I therefore welcome the oppor- tunity to consider the ways in which ableism worked in concert with ...
I therefore welcome the oppor- tunity to consider the ways in which ableism worked in concert with racism to undermine justice in the government’s response to the Katrina disaster. We must craft a vision of the right and the good in society that is adequately nuanced with respect to all social boundaries and the ways in which they interact with each other. Discussing the inconsistent and inequitable provision of emergency services during and after Katrina, Zack observes that “prior disadvantage included at least disability and age, as well as race and class” (Zack, 100). The available statistics on Katrina-related deaths are broken down by race (with a signifi- cant amount of missing information), gender, and age, but not by di sability status. 1 According to the National Council on Dis- ability, however, 23.2 percent of the residents of New Orleans at the time of Katrina—over 102,000 people—were disabled. 2 I have heard surprise at this figure (“nearly a quarter of the resi- dents of New Orleans are disabled?”), but it is consistent with national statistics. According to the 2000 census, 19.3 percent of the United States population age five and older are disabled. 3 In an insightful blog posted shortly after Katrina, Michael Bérubé—a Penn State literature professor, social critic, and dis- ability rights advocate—reflects on the invisibility of disability in our nation’s public discourse. Bérubé begins by noting scath- ingly the media’s racism in representing the harm done to poor, Race, Disability, and the Social Contract Anna Stubblefield Rutgers University 104-111Stubblefield.pm 5/22/09, 2:55 PM 104 Race, Disability, and the Social Contract 105 black residents of New Orleans through the mishandling of emergency response to Katrina. He argues that while focus on Katrina made race visible in our national discourse for at least a brief moment, sometimes in useful and much more often in harmful ways (for example, the portrayal of black residents as “looting” while white residents “searched for food”), disability remained invisible, even when it was right there in front of us: recall the image of the dead woman in the wheelchair outside the Superdome. As Bérubé writes: We saw people in wheelchairs. We saw patients on gurneys. We read about people abandoned in nursing homes; we heard of people with cognitive disabilities trapped in houses with rising water. We heard about the sick and the elderly and the dying ... but nowhere in mainstream media was this rendered, or understood, under a more general heading of ‘disability’ ... Individual persons with disabilities were depicted as objects of charity, or horror, or pity; but disability as a category of human identity, disability as a social and political fact, disability as a factor in public policy remained inconceivable. 4 We cannot create a more just nation if we do not ac knowledge disability as a sign ificant pu blic policy concern. In approaching this c hallenge as political philosophers, we must address dis- ability in our theoretical work. Zack’s paper is drawn from her forthcoming book, Ethics for Disaster , in which she argues that government within the social contract tradition has an obligation to assist citizens in disaster preparation and response. But who are these “citizens”? All too often, theorists represent people without disabilities as self- sufficient and disabled people as dependent, thereby excluding disabled people from participation in the social contract. Dis- cussing the responsibility of citizens to prepare for disasters, Zack states: Any small group can prepare for disaster by ... thinking about what they would do and what their normal obligations to care for themselves and others require them to do in a disaster. Collecting rainwater, basic first aid, and light search and rescue are examples of survival skills now within the reach of all U.S. residents.... Everybody who has dependents, whether professionally or personally, can begin to figure out what their needs would be in a disaster. (Zack, 96) It is not the case that “collecting rain water, basic first aid, and light search and rescue” are survival skills within the reach of all U.S. residents. Some disabled residents of the United States ma y not be able to perform these functions. The conjunction of a reference to survival skills with a call to those “with dependents” 104-111Stubblefield.pm 5/22/09, 2:55 PM 105 106 Anna Stubblefield to plan f or the needs of their dependents constructs those who cannot perform survival skills as dependents who cannot parti- cipate in planning for their own needs. When we conceive of the social contract in the Lockean sense as an agreement between autonomous, self-sufficient heads of household to protect first and foremost their property rights, anyone who we take to be dependent is excluded, both practi- cally and theoretically. Women of all races and nonwhite men have historically been outliers to the social contract on this basis, but so have disabled people. The notion that disabled people are inherently dependent is captured by what disability studies scholars call the medical model of disability. According to the medical model, what makes people either normal or disabled is the way their bodies and minds function. “Normal” people have sound bodies and minds; “disabled” people have damaged or dysfunctional bodies or minds. A person who is disabled can only become able if his impair- ment is cured. If it is permanent, the person simply has to live with limitations. If these limitations prevent individuals from either participating as full citizens or from receiving equal pro- tection under the law, then this reflects the fact that something is wrong with their bodies or minds. When we understand dis/ability as a social construction, a dif- ferent picture emerges. What disables a person is not her physi- cal attributes, but rather that the