Is there an established term for the phenomenon of people with more
severe (or more visible) disabilities perceiving themselves as the sole
possessors of validity as people with disabilities? And perceiving
people with less visible / non-severe / not-yet-severe disabilites - as
impostors or diluters of the concepts of disabled rights or people with
disabilies?
The word "ableism" clearly doesn't fit. Something like "disability
degree-ism" would be more like it For lack of a single term, I once
referred to this in a lecture as "... for lack of knowing any
established term for it, what might be called an 'authenticity test'".
Examples -- people who say that the scope of people with disabilities
covered in a law like the Americans with Disabilities Act should be cut
in half, or saying that only people using wheelchairs should be allowed
to use "handicapped parking spots" (ignoring other disabilities for
which such accommodations would be appropriate), or people who in
disabled social or movement orgs do not want to associate with or accept
as equal coworkers people who they see as insufficiently disabled?
Another example that comes to mind in a social org which I won't name
here, that had as it's one project, monthly Sunday brunches in
restaurants. In which I am told by a friend with severe mental
disability due to severe brain injury (barely able to work out ways to
live independantly), that a social pattern in this org. soon emerged in
which the crowd was big enough to use two big restaurant tables, and a
binary split happened -- people using wheelchairs refused to sit at the
same table with people not using them. Not in response to any untoward
occurances, but based on some underlying attitudes. This was the
opposite of the "paper bag party" phenomenon (of the light skinned
African American students refusing to allow into a party anyone darker
than a paper bag). In the example described by my friend, the less
disabled / less visibly disabled were socially ostracised by the more
disabled / more visibly disabled; the bias was clearly a one-way street,
not a two-way street (which division I hear, eventually led to the
dissolving of the brunch group).
So I'm just looking for the single word to indicate this phenomenon.
Is there a noun or adjective for this?
Jim
--
PS - It would be interesting to see someone analyze in research this
phenomenon in terms of the concept of "piss on pity", since the
"disability = only severe / visible disability" - notion (or the even
more restrictive - "disability = only wheelchair use" - notion) would
seem to not be a rejection of pity as a disability defining concept --
but would actually be an indication of an indirect and unconscious
embrace of the bad old pity concept.... which perhaps may not have
vanished as much as certain oversimplified theoretical writings are
saying?
________________End of message______________________
Archives and tools for the Disability-Research Discussion List
are now located at:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html
You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page.
|