-icy. The issue of work is of central importance. If manydisabled people can and want to work, then the current
 
transfer system, which frequently makes work finan-cially costly, must be recalibrated. And current policywhich would increase the supply of disabled workersshould be coupled with policy to increase the economy'sdemand for disabled workers.A rethinking is in order. The reasons mandating suchrethinking include the escalating costs of Social SecurityDisability Insurance and other transfer-payment pro-grams, the recent waves of legislation to guarantee rightsof handicapped people that many able-bodied peoplehave taken for granted at least since the Declaration ofIndependence, the discussion of costs and benefits oc-curring among policy makers and social scientists, andan emerging political organization of disabled peoplewhich has learned many of the lessons of other minoritygroups and has begun to impress the needs and require-ments of disabled people on both policy makers and thepublic.
Sticks and Stones
The conjunction of the words
politics
and
disability
still perhaps seems strange, despite increasing legitima-tion by some assemblies. This strangeness is perhaps areflection of an actual political disjunction in society.Such speech is sensible, and only a social error of the earhears sensible messages as strange. An inversion dwellson the conjunction
of politics
and
disability
that suggeststhe possibility of its sensible articulation.To undertake such an investigation is to embark on avoyage that many disabled people have already undertak-en. It is to disengage certain political foci of disabledpeople and expose their potentiality and character. In sodoing, it is, inevitably, to comment as well on certainpolitical attributes of that society through which disabil-ity is refracted and constructed. It is to explore the inter-connections that disabled people have with the politicalsociety that contains them, connections that, unlike theself-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence,are not self-evident but distorted, if not inaudible.Although we all think we know what disability is, it isdifficult to put it into words. The words opted for, if theyarticulate the current social-role structure, preclude thepossibility of finding any sense in the conjunction ofpolitics and disability. Should there be words that makeit nonsense to speak of disability and politics together,and other words that make it sensible, then perhaps oneof the characteristics of disability is its vulnerability todefinition. And insofar as a disabled person
is
a disabil-ity, disabled people are vulnerable too. Indeed, the word
vulnerability
has a political quality that may be part ofdisability. Further, the claiming of other definitions ofdisability, particularly on the part of the disabled, may it-self be a political act.One language used in discussions of disability has itthat the disabled person is permanently sick. By nowenough has been written on the politics of medicalspeech immediately to raise the suspicion that its wordsare political. As R.D. Laing and Thomas Szasz have
STIGMA / 57
shown regarding those aberrations of the mind calledmental illness, Seymour Sarason and John Doris regard-ing mental retardation, and Michel Foucault regardingphysical malady, to speak of a person as "sick" is hardlyapolitical.Many labels appear to be a case of "Sticks and stonesmay break my bones, but names will never hurt me."But there are labels which help or hurt, and when they doso, help or hurt politically. Indeed, the language ofmedicine entails social actions. When the disabled per-son is called "sick," the fact of this definition and itsconsequences reveal more about social and political ar-tifact than they do about the natural biological order ofthings. And when the disabled person is treated accord-ing to social convention and thought of according to so-cial habit, such treatment and thought is altogether po-litical. If society speaks of a disabled person in the lan-guage of medicine, it may do so with a purpose. Tospeak of social purpose is to enter headlong into the thickof the political. What might such social purpose be?In part, it might be to separate and protect the able-bodied. In speaking of some as sick and others ashealthy, sickness and health define boundaries. Further,to speak of people as sick is to locate the problem withinthe body of the sick person and encapsulate it by themedical system.Alcoholism has had a political stake in its recognitionas a disease rather than a moral attribute. To speak of itas a disease was to locate a problem that had grownalarmingly in scope and class distribution in a sup-posedly apolitical medical lexicon, absolving society ofresponsibility and depoliticizing its relationship to the al-coholic. What alcoholism has struggled for has comenaturally to disability. Here, too, the scope was large andthe class distribution wide. Here, too, there was now aneed for social isolation and insulation, and, ultimately,for de-politicization. That disability falls so well withinthe medical lexicon demonstrates how far away it hasbeen thrust from politics--and perhaps how close topolitics it would be without a medical buffer.Politics has been characterized as an arena of asym-metrical relationships. The disabled person is reckoned a(weaker) patient, thus obscuring political attributes toconcentrate on his failings as refracted through an idealof health. Activity is legitimated only insofar as it con-tributes to individual, apolitical recovery, usually ad-justment or acquiescence, since cure is, by definition,impossible. The disabled person is de-politicized, spo-ken of in terms of deviance and subservience; he is ren-dered apolitical, spoken of simply as a "good patient."Disabled people share their subservient place. Theability to demarcate a region in political space can be lit-tle solace to a victim, particularly when the political na-ture of that space is obscured. Many people throughouthistory have shared such a power of the weak. But sel-dom has the political quality of the weakness been sowell disguised.The major political goals of disabled people are
 
58 / SOCIETY 9 MARCH / APRIL 1983
achieving social recognition that their struggle is indeedpolitical, achieving a political definition that unites themwith other oppressed minorities, and acting not as vic-tims but as equals. It is an awesome agenda, alreadybegun.In exploring what is and what can be, it is frequentlyuseful to recollect what has been. In large measure thehistory of disabled people, like the history of so manyordinary people, is unwritten. But we do have some ideaabout the evolution of those structures which werefashioned to house and handle them. Of particular im-portance in the politicization of disability is the recenthistory of litigation and legislation.In 1954, the Warren court issued its famous decisionin
Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.
