Disability Justice
Modern American society is moving towards a tolerant attitude to vulnerable categories of the population, including people with disabilities. However, an intersectional perspective in this context remains insufficient. In other words, there is a scarcity of data on how the concept of disability intercrosses with various identities, such as gender or race. The paper aims to explore the sources on the topic in order to identify how their authors regard disability in general and aging as its type in particular through gender as well as racial lenses. The main idea is that disability is a social construction, and negative attitude towards people who have one or several emerges from xenophobia, similar to sexism, racism, and other types of prejudice.
Social Origin of Disability
It is worth noting that the concept of disability is intertwined with that of well-being, which, in turn, is quite subjective. This underlies the ethical dilemma that Stramondo examines in his writing, whose key idea is the unacceptability of “stigma-based” reproductive decisions (475). Specifically, the author doubts the adequacy of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in terms of identifying whether a particular embryo corresponds to normal or not due to the solely medical origin of the latter notion. Simply stated, the quality of life depends directly and strongly on the environment, which can compensate for a disability. Therefore, although Stramondo considers PGD morally acceptable, he reminds future parents of the relevance of considering the social component, not solely medical, when deciding whether a disabled child will have a good life.
The emphasis on society as a source of the challenges that people with disabilities face is also apparent in the article under the title “Disability, Identity, and Representation: An Introduction.” Its author, Garland-Thompson (1997), describes discrimination against those whose physical looks, in the wider public’s opinion, are improper (5). Such behavior is not solely unacceptable from a moral viewpoint but also senseless since appearance is not a constant. It changes as individual ages, due to which everybody becomes disabled with time.
The reason for discrimination, in fact, is otherness, at which point the article engages in conversation with the previous writing. Notably, both authors seek to communicate to their audiences that the concept of disability and the subsequent inferiority roots in dissimilarity from the majority. This is where this construction intersects with race and sexuality; simply stated, the disabled form a minority in a similar way, whose rights undergo violation on a regular basis. The main distinction between the two pieces of writing lies in the solutions that they offer: while Stramondo rests the responsibility for overcoming the stigma on families, Garland-Thompson appeals to the culture in general.
Feminist Perspective
The major obstacle to equality is the common perception of dissimilarities from the majority as abnormalities, hence people with them as outcasts. Garland-Thompson (2005) defines this as stigmatization and describes the subsequent invisibility of such individuals as well as the discrimination that is directed at their bodies (1557). The latter, according to her, derives from the public attitude to so-called unpresentable appearance, which is even more negative than that to bodily malfunctions. As a result, the category of the disabled frequently includes healthy people “whose looks […] depart from social expectations,” which the author calls social disability (Garland-Thompson, 2005, p. 1579). Aging, consequently, puts everyone at risk of neglect since conventional beauty presupposes looking young. Garland-Thompson regards this situation from the position of a feminist, as appearance-based discrimination against females apparently is especially severe.
Kafer, a fellow thinker of the previous writer, agrees that the concept of disability is a social construct since it is based on the artificial notion of normal. Similar to Garland-Thompson, she insists on regarding physical as well as mental disorders as alternative paradigms rather than abnormalities. Being an ecofeminist, however, she focuses on the interaction between human beings and nature rather than appearance-related issues. Specifically, Kafer considers it unacceptable to rely upon the way in which able-bodied people see their “position in the world” as the only possible (135). A deaf or blind individual interacts with the environment differently, which determines the uniqueness of their experience, hence the need for diversity even within the ecofeminist movement.
The point where the above two views overlap is the social origin of such a notion as a disability. The authors share the opinion that is classifying appearance, behavior, or experience as normal or not leads inevitably to erasing those who do not correspond to the former. In addition, both Garland-Thompson and Kafer mention that situations of this kind can happen even within feminism when able-bodied representatives consider their worldview paradigm as the only possible by definition. Consequently, the females whose physical forms are deviant from the average face stricter discrimination as compared to those who correspond to them. The deviations may include not solely medical conditions and bodily malfunctions but also untypical appearance and even age. Both authors insist on respecting and considering the experience of every person, notwithstanding any of those.
Anti-Racist Perspective
As said above, aging is a type of disability that everybody has a chance to experience in the future, which contributes to the unacceptability of stigmatization and discrimination. Physical appearance can change for the worse, and an able body can weaken, which will reduce the quality of life inevitably and, in some cases, substantially. Here, disability intersects with race, as the latter plays a considerable role in the well-being of the elderly. Fuller-Thompson et al. highlight the higher “rates of functional limitations” in older Blacks as compared to Whites of the same age (677-678). This disparity most probably results from the inequalities in the levels of education and income, hence in the access to healthcare. Consequently, black American retirees spend more on medications and procedures than white do but, notwithstanding this, live shorter.
The above is, however, not the only possible intersection of race and disability. Thus, Frederic and Shifrer insist on “centering the positionality of disabled people of color” instead of drawing analogies between the separate movements for the rights of each category (200). Simply stated, the authors argue that the so-called minority model is not applicable in the given case since it centers on the white disabled and the able-bodied black, respectively, erasing the Black with disabilities. Therefore, the situation in which the latter find themselves requires an intersectional analysis that would identify how ableism and racism intertwine and give birth to unique forms of oppression.
Although the article by Frederic and Shifrer is more theoretical and less specific than the writing by Fuller-Thompson et al., the two pieces share the key statements. First, all of the authors proclaim that the quality of life of an average White exceeds that of an average Black, which grows critical as both ages. Second, people with disabilities are more likely to face particular forms of discrimination than able-bodied. Notwithstanding the difference in the visions of how the two identities may intersect, the authors agree that the given groups of people are vulnerable.
Areas for Further Research
It has already been mentioned that sources on the topic of an intersectional approach to disability currently are few; the reason is the innovativeness of the perspective. This provides sufficient room for further investigation, the direction of which is guessable from the materials under review. Thus, it would be relevant to study how other identities, for instance, sexuality, can shape disability. This would allow for more precise identification of the possible ways to adapt disability justice to the needs of all categories of the population, which actually is the topic of a larger project. Finally, it is critical to search for the most appropriate solutions for overcoming xenophobia in society, hence eliminating all forms of discrimination against the disabled.
Conclusion
The so-called intersectional approach to disability involves exploring its interconnections with other identities, such as gender, race, or sexuality. An individual who is different from the majority by two or more of the above criteria apparently experiences oppression by each, which makes the usual minority model inapplicable to him or her. Another essential aspect to mention in the context of intersection is the social origin of disability, the concept of which presumably emerges from the negative attitude to those whose physical appearance or bodily characteristics are untypical. This is, however, groundless since everyone becomes less able-bodied with age, which discredits the notion of the majority in the given case.
Works Cited
Frederick, Angela, and Dara Shifrer. “Race and Disability: From Analogy to Intersectionality.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, vol. 5, no. 2, 2019, pp. 200–214.
Fuller-Thomson, Esme, et al. “Black—White Disparities in Disability among Older Americans: Further Untangling the Role of Race and Socioeconomic Status.” Journal of Aging and Health, vol. 21, no. 5, 2009, pp. 677-698.
Garland‐Thomson, Rosemarie. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
Garland‐Thomson, Rosemarie. “Feminist Disability Studies.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 30, no. 2, 2005, pp. 1557-1587.
Kafer, Alison. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2013.
Stramondo, Joseph. “Disabled by Design: Justifying and Limiting Parental Authority to Choose Future Children with Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis.” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, vol. 27, no. 4, 2017, pp. 475-50.