Capitalism and Disability

This week I want to touch my toes into some waters that are very uncertain. The more I read McLaren, Marx, and other "free thinkers" I am reminded of the larger picture of societal forces that perpetuate the subjugated status of individuals with disabilities. Although I've been touching on these issues for the past few weeks I think I'm ready to dive in with more gusto. You'll have to let me know what you think...but these issues are all related to eugenics, abortion, and modern bioethics and have become the political currency of today’s medical marketplace; and I mean marketplace quite literally. Let me explain....

Individuals with disabilities are classified as “market failures” within free market economic theory. Free market economic theory dictates that all members of a society, with the exception of the “unproductive units”, will have all of their needs met through the fair exchange of goods and services; individuals who do not have their basic needs met through the fair exchange process, or who produce more demand than supply in a trade exchange are classified as “market failures”. Free market theory goes on to state that the only role for government to play in a free market society is that of a safety net for distinct classes of people who are market failures. That’s at least how many traditional economists would describe the evolution of the government as the welfare provider to equalize the market outcomes for all members of a society. But you knew this already. Right?

Now this particular perspective on the role of the government is not necessarily positive. It assigns an inherently negative connotation to individuals with disabilities and other vulnerable social groups. A humanist might try to put a different spin on the role of government by saying that the government has a responsibility to protect it’s most vulnerable citizens, but it still assumes that “vulnerable” citizens are weak or helpless. So, what does this have to do with healthcare, abortion, and ethics? Well, every time that a child is born with a severe disability or some other chronic condition that requires ongoing and intensive medical care it usually falls to the government to pay for the care that the child requires. But why does the government pay for them, you may ask…

Well, the government pays for the care of most individuals with disabilities because our health insurance system in the United States will not. In the U.S. insurance and medical coverage is tied to an individual’s productivity, or potential productivity; meaning that, as a general rule, you must be employed full time and be healthy to be eligible for insurance coverage. This is a great example of classic free market theory in practice. An individual has to show that he or she can productively participate in the marketplace in order to qualify for coverage that will protect their health. Health insurance protects the healthy, able-bodied productive units in our society, but shuns those who are sick, disabled, or have any other pre-existing condition that could potentially jeopardize their “productive status”. Therefore, because health insurance won’t provide assistance for individuals with disabilities, the government has to assume this responsibility.

Now, when the government has to assume the responsibility for protecting or caring for individuals with disabilities someone eventually has to pay the bill. The bills are paid by taxes which are, for the most part, equally assessed across the populace to ensure that we are all helping to share the burden of caring for the vulnerable and helpless members of society. Therefore, whenever a child with a disability is born or an individual acquires a significant disability, the overall tax burden across the populace increases accordingly.

For example, over the past twenty years, technology has allowed us to keep many children alive who previously would have died as a result of premature birth or a particular disabling condition. In fact, just last fall, I sat in a lecture by an eminent doctor from the UMass-Boston Medical School who has shown a direct correlation between technology, infant survival rates, increased federal healthcare expenditures, and increased tax burden. One of his points was that given the spiraling increases in healthcare costs in the U.S., the federal government should develop a protocol for determining when a child should or should not be saved. This would entail a list of “acceptable” conditions, and a list of “unacceptable” conditions. Children born with “acceptable” conditions would be given the care required to survive; children born with “unacceptable” conditions would be cared for, although no extraordinary measures would be used to prolong or enhance the quality of their life, however short it may be. Many countries with socialized healthcare have already adopted similar protocols, with the Netherlands having the longest standing and most comprehensive example of such a system.

Although this is a morbid and terribly utilitarian way to view the burden of disability on society, it is a large reason why eugenics, genetic testing, and abortion continue to be especially important issues for individuals with disabilities and their families. Ultimately, it comes down to the question of who has the right to choose whether a child with a disability is so impaired that they are better off dead. All of this is somewhat depressing, but they are current and highly relevant issues.

Next post, I'll discuss why simply supporting individuals with disabilities through social welfare programs is merely redistribution of capital and why that doesn't address the real issues that continue to keep individuals with disabilities as a reified underclass...