This decisiondid not come out of the blue, nor, as social scientistssometimes like to think, did it issue from the discoveriesand evidence of social scientists. A long legal process--carefully orchestrated, well-planned, and consistentlypressed--had started in the courts decades earlier. The
Brown
decision emerged through legal and politicalstruggle.In principle, it seemed the decision was applicable togroups other than blacks. The idea that separate was notequal provoked reconsideration of the relationship of re-tarded people, prisoners, patients, institutionalized peo-ple, and people in the armed forces to this polity's legalstructure and to the polity itself.The example of
Brown
inspired the plaintiffs andlawyers involved in the landmark decisions of the recenthistory of disability that eventually, in 1975, led to Pub-lic Law 94-142, the Education for All HandicappedChildren Act. Another law, the Rehabilitation Act of1973, contained the revolutionary sections 504, 503, and501. These sections have been called a civil rights act fordisabled people.Changes in law and changes in implementation hadsome effect on the polity. Their effects on disabled peo-ple were profound. Sometimes political action by thedisabled was the result of law; sometimes its origins wereindependent. Sometimes political action was individualrebellion; sometimes it was carefully planned in concertwith others. Sometimes it was an insistence on rights thatothers had long taken for granted; sometimes it seemedto stake out new rights, opportunities, and obligations. Itis instructive to catalogue a few of these diverse politicalactions.A woman in a wheelchair who was qualified for ateaching job was refused it, fought back, and won;elsewhere, a governor signed a bill prohibiting job dis-crimination against disabled people. One airline refusedto carry a handicapped person, who fought back andwon; another airline published a booklet on special ser-vices for disabled people. Handicapped people inWashington fought to force inclusion of elevators intothe then-projected Metro subway system and lost; inanother large city, special seats for elderly and handi-capped people were marked out on public transportation.A disabled lawyer who could not appear at a legal
pro-
cess against him because there was no way for his wheel-chair to enter the building fought back; a state senate ap-proved bills designed to facilitate access to public build-ings and other facilities by disabled people. The JusticeDepartment charged the world's largest wheelchair man-ufacturer with collusion, monopolistic practices, pricerigging, inordinately high salaries for executives, andnepotism; later, this wheelchair giant finally came outwith an outdoor electric wheelchair, honoring a need metin the breach by small manufacturers, such as an out-raged paraplegic who designed a particularly impressivewheelchair, christened "Advance," in a garage.A computer was developed which transduces printedmaterial into spoken words, a promising use of space-agetechnology for handicapped people. Private groups pro-mote travel by disabled people, package tours, and ingeneral open up leisure activities that others have longenjoyed. The federal government published a book ofinformation for disabled people wanting to use the na-tional park system.In 1977, there were demonstrations at HEW regionaloffices, Washington headquarters, and the home of theSecretary of HEW demanding that the department issuethe regulations for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Actpassed 4 years earlier and appropriately administered bythe Office of Civil Rights. The regulations were issued.Many disabled people met each other in an atmosphereof friendship and politics at the White House Conferenceon Handicapped Individuals. A mayor of a city estimatedto have a million disabled people established an office ofthe handicapped to amplify the voices of its handicappedcitizens.With support of his parents and lawyers, a high-schoolfreshman without an arm contested a decision excludinghim from football training. A person in a wheelchair waskept from a marathon; with ACLU lawyers, he broughtthe case to the courts and won. A disabled Boy Scoutwas denied his eagle badge because of his age; he foughtback and got his badge, making eight other handicappedScouts eligible.Such events signal handicapped people's responses toproblems of access, organization, politics, and civilrights; at the same time, they tell something about theway society labels, brands, and stigmatizes handicappedpeople.
Political Self-Reliance
A discussion of handicapped people as political beingsraises points of comparison with other groups that, uponreflection, do not seem strange. In some ways, disabledpeople seem like other minority groups; in other ways,they are different, although still comparable.Many of the political actions concerning disabled peo-ple were, to paraphrase Lincoln, for them, but not by andof them. For example, the court cases leading up to P.L.94-142 were not pressed by disabled people themselvesbut by their parents, lawyers, and friendly professionals.There is strength in this. Disabled people have friendswho are sufficiently potent politically to cause change.
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