environment in which she lives makes it difficult for a person with her attributes to function. For example, what disables people who use wheelchairs is not the lack of function of their legs, but rather architecture designed to meet the needs only of people who walk. If buildings, sidewalks, and parking lots were wheelchair accessible, people who use wheelchairs would not be disabled. Furthermore, people who use wheelchairs are disabled when others treat them as if wheel- c hair use makes the wheelchair user less human. P eople who use wh eelchairs are not disabled in this way when others recognize that requiring a wheelchair for mobility is simply an anomaly: atypical for a human, but not a characteristic that undermines a person’s humanity. The social interpretation also applies to the concept of cogni- tive disability. In this case, people are disabled by an environ- ment in which the definition of a successful or full life is based on limited notions of independence, mastery of certain intellec- tual and social skills, and competitive accomplishment. People who are unsuccessful in these narrowly defined ways are dis- abled when they are therefore treated as less than fully human: deprived of the opportunity to challenge themselves develop- mentally, participate as citizens, use their skills and talents to make contributions to society in ways that are beneficial to them- selves and others and meaningful to them, and enjoy full protec- tion of their rights. 104-111Stubblefield.pm 5/22/09, 2:55 PM 106 Race, Disability, and the Social Contract 107 To include people with disabilities as full participants in a social contract model, we have to abandon the dichotomy between self-sufficiency and dependence. Whether or not one is financially self-supporting and making material contributions to the general economy, whether or not one is able to engage in basic life activities without assistance, or even—in the case of cognitive disability—whether or not one is able to make and carry out life plans without support would have to have no bearing on one’s status as a fully participating member of the social contract. In F rontiers of Justice , Martha Nussbaum argues that aban- doning the dichotomy between self-sufficiency and dependence in this way is inconsistent with social contract theory, and she therefore rejects the social contract approach as failing to reflect the needs of real human beings. 5 On the other hand, Anita Silvers and Leslie Francis have argued for a revised under- standing of the social contract that would include all members of a society regardless of self-sufficiency. In “Justice Through Trust: Disability and the ‘Outlier Problem’ in Social Contract Theory,” they argue that the value of the social contract approach to justice lies in its construction of citizens as deserving of r espect as choosers in a broad sense of the term. Consequently, parties to the contract function as a source of political and moral jus tification. According to Silvers and Francis: The challenge disabled people pose for social contract theory has been misplaced and misunderstood. To embrace them, philosophical theory need not discard the ideal that justice in principle should emerge from committed participation by all. Meeting the challenge requires instead letting go of the presumption that cooperative human behavior reduces to reiterations of reciprocal dyadic inter- actions between similarly positioned individuals. 6 In other words, we must move beyond conceiving of the social contract as a glorified version of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” agreed to by parties who are equally powerful and can manage without each other. Revising the social contract to incorporate people with dis- abilities is preferable to Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. In F rontiers of Justice , Nussbaum argues that all people have a right to the means to ac hieve certain forms of functioning. In more r ecent work in progress that she shared at a conference on cognitive disability in September 2008, she argued further that access to participation as a citizen—with assistance or by proxy as necessary for people with significant cognitive or physical restrictions—is a crucial aspect of well-being. 7 A vital element of citizenship is lost, however, when we think first and foremost in terms of welfare rather than in terms of participation in the process through which welfare is provided. It is the subtle differ- 104-111Stubblefield.pm 5/22/09, 2:55 PM 107 108 Anna Stubblefield ence between beginning with welfare and including political participation as a component of welfare, as opposed to beginning with political participation as the means through which every- one has a role in defining and providing welfare. Society has value not only as a tool for ensuring welfare but as a cooper- ative venture. The slogan of the disability rights movement is “Nothing about us without us,” because for far too long our society has at best constructed disabled people as dependents with needs that should be met, but not as active participants in the social project. At worst, and this is still the rule rather than the exception, our society relegates disabled people to the mar- gins and their needs are not met at all. Despite the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—the culmination of attempts by disability rights advocates to align public policy with the social interpretation of disability—the medical model still holds sway in the United States. As a result, disabled Americans continue to be excluded from full protection of their rights as citizens. Survey data collected in 2000 indicated that only 32 percent of disabled people questioned were employed full- or part-time, compared with 81 percent of n ondisabled people. Two-thirds of u nemployed dis abled persons reported that they would prefer to be working. Twenty-nine percent of disabled people were living in poverty with household incomes of $15,000 per year or less, compared with 10 percent of nondisabled people. Twenty-eight percent of disabled people reported that they had deferred needed health care because they could not afford it, as compared to 12 percent of nondisabled people. 