Internalized ableism is the
polar opposite feeling that those with disabilities should be feeling in
society. However, the legal protection serves as a covert, formal form of
oppression in society. I must point out that I do not believe this is
intentional. This thesis is simply meant to imply that those in power, making
these laws, do not understand the indirect effects it has on the consciousness
of people with disabilities.
Fiona Campbell argues that
we need to take account the negative ontology of disability; that is, that in
order to define and maintain the value of the normal, disability must be seen
as something to be avoided, prevented, or eliminated. This negative ontology
means that calls for inclusion will extend only so far as people with
disabilities are willing to move away from their own disabilities. To make
claims of legal protection on the basis of disability produces resentment
against those who have “special rights” and thus, the law reinterprets
disability protections as mechanisms for disability normalization and
elimination, as shown in a variety of court cases concerning the definition of
disability in the ADA. Thus, these laws serve to cause people with disabilities
to internalize ableism rather than create new ontological formations that could
accept non-normative body presentations. (Credit Claire Mckinney of the
University of Chicago for summary of Campbell’s Legislating Disability)
“What happens when we live
in this world of negative messages all the time and people telling us that
disability is something to be ashamed of and something that needs to be cured
and something that needs to be fixed is that we internalize that. We call that
ableism.” (leverageinc.org) Albelism can only exist relative to disability.
(Campbell 109) This notion leads Campbell, to basically state that a person with a disability can only
be seen as a negative being. People with disabilities start believing that they
cannot “do it”. They begin judging themselves based upon the norms established
by society. This is how the oppression of disability is being carried out. I
agree with Campbell when she states that, “the legal categories of ‘disability’
and ‘disabled person’ disallows the ‘disabled’ subject any escape from the normalizing
practices of compensation and mitigation.” (Campbell 126) It seems like our
society has effectively labeled people with disabilities. Instead of
restructuring our society to include those with disabilities, our society makes
people with disabilities feel like they are a lesser person in it. It is our
job to eliminate this covert form of oppression.
References:
Fiona Campbell, 2005 “Legislating Disability: Negative ontologies and the Government of Legal Identities” in Foucault and the Government of Disability edited by Shelley Lynn Tremain, 108-131
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