Attitudes towards the disabled

In My Humble Opinion
1

On the first episode of Mad Men there is a character that is disabled, and comments are made about it. Not just about the disability, and not really even jokes, as much as it was cruel comments about the actual person. (Never mind that the disability was the result of a war injury.) In season 3 a character is injured, and while it would probably require a prosthesis, it shouldn’t be a career-ender, but that’s the way people reacted.

With the Americans with Disabilities Act being in the news this week for its 20th anniversary, it has me thinking about how much attitudes have shifted. Is the ADA responsible for the shift in attitude? I admit that before I got hurt, having a disability was not at the top of my mind.

I know Mad Men isn’t always historically accurate, but everything I’ve read makes it seem like they try. How accurate is the portrayal? How widespread was thinking less of a disabled person and when did it start to change?

I’m paralyzed, I use a wheelchair. I have a job, and I graduated from college. I notice whether or not things are accessible. I think facilities have improved because of the ADA, and I appreciate it. There are times, especially in “old” cities, when I can’t get somewhere because of steps, or a narrow doorway, or no accessible restroom. It’s disappointing, but I figure that’s life. I certainly don’t think of it as intentional. In my personal experience, I’ve never felt discriminated against. It’s possible that people say things when I’m not around (like the character in Mad Men), but I doubt it’s disability related. Am I just being naive? I don’t really notice it myself, but if people stare, my friends will get irritated at times. I figure the staring is more a result of curiosity though, and not because they think less of me. But who knows … That’s why I’m asking.

Historically, what have attitudes towards the disabled/disability been like? When did they start to change (if they did)? And what are attitudes like outside of the United States?

2

I think people still are unsure how to treat them, they mean well but are afraid to ask.

The thing is outside of their disability people are still people. You can be a jerk in a wheelchair.

I worked in a hotel with a wheelchair jerk who was a guest. If you opened the door, it was “I can open the damn door, I’m not helpless.” If you didn’t open the door, he’d be like “You can see I’m in a wheelchair.”

Jerk-in-a-wheelchair was mad at the world.

Part of the current trend in comedy to make fun of them is to show, they are no different.

Do we make fun of fat people? Of course we do. They don’t like it but we do.

I tend to be a bit blunt around people with disabilities. Yes, I know you had bad luck. So I say “I don’t know what you can or can’t do, so I’ll assume you can do anything unless you tell me otherwise.”

I had an employee Rita that had a stroke and she used a cane to walk and had limited movement in her left hand. But she managed. I told her to tell me if she couldn’t do something and she did.

There’s always someone who can’t understand the concept of proportionality. Sure people with disabilites want to be teated like everyone else, but they also want a bit of help.

If I see someone in a wheelchair I assume they are fine. If the look like they are stuggling I always say “Would you like some assistance.” I never assume they need help. If they say no, even if they continue to stuggle, I leave. They may have a reason to want to do something and stuggle a bit to get it done.

And there are always jerks who can’t get his. I recall after 9-11 our hotel was by a major skyscraper in Chicago. Corporate said, “Effective ASAP All EMPLOYEES NO EXCEPTIONS have to pass by security”

Well security was in the basement and you had to climb out a steep set of stairs.

So I asked H/R about Rita, the employee I had who suffered a stroke. Since she used a cane, would she have to do this. H/R said “no,” she can leave out the front door.

There were people who complained about special treatment for her.

They were like “But Rita could pass security have them check her bag then walk back to the elevator and leave the front door.”

I was like, “But what’s the point of that.” If she was gonna sneak a bomb (remember this was after 9-11) she could hide the bomb, check with security and then pick the bomb up on her way out of the front door.

My viewpoint is, ask before you help a disabled person and then respect their wishes. Otherwise they are no different from a non disable person. I fully expect that if a disabled person has a special need they ask for it. It works both ways.

3

Back in the 60s or 70s, I read a book about the Beatles, which included anecdotes about them from various people in their lives. I was struck by one anecdote about John…someone said that he used to say “Let’s go and make fun of the cripples” when they were thinking of things to do. I was horrified, as I had thought that John Lennon was one of the world’s most perfect people up until that point (hey, I was a kid, OK?), and this just didn’t mesh with my image of him.

When I went to school, it was fairly common for some students to mock other students, and “spaz” and “retard” were frequently used as insults. This was before the mainstreaming movement took hold. ANY deviation from the norm was used as an excuse to harass someone…except, of course, superior athletic ability.

