“Attacking people with disabilities is the lowest display of power I can think of” (Morgan Freeman). The numbers are staggering, approximately 52 million Americans have some sort of disabling condition such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, depression, spinal cord injury, visual impairment, arthritis, and muscular dystrophy; to name a few. Disabilities are due to an individual suffering from an emotional, developmental, cognitive and mental impairment, it can even be a combination of one or more depending on the actual disability. These people are treated as less valuable than the next person. Many believe that people with disabilities are an inconvenience so they avoid putting themselves in a position where they could help improve …show more content…
Such as, when Jim was 3 months old, his mother was told he had cystic fibrosis. His doctor asked Jim’s mother where she wanted Jim to be in 20 years. Looking ahead, she told the doctor she wanted Jim to go to college. Working as a team, Jim’s doctor and mother began to plan for his future. Jim learned early that he needed to be involved in his own health care. With support from family, school, and health care professionals, Jim took on more and more responsibility for his own health. He also learned to take care of himself by exercising, eating right, and avoiding alcohol and tobacco. Today, Jim is 24, married, working, and buying a home. He believes he has been able to enjoy a full life, in spite of his disability ("People with Disabilities", 2016). All it took was his family, school, and doctors coming along side he and his family, which led to a hope and a future for this young man. So many other lives could be impacted in the same way. More than 82% of children with disabilities get bullied in school but other non-disabled children. This makes the child resent school and that child will start to associate
The following is a response and reflection to the article “People First Language” by Kathie Snow. My first personal interpretation of the article was of a person on a rampage and I could not understand the content of the article. The author Kathie Snow seemed to be upset that people with disabilities are labeled, instead of being addressed by their name. In her article, it appeared that she was using false analogies. Her article compared people with disabilities and medical diagnoses like psoriasis, arthritis, diabetes. I am not sure if I agree with this analogy, because not all disabilities are a physical medical issue. Some disabilities are cognitive, social, or emotional and really have no relationship with medical disabilities. Although, it takes a professional medical person in some subfield of the medical field to diagnose a disability, it just seems that, there is no correlation between medical physical issues and disability. On the other hand, there were parts of the article that
The Disability Act promoted these behaviors by making it the law that the disabled be treated fairly. Therefore, people are not treating the disabled equally; people are treating the disabled differently because they feel it is politically correct. In Birnbaum’s case, a lot of people overlooked him when they considered someone committing a crime because there are always chances that the accuser could be prosecuted against for discrimination (228-230). In Toby Sieber’s “Disability Theory”, the author makes this statement, “The right to have rights, according to Hannah Arendt’s valuable formulation, bases human rights on the right to belong to a political community in which individuals are judged by their actions and opinion” (176); Sieber’s statement illustrates how every person’s actions should be judged equally and this is the definition of having rights. Problems occur when people emotionally react to situations rather than logically. As discussed before, Birnbaum’s smuggling of Cuban cigars into the U.S. was a result of airport official’s negligence to his capabilities (229). Though, not only was the airport officials negligent, Birnbaum was deceitful because he knew his action was against the law, but he still committed the crime (Birnbaum
After reading “People First Language” by Kathie Snow, the first thing that came to my mind was the saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” I have never agreed with this saying because words can inflict pain just like sticks and stones. Words really do matter. Kathie Snow believed that other people’s attitude towards others is the greatest obstacle facing people with disabilities. According to Kathie Snow (2010), “The real problem is never a person’s disability, but the attitudes of others!
The first theme we discussed in class was ableism. Ableism is discrimination of disabled or handicapped people (Croft, Ableism Powerpoint, 2016). The disability does not have to be obvious such as the person needing a wheelchair or a cane. They can be less obvious to what we consider “normal” such as the person wearing glasses. One of the questions that were discussed in class was “How do we decide who is able?” and “What is standard?” (Croft, Ableism Powerpoint, 2016) . The answer to those questions is power and privilege. If a person has power, they can do anything, meaning they have all the necessary resources. They are accepted because they have the power to influence others (Croft, Ableism Powerpoint, 2016). Privilege
Disability in our day in age is seen as being worse than death. People with disabilities should not feel like they don 't belong. They are just like everyone else and want to be treated like everyone else. Many without disabilities think that it can be contagious and stray to even look at people with disability. This is not the case for it 's not contagious and one should not be seen as a different person just because of their disability. They didn 't choose that life and shouldn 't be mistreated for what they are. “People with disability should be treated equally to everyone else.”
Interestingly, the Medical Model of disability starkly contrasts how other forms of discrimination are typically viewed in society. For example, most individuals believe that the social ailments surrounding racial and ethnic minorities, women, and sexual minorities stem not from any sort of physiological abnormality, but rather from societal environments that breed discrimination. Thus, discrimination against these minority groups are often viewed as unreasonable. Moreover, attempts at justifying the discrimination against any of these groups is deemed socially deplorable. In contrast, many people seem to view discrimination against disabled individuals as not only rational, but also morally acceptable (in the RGT context specifically). The result, therefore, is that individuals who strive against discrimination in other contexts may be apt to justify discrimination against disabled
Most people feel relatively uncomfortable when they meet someone with an obvious physical disability. Usually, the disability seems to stand out in ones mind so much that they often forget the person is still a person. In turn, their discomfort is likely to betray their actions, making the other person uncomfortable too. People with disabilities have goals, dreams, wants and desires similar to people without disabilities. Andre Dubus points out very clearly in his article, "Why the Able-bodied Still Don't Get It," how people's attitudes toward "cripples" effect them. It's is evident that although our society has come a long way with excepting those with physical disabilities, people do not understand that those with physical disabilities are as much human as the next person
Historically, we have been taught that people with disabilities are different and do not belong among us, because they are incompetent, cannot contribute to society or that they are dangerous. We’re still living with the legacy of people with disabilities being segregated, made invisible, and devalued. The messages about people with disabilities need to be changed. There needs to be more integration of people with disabilities into our culture to balance out the message. Because of our history of abandonment and initialization, fear and stigma impact our choices more than they would if acceptance, community integration, and resources were a bigger part of our history.