8 The effectiveness of the ADA has been severely limited by Supreme Court rulings that have reinforced a medical model understanding of disability by requiring plain- tiffs, contrary to the intent of the ADA, to demonstrate that they are disabled by impairment rather than by how they are treated by o thers. 9 But what does disability have to do with race? A complete answer to this question could easily fill a book, so I will only ges- tu re at the answer. Turning to the past, chattel slavery was a conspicuous producer of disability. Loss of limbs, vision, and hear- in g were common results of corporal punishment and physical hardship. Poor maternal health and healthcare led to physical and cognitive impairment in children, as did accidents and dis- ease. 10 Beginning in the nineteenth century, the project of sup- posedly m easuring intelligence, upon which the classification of cognitive disability continues to rest, developed as a means to justify the exclusion of nonwhite and not-quite-white people from the social contract. 11 This dynamic continues to play out today, as schools disproportionately label black students in par- ticular—along with Hispanic and Native American students in many cases—as intellectually impaired and move them to segre- gated special education classrooms and schools. 12 104-111Stubblefield.pm 5/22/09, 2:55 PM 108 Race, Disability, and the Social Contract 109 In contemporary society, poverty results in disability and disability results in poverty. Because black and many other non- white Americans disproportionately experience poverty, they disproportionately experience disability. Disability results from poor healthcare, low-birth-weight and premature birth, exposure to environmental toxins like lead and air pollution, and violence. W ar causes disability, and black Americans constitute a dispro- portionate percentage of the lowest ranks of the United States Armed Forces, those who are most likely to be harmed while on active duty. Being more likely to experience disability and less likely to receive the best social services is a significant aspect of the legacy of racism with which black Americans must cope. Our nation’s discourse around disability and resources places poor, black Americans—those who suffered most as a result of the mismanagement of response to Katrina—in a double bind, as captured in Bérubé’s blog. The blog is based upon a talk that Bérubé gave a few weeks after Katrina at a Pennsylvania Asso- ciation of Rehabilitation Facilities conference at Penn State Uni- versity. According to Bérubé, conference participants on another panel pointed out that Medicaid is the major funding source for hundreds of disability-service providers throughout the country. Ye t legislators are loathe to increase support for Medicaid because they do not want to be seen as proponents of “welfare spending.” Rehabilitation support advocates at the conference urged their allies to help legislators understand that supporting Medicaid is not “welfare spending as you traditionally know it.” The problem, as Bérubé explains, is: We already knew that the United States has the worst health-and- human-services policies, for people in poverty, of any industrialized nation, and we already knew that this had everything to do with the fact that many Americans, and their elected representatives, think of the poor as so many shiftless Negroes. But now we have another dynamic to consider: according to the logic of stigma and abjection by which American politics operates, disability advocacy groups will be funded under Medicaid to the extent to which they can rhetorically distinguish people with disabilities from African- Americans in poverty . F rom single mothers and their innumerable babies. From welfare spending as you traditionally know it. 13 This is a rhetoric that pits the supposedly “deserving” and “undeserving” poor against each other for resources. It leaves poor, black Americans with disabilities—including those who are single mothers—with the conundrum of how to distinguish them- se lves from poor, black Americans and single mothers. If we try to address disability oppression without acknowl- edging its entanglement with racial oppression and racial oppres- si on without acknowledging its entanglement with disability oppression, we will not achieve social justice in our nation. If we 104-111Stubblefield.pm 5/22/09, 2:55 PM 109 ase keep the questions showing and type your answers beneath them. Thank you! Questions 1. Throughout the article, how is disability discussed with relation to race, age, and gender? Give 3 brief examples with their page numbers. ~Continued next page Humanities 2319: Minority Cultures in the U.S. Professor Stamper, Lone Star College, CyFair, p. 2 2. On the first page, Stubblefield writes that she has “heard surprise at this figure . . . but it is consistent with national statistics” (104). What is she discussing, and what is the national statistic? 3. On P. 104-105, Stubblefield discusses a blog post by professor Michael Bérubé. What does he say about how people with disabilities were portrayed in the media during and after Katrina? And, what “remained inconceivable?” (105) 4. On p. 105, Stubblefield examines how the concept of “citizens” is understood and portrayed – how is this concept written about in this section? 5. What does this idea mean: “When we understand dis/ability as a social construction, a different picture emerges” (p. 106)? 6. According to Stubblefield, what has to happen to “include people with disabilities as full participants in a social contract model” (p. 107)? 7. Stubblefield argues that we need to revise the social contract on p. 107. How does she think it should be revised, and what do you think about the idea/argument