I have a lot of balance issues*, and I use a walking stick or a quad cane, because if I fall I need some sort of aid to get back up. I have problems getting out of my car, and need to position myself carefully. Frequently strangers who are passing by ask me if I need help. I always thank them, and tell them that I can manage. People also frequently ask if I need help with the door or with packages. Generally I don’t, but I do ask for help if I need it.

I think that American society, or at least those segments that I’m exposed to, is more aware and accepting of people with disabilities than we used to be.

*My doctor is trying to get me to buy and use a motorized chair, but I’m afraid to do that, I’m afraid that I’ll lose what mobility I do have.

4

I don’t remember what things were like pre ADA, since I was a tiny kid then. (was ten going on eleven) I do remember the Republicans ranting that “oh its all this expensive modifications to only benifit a small number of people” :rolleyes:(forgetting that curb cuts help moms in strollers)
I do think that a lot of activists are too hyperfocused on placing EVERYONE with a disabilty in the MAINSTREAM, like its some sort of glorious utopia.
Yes, we shouln’t be warehoused away in a state insistution, but at the same time we need to reconize that people have a right to a contiuum of placement. Some people need insistutions (which just made me think of a funny skit…imagine a person with a mild brain injuiry DEMANDING that someone in a PVS (not Locked in Syndrome but full blown PVS) be included in ALL aspects of life! (even thou they really can’t parcipate in life)

5

I do tend to notice whether buildings are accesible, etc. This was caused in part by knowing people who were temporarily disabled at one point, partly by my brother’s civil service (in lieu of military service) working with people who had brain damage. Thing is, I notice and I’ve been aware of these things for about 20 years. 20 years ago, laws requiring buildings to be wheelchair accesible were barely starting to appear in Spain.

The flat I’m renting is in a 3yo house; it was built to be accesible. Except it’s not. There are ramps all over the place, fine, but there are also several doors that would be pretty much impossible to open for someone in a wheelchair; also, the ramp at the gate ends several cm over the sidewalk (between half an inch and almost 3", the sidewalk slopes). I can’t imagine how would someone with a wheelchair get up that ramp without help, a chair can’t hop.

Spanish law requires companies over a certain size to either have disabled employees or otherwise provide employment to the disabled: for example, I used to work in a chemical factory with no disabled employees but which did a lot of business with places that had disabled employees (for example, they used a printing shop most of whose employees are disabled). There are some companies which do neither, get fined regularly and pay the fine… they look at it so much as “part of our way of doing business” that there is even a specific line in their budget and account in their books!

My client is a very large engineering firm; I think my building has over 1000 workers. It was built last year, it truly is accesible and there are several employees with physical disabilities. I’ve seen several dwarves, a very short woman who walks with crutches and has a bad leg, a man with a prosthetic leg, two people in wheelchairs, a man with a withered hand (I think he may also be somewhat autistic, but in an engineering firm that’s not particularly strange)… I kind of like that, it tells me this is a company which does things right. The woman with the crutches works in my building; the first time we saw her getting a cup off the coffee machine we asked “want help?”, she gave us a sunny smile and said yes. Could she have manouvered the coffee out of the machine? Yeah, but damn it’s complicated enough without having to deal with crutches and a bad foot! But at the same time, it would have been insulting of us to assume that she wanted our help.

I think it’s important to remember that making buildings accesible benefits both people with permanent and temporary disabilities, and also to many others. “Death Star floors” are quite deadly if you’re on crutches; ramps are useful for people lugging monster suitcases or pushing prams as well as for those on wheelchairs. And having more accesible buildings and more open-minded hiring practices means that we’re not discarding a perfectly fine accountant for having a withered hand (he’s an accountant, not a hand-cream model!).

6

Just in a general sense, I encounter a few different attitudes regularly when dealing with strangers:

  1. People who talk to me like a regular adult: admittedly, this is refreshing and unusual.

  2. People who talk down to me like a small child.

  3. People who don’t even acknowledge my existence.

People are typically friendly and accommodating, so that’s nice. But most curious of all, even strangers who learn that I’m a Computer Science grad student may still talk to me like I’m mildly retarded. It’s odd.

Also, people seem to assume I sit at home all day doing nothing, even when they know what’s on my plate.

In general, I think a lot of people see me as living a quiet, sheltered life. Nothing could be further from the truth.

7

I get that too. I am LD and hard of hearing, as well as gifted. But it does seem like the strangers or people who think we’re MR, are almost MR themselves.

