A NEW 'COMMON IDENTITY' FOR THE DISABLED (original) (raw)

Jill Robinson watched the televised images of Gallaudet protesters

and thought excitedly, "These students are fighting my fight."

Robinson, an Arlington attorney, is not deaf. But she uses a

wheelchair and knows a lot about the barriers thrown up to people with

disabilities, about the patronizing attitudes of others, about the

desire to show everyone, as the Gallaudet students did, that "I can be

who I am and make it in the world." The Gallaudet protest week made

Robinson a "TV news junkie, flipping the channels up and down" to catch

scenes -- over and over -- of Gallaudet students signing, en masse, for

a "Deaf President Now." "It was," she says, "one of the most poignant

moments of my life."

Like Robinson, millions of Americans who can't hear, see, walk or who

have other impairments are coming to view themselves as members of a

common minority group. A 1985 poll by Louis Harris and Associates found

that 74 percent of disabled Americans say they share a "common identity"

with other disabled people and 45 percent argue they are "a minority

group in the same sense as are blacks and Hispanics." Taken together,

people with disabilities would make up the country's largest minority.

There are 37 million Americans with physical disabilities, according to

the U.S. Census Bureau.

At the core of this growing collective identity is a new philosophy.

Rejected is the traditional mindset that it's up to the individual to

overcome his or her own physical limitation. That kind of thinking has

given rise to the public's glorification of what Mary Johnson, editor of

the disability rights movement's irreverent Disability Rag, calls

"supercrips" -- achievers such as Terry Fox, who ran across Canada on an

artificial leg, or Jim Dickson, the blind sailor seeking to solo across

the Atlantic. Extraordinary achievement is laudable, but it does not

reflect the day-to-day reality of most disabled people, she says.

Instead, according to the disability rights movement, it is not so

much the individual that needs to change -- but society. The biggest

obstacle facing people with physical impairments, Johnson says, are

people's prejudices about disability -- whether it's a refusal to hire

someone with epilepsy or a failure to make buildings accessible to

people in wheelchairs. Although disability rights activists most often

draw parallels to the civil rights and women's movements, Johnson says

the best analogy may be with gay rights. Like homosexuals in the early

1970s, many disabled people now are rejecting the "stigma" that there is

something tragic or pitiable about their condition. Johnson's magazine

has even coined a slogan -- "Disability Cool" --

the movement's

equivalent of "Gay Pride" or "Black is Beautiful." Says Judy Heumann of

the World Institute on Disability: "Disability only becomes a tragedy

when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives --

jobs opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example. It is not a

tragedy to me that I'm living in a wheelchair."

So more and more frequently, disabled people are attacking

discrimination. Sometimes the prejudice to be fought is crude, like that

of the New Jersey private zoo owner who refused to admit children with

Down syndrome to the Monkey House because, he claimed, they upset his

chimpanzees. Other times, the rights at issue are not so clear-cut, as

in the case of Tiffany Callo, the cerebral palsy patient fighting

California welfare officials for custody of her two young sons.

Perhaps most serious is employment discrimination. According to the

1985 Harris poll, two thirds of disabled people are unemployed. Almost

all of these people "want to work and can work," instead of being forced

to accept welfare, says Sandra Swift Parrino of the National Council on

the Handicapped. Although a disability may limit the type of work a

person can do, more often, she says, companies simply don't want to hire

or accommodate physically impaired workers. Syracuse University

economics professor William Johnson found that even when people with

disabilities do hold jobs, they make less than other workers and are

less likely to be promoted. Even after factors such as the possibility

of a handicapped person's lack of experience or lowered productivity are

taken into account, disabled men still make 15 percent less than

non-disabled co-workers, according to Johnson. For women, there is a 30

percent difference.

There is no Martin Luther King or Betty Friedan of the disability

rights movement. But its organizations are becoming more militant.

Members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation

(ADAPT) use civil disobedience to lobby for transit systems to put lifts

on all buses. In mid-March, 24 ADAPT members were arrested in Washington

for blocking traffic after a day-long sit-in at the Department of

Transportation. ADAPT argues that "para-transit" -- separate vans for

people with wheelchairs -- amounts to a system that is "segregated" and,

besides, doesn't work very well. "Black people had to fight for the

right to ride at the front of the bus," says Mark Johnson, an ADAPT

leader. "We're fighting for the right to get on."

Even the 13 members -- all Reagan appointees -- of the National

Council on the Handicapped are targeting discrimination as the No. 1

problem facing people with disabilities. The council, a small

independent federal agency, has drafted that most unlikely of things

from the Reagan administration --

a comprehensive civil rights bill.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988 would extend the same type

of legal protection already guaranteed to blacks and women -- against

bias in housing and hiring, for example -- to Americans with "physical

or mental impairment."

Council attorney Robert Burgdorf Jr. says the legislation is

necessary because the few protections that do exist --

primarily

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits

discrimination in activities that receive federal funding --

are too

narrow and "very difficult, if not impossible to enforce." Because the

act is expensive and broad -- it would also require new buses to be

equipped with lifts and that television stations caption most of their

programs and advertising for deaf people --

it will attract a vast

array of interest group opposition. But the bill, to be introduced next

month by Senators Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), will

also serve as a rallying point for a cross-section of disability groups.

"People with epilepsy now will be advocates for the same piece of

legislation as people who are deaf," says Liz Savage, assistant director

for governmental affairs for the Epilepsy Foundation of America. "That

has never happened before. And that's really historic."

Why the rise of a civil rights movement for the disabled now? A

similar movement started briefly in 1977 -- when protesters seeking

federal regulations staged sit-ins at Department of Health, Education

and Welfare offices -- but then quickly died. This time, advocates say,

the movement is stronger. For one thing, hundreds of thousands of

handicapped children have gone through education programs with

non-disabled children since 1975, when mainstreaming was advocated by

law. Says Cyndi Jones, publisher of the magazine Mainstream: "After 12

years of mainstreaming, the disabled feel they have a right to have

jobs, to have family and to do anything else anybody else does."

Also a factor is the rise since the early 1970s of some 200

independent living centers. These nonprofit advocacy groups run by

disabled people have fostered a new generation of activists. Further,

disability groups gained political sophistication after they mobilized

to stop efforts in the early years of the Reagan administration to cut

back on federal regulations that protected handicapped individuals.

Jim Charlton of Access Living of Chicago, says Gallaudet was "a

watershed in the history of the disability rights movement" that, for

years to come, will be held up as "a shining example of what can be

done."

Jill Robinson, however, is not so sure the victory significantly

changed public attitudes. The fight over a deaf president, she says, was

clear-cut. Issues such as putting lifts on buses "are more complicated."

And the Gallaudet protest took place on a university campus where it did

not have an impact on hearing people. The students were "clean-cut and

All-American," she adds. People in wheelchairs are often "frightening"

to non-disabled people. "It's easy to sympathize with a cause when you

don't have to change your own behavior," says the Arlington attorney.

"But to empathize, you have to change. What we need now is for everyone

to change their own behavior."

Joseph P. Shapiro is an associate editor at U.S. News & World Report.