People With Disability Essay

Improved Essays
This study will define the subjective forms of medical and social discrimination that are imposed on people with disabilities due to being considered a “minority group.” The dispute over the social circumstances of disabilities has often been framed through the traditional “social model” or “minority” to define discrimination, but the majority of ‘able-bodied” persons tend to create the policies and rules for protecting the rights of disabled people. However, the argument that impairment and illness is a part of all human experiences defines the necessity of a new social model to include “disabled” as a part of humanity, and not a minority. Persons with disabilities have often been defined as a sub-set of humanity, since they have been medically …show more content…
This lack of political, social, and medical representation defines a form of discrimination that was behind the outwardly positive social and governmental reforms that were attempting to define disabled people as a type of “minority”, which was intended to gain more financial, social, and medical support for disabled people during this historical period. This is why the social/minority model of identity for disabled people certainly provided a greater exposure to their medical and social conditions, yet disabled people were still being discriminated against by not being presented in governmental or institutional policy …show more content…
Once again, the social and political hierarchy of western societies defines the formation of minority status as a way to gauge the special needs of disabled people,. But yet these conditions form a clear division within the innate ideology of these social and legislative reforms. In this perspective, the philosophical aspects of the social model are challenged by Shakespeare and Watson (2001) through the broader ontological perspective of “disability” as an experience for all human

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    21.6% of the United States’ population that is incapacitated are more likely to live in poverty, compared to able-bodied people with 11.1%. That is an astonishing 20.5% difference in percentage. It might be a preposterous claim, but it is wretchedly true. Persons with impairments should be significantly recognized for things other than their disabilities because of their horrid treatment historically, the obstacles they face in everyday life, and that they should not be judged because of their outer appearance. Throughout history, the treatment of the mentally and physically impaired was absolutely disgusting; even for the normal person.…

    • 1252 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    American Disability Crisis

    • 1387 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Discrimination was now outlawed in any work environment or public places. The purpose of this equality was to alter and improve society’s view towards all the handicapped, and also to raise awareness. It was a subject to be approached with more care and…

    • 1387 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Many of us have encountered someone with a disability or are not fully able-bodied ourselves. One of my high school friends has cerebral palsy and is wheelchair bound. Even though it is regulated that schools must be handicap accessible, I saw the struggles my friend went through because our society is structure based on the perfectly able-bodied. Due to his condition, my friend was not allowed to take tests at the same time as the rest of the students. He was excluded, and this further ostracized him based on his condition.…

    • 1157 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Have you ever been discriminated by something you have no control of, your own race. Many people face different types of discrimination on a daily, but race discrimination is onto a whole other level. In “Discrimination in the 21st Century”, by Victoria Johnson, the author talks about discrimination towards people in wheelchairs. Johnson goes on describing her personal experiences because she herself uses an electrical wheelchair. Johnson’s reasoning is that many people face issues with personal relationships, transportation options, and public venues.…

    • 589 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In The Disabled State, Deborah Stone's main thesis is that disability is an administrative category in the welfare state that grants people with disabilities (PWD) special "privileges" and exemptions from obligations of citizenship. Her use of the term privilege when describing disability is provocative and sets the tone that she wishes to challenge popular held beliefs and conceptions of disability in modern Western society as a medical condition. She is interested in answering why social institutions respond to some individuals differently, rather than what is different in some individuals. For this paper, I plan to analyze Stone's arguments presented in her book and demonstrate that her thesis is worthy of acceptance.…

    • 579 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Personally, the section of G. Thomas Couser’s piece, Disability, Life Narrative, and Represention that truly made an impression on me was on page 456, when he writes “Although it is as fundamental an aspect of human diversity as race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, it is rarely acknowledged as such.” I was almost unsettled after reading this statement, as I realized that I myself fall into the vast population that is essentially uniformed about disability. Just because those with a disability have a physical or mental “impairment,” by no means does that make them substantially that different than any other human being. When I think about other minority groups, whether it be in regards to race, sexuality, or gender, I have a common view that “people are people” and that’s it. However, reading this piece served as a great breakthrough for me as I realized that I, in fact, did not look at people with disabilities in this manor, but rather as a group that I felt unfortunately had to deal with an everyday burden in their lives.…