8

Haiving had a cast on my arm for ten weeks, I experience mostly understanfing kindness, but also a few people who didn’t understand that breaking a wrist did not lower my IQ. I grew to identify with Christopher Reeve, who stated in Still Me that he had to tell people “I’m a 45 year old man. If you can’t treat me like one, you can leave.”

9

I’m not disabled; however, I work for an SSDI company (though I work primarily in the Medicare department as a senior product manager/regulatory affairs junky) and deal with the disabled every day. In my experience, most of the disabled individuals we’ve dealt with are treated with kindness, but as noted above, some people might assume they either need more help than they do or are just generally kind of dim, regardless of their education. Still others don’t want to acknowledge the elephant in the room and try very, very hard to ignore it, not meeting some of our clients’ eyes.

The absolute worst attitude I’ve seen, though, and it’s shockingly common, are those people who feel the disabled should’ve planned better. Because of the very small number of people gaming the system, many people who’ve gone through the process and are collecting SSDI are seen as lazy, shiftless lie-abouts on the government dole. It pisses me off to no end. It’s not like these people planned to get cancer. They didn’t want to get HIV or break their back or have a combination of bipolar, anxiety disorder, depression and whatever cognitive disability so severe they can’t even sign a form without help. The vast majority would do anything to be able to go back to work tomorrow. And I hate that that perception colors so much of what people think of disabled individuals.

Edited to add: I know that talking with disabled individuals doesn’t qualify me as any sort of expert, though we often hear from people that this perception, especially when someone isn’t visibly disabled, is one of their biggest hurdles in daily life.

10

Seriously. I have a friend who is in a wheel chair and a friend who is mostly deaf. When we go out to dinner, I’d say about 25% of the time the server will ask me what they want. WTF? My friend in a wheel chair is just… in a wheel chair. How does that make her incapable of communication? Luckily my friend takes no shit. “Either you can ask me directly what I want, or we’re leaving right now. Don’t do that again.”

For my deaf friend, I can understand it a bit more, but didn’t they see her and me talking right as they walked up? I don’t mind if I end up having to repeat things to my friend (using more clear lip movements), but don’t just talk directly to me. She is hard of hearing, not mentally retarded. :mad:

11

I once made a waitress cry after she did that to my legally blind (but pre-Alzheimer’s) grandmother. Grandma did look really frail and needed someone to read the menu to her, but had good hearing. The waitress didn’t even acknowledge her, she asked me what she wanted, asked me what sides, how she took her coffee, etc and Grandma was looking right at her and starting look look embarressed (not that she’d ever actually say anything). I said nothing at the table, after the waitress left I excused my self to go the bathroom, found the waitress and proceeded to chew her out in front of the owner. She broke down in tears and the apologetic & horrified owner ended up waiting out table (dessert & coffee on the house).

12

Not for nothing, but I get that too, and I’m not disabled.

13

I usually end up teasing them gently as a form of acknowledging their condition and letting them know it does not make any difference to me. Mostly that works but not every time.
Example:
Two folks join the group at some type of gathering and are introduced. “Hi, I am so & so, pleaded to meet ya.” If things feel awkward for some reason I’ll quip to the wheelchair person, “My feet hurt standing around like this, how come you get wheels and a chair and I don’t?”
Stuff like that.

I am usually curious about obvious physical injures. I have a few myself. So when alone with them after getting some idea of their personality I am wont to say, “So how did you manage that?” While indicating the injury as if it is cool and I might try it if it was fun. Mostly works out for me.

Those with disabilities on here that do not know me, how does this attitude strike you just from what you read of my words? Am I really screwing up and just being tolerated?

14

I think the ADA has made a HUGE difference. When I was growing up and for a considerable time after, you essentially never saw anyone in a wheelchair. They were called “shut-ins” and were truly shut in. You did see a lot of people using one or two leg braces and walking with crutches. You rarely see that today. I always assumed that was the effect of the polio vaccine. It may be that some of those people now use wheelchairs, I don’t know.

Canada has similar accessibility acts. At McGill 30 years ago, some students petitioned for automatic opening doors and were rebuffed. I think the administration said they cost $10K a piece and the expense was unwarranted (although it could have been raised by firing one vice-principal–instead their number has grown over my 42 years here from 5 to 9). Now all the buildings have automatic doors and most of the buildings with steps also have ramps.

Another thing that has a made a difference is reserved parking for handicapped. But the situation for people in wheelchairs is entirely different from what it was.

15

I find that about 95% of people tend to try to be helpful and accomodating, and 5% are total schmucks.

I hope I wasn’t in that 5% catagory before my wheelchair days.