Great Article on How the Media Perpetuates Disability Stereotypes

Wow! Two interesting articles in a single morning. The link to this article is in the title of this post. It's a great article that discusses the harm that our language does when we're not careful. It also highlights the impact of the media on shaping our language and attitudes.

Let me know what you think....

Advocate Dened Admission on Two Airlines

Although this happened in India (link is in the post title), it's still relevant to us here in the U.S. I've seen the same thing happen to people I know on several airlines here in the States.

That's all for now...more thoughts to come. I'll be checking out Marx's Das Kapital this afternoon and then posting a follow-up to my previous post for those of you who are anxiously awaiting my re-descent into the world of radical Marxist thought and pedagogy. But don't hold your breath too long...

Marxism, Social Justice, and Critical Pedagogy

So, as some of you know, I am anxiously engaged in developing a new Core Discovery class in Disability Studies. For those of you who don't know, a Core Discovery class is a yearlong course for first year students that introduces them to critical thinking and the university culture through specific content areas. My specific content area is --GASP-- Disability Studies!

Okay, sarcasm aside, I've been really wrestling with how to make this course meaningful to my students. I want it to be something that they remember and that shapes the rest of their academic career at the University of Idaho. Am I asking too much? I don't think so...but in the process I've gone back to my roots in critical pedagogy and Marxist thought. It's been terribly exciting, but it has also caused me to do a lot of soul searching about how I approach my scholarship and teaching.

I've specifically been re-reading Paulo Freire and some of Peter McLaren's recent thought about Freire and the root of injustice and how pedagogy can bring about conscientization and overcome injustice. McLaren's recent thought has taken him out of the classroom however and more into the realm of classic Marxist thought regarding the "true" root of injustice: economic disparities. McLaren argues that the recent push for courses about social justice and diversity in the university setting don't do anything to actually address injustice. Instead they merely describe a particular group's subjugated status, speculate about some of the reasons this group might be oppressed, and then leave it at that. These classes are more about teaching students "this is the way it is and here's some of the reasons, so try and be nice to these folks". This type of pedagogy leaves off one of the most important elements of critical pedagogy: informed social action.

This notion of combining theory and practice is the exact Freirean notion of praxis: a critically informed theory-based practice. I started here during my student teaching in 1997 and was highly discouraged by my instructors and the administrators at the school I taught at. There is always a fear among the administration when a teacher's students threaten to "do something"; but it is a vital step to the learning process. Especially when we talk about disability and other marginalized groupings.

McLaren also discusses some other very interesting ideas about the economic roots of oppression. I think he's right, but his analysis is usually tied only to minority groups or the LGBT crowd. He hasn't extended his thinking to include people with disabilities who, I think, are a model group for applying the model of economic oppression as formulated in traditional Marxist thought. So, in short, I guess this means that I need to go back to Das Kapital and get current. I can see a whole body of scholarship arising from this line of thinking; I just need to find the time to articulate it clearly. I wonder who funds Marxist scholarship?

Okay, so I've got that off my chest and now I can hit the sack with a semi-clear conscience that I got these ideas out of my brain and into words. Now let's see how they develop...

An Interesting News Story from National Geographic

Okay, before I get to the meat of this post, I have to admit that I have been a National Geographic afficionado since I was a young child. There, I've said it.

So, being a National Geographic afficionado I regularly download several podcasts from NG including National Geographic News. In the news this morning was this story about some archaeologists from Italy who have uncovered evidence of people with physical disabilities being offered as human sacrifice all over Europe. The link to the full story is in the title of this post. Just click on it and you'll get to the original article.

BUT BEFORE YOU GO...I have several observations to make about this discovery. First of all, offering individuals with disabilities as human sacrifice is much different than straight out euthanasia of the sort that was regularly practiced by the Spartans and other warrior cultures. Human sacrifice seems to indicate a certain social status or role for individuals with disabilities, whether it was positive or negative we can't be sure, but the fact is that they were allowed to live and were central to the spiritual life of the different cultures these archaeologists have uncovered. Were the disabilities feared as a sign of the gods displeasure? Were the disabilities revered?

