Baynton, “Disability and the Justification of Inequality”
This paper concerns itself with the historical view of disability and its study. Traditionally, at least in western cultures, “disability” was used to keep people with disabilities unequal in society. It was also used to keep people of color and women unequal, in the same framework: “lack of ability” as compared to able-bodied white men. Disabled people are marginalized, but this paper argues that disability has been used to marginalize people of color and women as well. This brings to mind intersectionality, which will be another post.
Normality, as earlier inspected, is drawn from the empirical belief of progress during the Enlightenment. The “below-average” was what became marginalized--particularly in ability, and race--as “abnormal signified subnormal” (20).
This sub-normal belief system directly harmed many disabled people (and played into racist ideas).
-Deaf children were forced to cease studying sign language in favor of making them appear “normal”.
-Down Syndrome was originally considered Mongolism (to be addressed later)
-Disabled people were often placed in side shows as “freak, curiosities, and oddities” (to be addressed later).
Racism and Ableism are so intertwined, disabled people, “defectives” and “primitives” which in doing further research, was found to be the Igorot tribe of the Philippines, were displayed together as “Living Exhibits” in the 1904 World Fair in Louisiana. Disability was used to justify slavery, perpetuating the belief that black people were of lower intelligence, and lower quality physicality.
This paper goes deep into the disturbing past of black people being marginalized by perceived disability stemming exclusively by race.
Women were also marginalized by disability, particularly “emotional”/mental disability during the Suffrage movements.
This rhetoric was used against different ethnicities as the entered the USA, including Jewish and Southern European immigrants.
What it comes down to, in disability studies, is that no one denies that disability was used to marginalized black people and women, and immigrants, but no one looks at the cultural framework which allowed disability to be a trait to be marginalized against (25).
People with disabilities have a history all of their own, and it is worth studying.