    • 809 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Disability and the justification of inequality in American History by Douglas C. Baynton The main idea addressed by Douglas C. Baynton is that disability has never been a focused upon and its is often overlooked and used as a justification for inequality in American History. Disability is ignored and not questioned or treated as a cultural construct. It is viewed as personal tragedy, instead of something that produces social hierarchies. The author goes on to describe how disability functions to justify inequality for disabled persons, as well as for women and other minority groups.…

    • 894 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Smith-Fess Act

    • 1270 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In America, individuals who cope with a disability have had a long struggle for equality. In the 1800s many did not believe persons with disability were capable of living independently. According to the ASHE Higher Education Report (2013), society viewed persons with disability as incapable of thinking, learning, or achieving goals. Persons with disability were considered a disgrace and spent their entire lives in institutions or asylums for “purification”, because they were seen as unclean (Fleischer & Zames, 2000). They were viewed as being abnormal and were forced to undergo sterilization.…

    • 1270 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1. What categories of children and youth classified as disabled are present in your school? In your classroom? In the school, there are all kinds of children with different disabilities.…

    • 751 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to the American Community Survey, “The overall rate of people with disabilities in the US population in 2015 was 12.6%” (2). Although this percentage may seem insignificant, that number translates to well over millions of citizens who have disabilities. Considering this, everyone is likely to encounter a person with a disability at some point in their lives, so it is important that they are aware of how to be inclusive and interact with them. They may be people, but the society has discriminated against them in the past. The good news is that there has been progress because of the awareness that has been brought to the issues.…

    • 912 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Though the treatment of people with disabilities was far form ideal during the early American period, it declined even further during the “progressive” era. The community aspect of caring for each other seems to have been completely lost, and attempts to find a place for individuals incapable of performing traditional labor diminished. Rapid industrialization continued to cause more and more disabilities, and the quality of life of those affected by them became even worse than before. Disabilities during this time were viewed as undesirable defects, and those who had them were ostracized and looked down upon. This era gave birth to the notion of eugenics, which claimed that a “perfect” society could hypothetically be achieved trough breeding out undesirable traits that did not align with their notion of the ideal citizen.…

    • 689 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    This is constituted predominantly through discourses such as medicine, law, psychiatry, social work, and the like. These discourses act as technologies of power utilizing informal disciplinary power which put emphasis on the body by constituting particular bodies and behaviours as healthy and ‘normal’ while stigmatizing contraries of these ideals. Therefore, these discourses construct relations of power with those who fit the ideal or norms receiving advantages, privileges, rewards, and those deemed ‘other’ being cast as unworthy and stigmatized which in turn becomes justification for exclusion, subordination, and marginalization. David Lepofsky outlines this when he claims societies are physically constructed and socially organized with the unacknowledged assumption that everyone is non-disabled. As a consequence, this creates an excessive deal of disability through the negligence of what most people need in order to participate in all aspects of the social sphere.…

    • 1600 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay On Ableism

    • 1865 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Introduction The controversies over ableism are an ongoing topic that our society must continually address in order to meet the needs of all people. Ableism is defined as discrimination or acts of prejudices against specific groups or individuals with disabilities (Adams, etl. 2013, pg. 297). This encompasses any person who experiences oppression due to any physical, intellectual, mental, or emotional disorder they possess (Levy, 2015).…

    • 1865 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Disability Movement Essay

    • 1472 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Throughout many years of history, those with disabilities were not always treated fairly or given equal opportunity. Activists around the world have worked together to achieve goals such as increased access to all types of transportation and a safer day to day environment. Equal opportunities in employment and education have been a big part of their efforts too. For many years, children with disabilities were many times segregated and not given an equal opportunity for a chance to learn and succeed in school. A disability should not limit a person’s choice to improve themselves and their intellectual capabilities.…

    • 1472 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Every student has experienced a time when they struggled in school, whether they had a difficult time grasping a concept, had trouble answering a question or was unsure how to study for an exam. These are common struggles that many students face when they are in elementary school, high school, college, and even graduate school. However, being the one student that encounters all those difficulties altogether, make it very challenging to achieve in school, especially when they are stigmatized for having a learning disability. Students with learning disabilities can either have a negative or positive school experience based on the attitudes and behaviors of their fellow classmates and teachers. These students often have negative school experiences…

    • 1309 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays

Related Topics