Introduction
A disabled person is an individual living with mental or physical impairment, which largely hinders him or her from performing one or more activities in life. A person may also be termed as disabled if he or she had impairment previously or is viewed as disabled by society according to personal or group principles or rules. Examples of such impairment are cognitive, sensory, mental disorders, and physical impairments. Impairment may occur in someone’s lifetime or right at birth. According to the Americans with Disability Act, there are three stages of disability namely; the impairment of the main roles in life, a legal treatment record that recognizes an individual’s impairment history. Thirdly, features that lead to the branding or stigmatization of the person as debilitated or inadequate (U.S. Department of Justice par.2).
Statement of purpose
This paper will identify different forms of prejudice underlying cultural representations of people with impairment and analyze their effects. Disability just like sexism or racism is social cruelty and unfairness. This is because it is the restriction or denial from participating in the activities, which result from people who put little or no effort into the welfare of the disabled individuals and therefore, exempt them from major activities. Impairment is a feature in a person that is long-lasting and it may or may not be due to illness or accident. Moreover, it changes a person’s look in a way that may not be appreciated by the community. In addition, it affects how a person’s body or mind works due to society’s perception or due to pain and tiredness that affects communication and decreases consciousness (Morris 2).
Disability and impairment
The terms disability and impairment have a different meaning. Impairment refers to the serviceable restrictions of individuals’ minds and bodies while disability refers to the disabling hindrances of uneven approach and negative thoughts. Therefore, by separating the two terms, disabled people were in a position to confront the hypothesis that impairment is an unavoidable misfortune that can only be relieved by treatment or death. Instead of such a hypothesis, they declared that; the quality of their lives is not dependent on what their bodies and mind can not do or function, therefore, it is essential to differentiate impairment from the way the society perceives and react to it. In addition, some of the disabling hindrances experienced by disabled people are as follows, inequity, prejudice, services that separate and disempower them. These services that isolate them from the rest of the people include failure to utilize the resources available in the surroundings, failure to utilize technology to assist in communication, and failure of the society to offer personal support to help in daily living. Individuals with cognitive, physical, and sensory impairments and mental disabilities are mostly disabled by the people in a certain community where they live. Therefore, disabled people use the word ‘disabled people’ to illustrate or express what society does to them. Hence, the term disability is used to refer to discrimination and prejudice rather than impairments. For instance, someone’s impairment is that she or he cannot walk but his or her disability is that the motor vehicle industries only buy inaccessible motor vehicles. Another example is that someone’s impairment is that she or he cannot speak but the disability is that one cannot take time to learn and understand how to communicate with such a person (McRuer 88-89).
Forms of prejudice and their effects
Disability is a complicated procedure that includes several causal elements. Therefore, the responsibility of the culture is very important, independent and unavoidable. In most of the community or societies, disabled people are perceived in major methods/ways that are negative at all the times despite the specific social-economic associations. Someone with long lasting physical impairment is neither well nor sick, neither alive nor dead and he or she is neither fully in nor out of the society. These individuals live in partial separation from the community as vague, ambiguous individuals. Harassment of the disabled people is painful and it hurts them especially when they are excluded from participating in major activities by the society (Shakespeare 16).
People living with impairment are disabled both by resources inequity and prejudice. This prejudice or injustice is both social and intrinsic in cultural image, in communication or socialization and in language. People are scared by individual’s disability and do not imagine such kind of disability can also occur to them. Therefore, disabled people tend to become isolated from the common people or humankind, treated as primarily dissimilar and strange. These kinds of separation or hindrances between the disabled and non disabled individuals affect the disabled people. This is because it conceal their discomfort and fear by making them look like substances of pity, encouraging themselves by their own compassion and bigheartedness. It is not the disability that scares people but it the impairment. Hence the issue is not with the disabled people but the non disabled people in the society who should also know that any form of disability may happen or occur to them because they are also vulnerable (Morris 192).
In addition, non disabled individuals are continuously nervous to reject their own physicality and humanity and individuals with disability are the crowd that these challenge or hard feelings are anticipated. People’s physical features or traits induce strong feelings, which individuals mostly have to communicate them in some methods. Similarly, non-disabled people think they are able to impress their feelings on disabled people since the disabled people are not regarded as independent people in the society (Morris 29).
Disabled individuals have similar human and civil rights and privileges as the non disabled people. However, human and civil rights have denied them these rights as injustice and discrimination has. The challenging thing is that the human and civil rights of the disabled people cannot be improved without specific actions being implemented, materials or resources being made accessible that offer them equivalent access. For example children with disability will not have equivalent admission to education until there are favorable surroundings or environments of schools. This is to ensure provision of relevant resources, interpreters and physical access that make it easy for them to access school curriculum and executing of anti-bullying regulations. In addition, accessibility to human and civil rights by disabled people to a family life is difficulty unless they have power to available resources, housing and personal support (Morris 11).
Identification of the difference in the disabled people has been a major thing to a denial of their rights and privileges. Therefore, we ought to change this occurrence in order the identification of the dissimilarity of the disabled people becomes the solution to getting what they need so that human and civil rights can be available or accessible to them. Disabled individuals cannot obtain the entire human and civil rights by being served the same way as the well able people. Such prejudice or disabling hindrances like inaccessible shelter or housing and uneven access to education is not faced by the non-disabled people. Disabled individuals incur a lot of expenses in their daily living since they need a personal assistance, communication equipment, sign language interpreters and supporters that are not experienced by the non-disabled individuals. In addition, they need or demands a lot of medical care services and their access to the health facilities is limited by the society perception that their quality of lives do not require such spending. Therefore, equality between disabled individuals and non-disabled cannot be attained unless they have power to act and have materials or resources that will assist them in dealing with the above mentioned disabling hindrances or barriers (Mairs 122).
Conclusion
In conclusion, different forms of prejudice or injustice have major effects on the disabled people especially when the society exempts them from participating in major activities. Therefore, the non disabled individuals should agree or accept a disabled person’s human and civil rights, and at the same time embrace their common human-kind. This will lead to equality between the two groups as human beings and society. In order to attain equality, there is need for the disabled people to have power or entitlements to action, resources and be treated in better way than the non-disabled individuals.
Works cited
Mairs, Nancy. Waist-high in the world: A life among the nondisabled. 1996. Boston: Beacon Press.
McRuer, Robert. Compulsory Able-bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence. Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, New York: The Modern Language Association of America 2002.
Jenny Morris, Pride Against Prejudice: A personal politics of disability, London: Women’s Press, 1991
Morris, Jenny. Impairment and Disability: Constructing an Ethics of Care that Promotes Human Rights. Hypatia, 16, (4). 2001
Shakespeare, Tom. Cultural Representation of Disabled People: dustbins for disavowal? The Disability Press. 1994. Web.
U.S. Department of Justice. A Guide to Disability Rights Laws. Civil Rights Division Disability Rights Section. 2005. Web.