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Segregation

When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. When you determine what a man shall think, you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept his inferior status, for he will seek it himself… If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the backdoor. He will go there without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one. ~ Carter G. Woodson

Segregation works to build thought patterns this way and to keep people in inferior positions. It works to keep people from questioning and from fighting back. Disabled people are often unable to access spaces because they are physically inaccessible, because they are financially inaccessible, or because of systemic exclusion.

Segregation, maintains Joe Shaprio, author of No Pity “whether the result of stairs or attitudes – creates harmful myths and stereotypes. Worse, it sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy for failure – that disabled people are invisible or separated” and this prophecy acts as “proof that they do not need inclusion or are not even capable or worthy of it.”

If disabled people don’t go to the store or to the theatre or to school (because those spaces aren’t accessible) then there is no reason to make those spaces accessible.

There are lots of kinds of segregation, including special education, institutions, prisons, and immigration.

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Segregation

When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. When you determine what a man shall think, you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept his inferior status, for he will seek it himself… If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the backdoor. He will go there without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one. ~ Carter G. Woodson

Segregation works to build thought patterns this way and to keep people in inferior positions. It works to keep people from questioning and from fighting back. Disabled people are often unable to access spaces because they are physically inaccessible, because they are financially inaccessible, or because of systemic exclusion.

Segregation, maintains Joe Shaprio, author of No Pity “whether the result of stairs or attitudes – creates harmful myths and stereotypes. Worse, it sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy for failure – that disabled people are invisible or separated” and this prophecy acts as “proof that they do not need inclusion or are not even capable or worthy of it.”

If disabled people don’t go to the store or to the theatre or to school (because those spaces aren’t accessible) then there is no reason to make those spaces accessible.

There are lots of kinds of segregation, including special education, institutions and prisons, and immigration.

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Supercrips/Abled-disabled

You have watched their inspirational stories on TV. Supercrips are people who are considered to have overcome their disabilities because they do something extraordinary (like wheel across Canada) or ordinary (like paint pictures or have a baby). The supercrip is also called the “abled-disabled”.

Tanya Titchkosky has defined it as:

those people who can exclude attending to disability by attending fully to their ability to participate in society, as normally as is possible, and they ultimately and inevitably signify having a “positive effect on others,” “contributing fully to the community,” and “maximizing their potential”…The stories of the abled-disabled demonstrate that even disabled people are able to fit in and take up an appearance which shows that their conduct is undoubtedly oriented to an unquestioned normalcy. Through this way of conceptualizing disability, disability becomes the space in which the value of normal shines forth without ever having to be directly spoken of, and disabled people are held to be asserting their individual ability (value) when they can be seen as oriented to serving this normal order.

The way that disabled people are constructed through this approach (largely by the charity model positions disabled people as either the objects of pity or inspirational overachievers. Those are the only identities that we can occupy.