16

Yeah, as Hari says you never saw anyone disabled in public. So, they were different and therefore easy to make fun of. And who cares what they think if you do make fun of them?

I guess it would be similar to making Amish jokes on television now. It’s not like they’re going to find out.

Attitudes about a lot of things have changed over the years: colour, race, religion, disabilities, homosexuality, etc. When our world was viewed from a white, Christian, able-bodied, hetro perspective it was easy to make disparaging remarks about the tiny minority who weren’t like you. As demographics and visibility of all kinds of minors has increased, the change in attitude towards these people has also changed.

17

Speaking about Germany, we have something similar to the ADA passed several decades back, too, and there was also a bit complaining about the cost of changing all the public buildings. But with the help of active groups taking the offices to task, things have changed. On our public transport, for example, buses and trams are mostly wheel-chair (and pram) accessible. There are special plans on when the buses with elevator are coming, and which subway stations have elevators, and where the wheelchair toilets are (one key for all toilets in subway and rail stations for all of Germany).

Like what Nava said, businesses are required to employ a certain percentage of handicapped, or pay a fine. Sadly, although the money from the fine fund is used to help a company with the additional expense of the technical help (a braille reader, an elevator, a special wheelchair toilet), most companies prefer to pay the fine. The most disabled people are in the public service, because the law says that if two people with the same qualifications apply for a job, the handicapped person is to be preferred (although that “same qualifications” can be stretched very wide if necessary).

Also, similar to what has been said before, in the last decades the disabled have come more out of the hiding away. Partly with integrated schools like Montessori getting more exposure. The Contergan children, in the 60s, were given prosthetics so they would look like normal people as much as possible. In the last decades, they are moving around without them, because they say they hinder more than help, and they don’t want to hide who they are.

There was an infamous court verdict in the early 80s where many people were upset: some people went on holiday, and disabled people (spastics and others) were staying in the same hotel. The tourists went to court (against the holiday organiser) because the sight of these drooling, ugly people in the elevator and at meal times ruined their holiday for them. The judge agreed with that reasoning - that seeing disabled people ruins your day - and gave them compensation.

I hope and see signs that this kind of attitude has decreased.

On the other hand, with the new wave of liberatarian thought coming over from the US, the global market and the push to consider only highly productive people as worthy humans, and the rest as burden, the other side is on the rise, too - the idea that disabled are a burden on society and the taxpayers, and why didn’t the parents abort it to save the emotional trouble and hard work? (Parents of disabled children say they still hear that from passerbys on the street, and disabled adults hear it to their face).
With the push for amniocentesis and PID (Pre-implantation diagnostic) in artifical impregnation, advocate group for human rights, churches and groups for disabled fear a stronger adversity than before.

18

When my wife was a special ed teacher, hers was the designated classroom for visits by the news media (mainly because it was closest to the side door, and reporters and photographers could get in and out with a minimum of disruption.) She was put off because the photographers and videographers would always shoot just the students in wheelchairs, although she understood that they were visual shorthand for “disabled.”

That didn’t prepare her, however, for the time she hurt her knee during a visit to Disneyworld and was forced into a wheelchair herself.

Ride attendant: “Can she get into the car by herself?”
Her: “I’m not deaf, and yes, I can!”

19

As far as the recent Mad Men episode–I don’t think you can necessarily take Roger’s comment as indicative of any attitudes about disabilities. That was just a typical Roger comment–so wrong, yet so funny.

The lawnmower incident from season three is more telling. The guys from the British company really did seem to assume that the guy’s career was over.

(Not that we got another hilariously horrible Roger comment there as well)

Word to the third, man. I’m not disabled, but for all those times I’ve been pushing a stroller, wheeling luggage, or just wanting some extra elbow-room in a public bathroom, I just want to say

THANK YOU ADA!!!

20

You obviously didn’t read his In His Own Write. Note especially “A Suprise for Little Bobby.” Lennon had a very cruel sense of humor, though the “make fun of cripples” comment was probably just a joke – he didn’t actually do it.

Kids back then were cruel to those with disabilities (usually – there was a kid with cerebral palsy in our school who was pretty well respected).

Adults were more circumspect. It was bad manners to ridicule them, and the sure sign of a boor to do it where they could hear. I never heard any of my parents or their friends ever saying anything to ridicule them. The issue wasn’t really thinking less of disabled people as it was being overly sensitive – “That poor guy’s in a wheelchair; I’m not sure what to say to him, so I’ll stay away.” Or “He lost an arm. Too bad he can’t get a job now.” The assumption was that any disability kept you from doing any useful work.