This would obviously affect children or teens with disabilities, despite the fact that schools are supposed to be a safe place for young students. Part of a teacher’s job is to help any student when they need it, especially considering they see the student approximately seven hours a day, five days a week. Despite this, “A quarter of young disabled people report feeling discriminated against in school...34% felt they did not get the help and support they needed from teachers and other staff” (Curtis). Students with disabilities do have certain differences from other students and in turn may be more difficult to deal with but, “More than a third (38%) said they had been bullied because of their disabilities, with one in 20 saying their bullies had been teachers” (Curtis). Bullies have to find something different about a person to have a reason to discriminate against them, and people with disabilities have that different quality. The bully may use this disability against the person because stigmas in our society have taught them it’s okay to discriminate against the disabled. Some people don’t experience this bullying, but they still may not get equal or appropriate treatment. Nathan Liu again spoke about his time in school saying, “My teachers acted super antsy around me…[they] didn’t know how to act around me...disabled kids were the ones who got hidden away in ‘special’ classrooms. They
Disability: Any person who has a mental or physical deterioration that initially limits one or more major everyday life activities. Millions of people all over the world, are faced with discrimination, the con of being unprotected by the law, and are not able to participate in the human rights everyone is meant to have. For hundreds of years, humans with disabilities are constantly referred to as different, retarded, or weird. They have been stripped of their basic human rights; born free and are equal in dignity and rights, have the right to life, shall not be a victim of torture or cruelty, right to own property, free in opinion and expression, freedom of taking part in government, right in general education, and right of employment opportunities. Once the 20th century
The first thought that crosses the mind of an able-bodied individual upon seeing a disabled person will undoubtedly pertain to their disability. This is for the most part because that is the first thing that a person would notice, as it could be perceived from a distance. However, due to the way that disability is portrayed in the media, and in our minds, your analysis of a disabled person rarely proceeds beyond that initial observation. This is the underlying problem behind why disabled people feel so under appreciated and discriminated against. Society compartmentalizes, and in doing so places the disabled in an entirely different category than fully able human beings. This is the underlying theme in the essays “Disability” by Nancy Mairs, “Why the Able-Bodied Just Don’t Get it” by Andre Dubus, and “Should I Have Been Killed at Birth?” by Harriet Johnson.
Like Sharron Angle said, “There is a plan and a purpose, a value to every life, no matter what its location, age, gender or disability”. We all are one; we all are special in our own way, so why treat someone else different just because they look different from what is viewed as “normal”? Why commit violence against people with disabilities? According to Cook, L. (2015), Americans with disabilities are more often victims of violent crimes. The violence against the disabled was thirty-six per one thousand in 2013, two times the amount of people without disabilities.
“In 1970, U.S. schools educated only one in five children with disabilities, and many states had laws excluding certain students, including children who were deaf, blind, emotionally disturbed, or mentally r******d.” (“Archived: 25 Year History of the IDEA”) Today there are an estimated 6,429,431 students —ages 3-21— receiving special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (“How many students with disabilities are in our school(s)?”) With over 6 million people being helped by these acts it is easy to assume that this is no longer a problem and that we have taken control over the issue at hand. This would be wrong. While many of these students are receiving special education services, this does not necessarily mean they are thriving in their environment they have been placed
Every day in America, a woman loses a job to a man, a homosexual high school student suffers from harassment, and someone with a physical or mental disability is looked down upon. People with disabilities make up the world’s largest and most disadvantaged minority, with about 56.7 million people living with disabilities in the United States today (Barlow). In every region of the country, people with disabilities often live on the margins of society, deprived from some of life’s fundamental experiences. They have little hope of inclusion within education, getting a job, or having their own home (Cox). Everyone deserves a fair chance to succeed in life, but discrimination is limiting opportunities and treating people badly because of their disability. Whether born from ignorance, fear, misunderstanding, or hate, society’s attitudes limit people from experiencing and appreciating the full potential a person with a disability can achieve. This treatment is unfair, unnecessary, and against the law (Purdie). Discrimination against people with disabilities is one of the greatest social injustices in the country today. Essential changes are needed in society’s basic outlook in order for people with disabilities to have an equal opportunity to succeed in life.
People with disabilities are still people, they are people with hearts and they are actual physical beings; people with disabilities do their best to live every day to their fullest, yet that is still not enough for others. I feel like as a whole, humans are generally uncomfortable with people who have disabilities. Let’s think of it this way, people live their life every day in their normal lives and then they come across a person with a disability and suddenly their life is interrupted, like it is such a barrier in their flow of life to come across someone different from themselves.