Does that seem odd that an individual with a disability might be revered? It shouldn't...many indigenous cultures have given status and high social rank to individuals with disabilities. Individuals with physical disabilities were often elevated to leadership positions within a tribal group because they could not hunt or gather, therefore as a result they had time to devote to the "administrative" and social elements of maintaining a cohesive cultural group. The tribal group provided for the leader and leader provided a stable social atmosphere.

Individuals with mental illness who would be considered "crazy" today were often revered as shamen in American Indian and Alaska Native cultures. It was believed that these individuals could communicate with spirits from other worlds and were therefore central to the spiritual life of the tribe. Today we take people who "hear voices" and lock them up in institutions and psychiatric wards. One culture respected the skill to "hear voices", another culture demonizes it as an illness.

Interesting ideas to consider. What do you think?

The Moral Model of Disability Still Prevalent

Well, I end up posting these things while I'm away from the office for some reason. Maybe it's because I have more time or because I'm more focused, I don't know. Right now I'm sitting in the Boise airport getting ready to head home to Moscow after two long days of meetings. At my meeting earlier today there was a parent of a child with a disability sitting by me and I overheard her talking about another family in their community who had a daughter with epilepsy and mild mental retardation caused by the epilepsy. Now, before I get to the point, I would like to point out that as a general rule, I don't usually eavesdrop but I couldn't help but be chagrined when this woman said that this other family was convinced that their daughter was possessed by a devil and that if they could just exorcise the devil their daughter would be normal again. They were going to have a preacher who specialized in exorcisms come over and try to "cure" their daughter. How freaky is that?

It always seems that when I feel the world is getting better, I hear a story like this and it depresses me again. What's wrong with these people? Of course the same could be said for society in general and academia especially. Why do we persist in holding onto arcane and damaging models of disability?

Let me illustrate what I mean:

Traditionally academia has approached the study of disability by conceptualizing it as a deviation from the “norm”; or, something to be remedied, rehabilitated, or cured. This is a very elitist and disempowering approach to understanding disability because it assumes that individuals with disabilities are passive subjects who are sitting around and waiting for the, generally, able-bodied medical and rehabilitation professionals to develop cures, therapies, and other treatments that will allow individuals with disabilities to enter the “mainstream” and participate as a full-member of society. But the origins of these attitudes began much earlier.

In the Western world we can trace the origins of our attitudes towards disability all the way back to the first literate cultures: the Greeks, Romans, and Jews. In the Old Testament and in Greek and Roman mythology we see the beginnings of the “first” model of disability: the “moral” model of disability. The moral model of disability is based upon the assumption that disability, deformity, or any deviant appearance or behavior is a direct manifestation of the displeasure of God/the Gods. The moral model of disability usually interpreted this deviance as a sign from the God/Gods that the parents or the individual had committed some sin or other act of transgression. Indeed, beginning in the New Testament and through the Middle Ages as superstition ran rampant among the population there was a widespread belief that cognitive disabilities and mental illness were the direct result of demonic possession. For example look at how these individuals with disabilities are portrayed in the New Testament:

• Matthew Chapter 8 verses 28 & 33-- “(28) And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. (33) And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told every thing, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils.”
• Matthew Chapter 9 verse 32-- “As they went out, behold, they brought to him a dumb man possessed with a devil.”
• Matthew Chapter 12 verse 22-- “Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw.”

Now, it’s difficult to determine whether these attitudes were the actual attitudes of Jesus and his disciples because the majority of English translations of the Bible came through the pens of medieval monks and scholars who were steeped in the superstition of their day. But, we do have to give credence to the fact that these translations of the Bible have been some of the most influential writings in Western culture and have formed the backbone of social attitudes that continue up through today. Indeed, it is easy to look at the moral model of disability as an outdated understanding of disability that has gone out of fashion, but the fact is that remnants of it are still evident today… as the conversation I overheard earlier today seems to indicate.

So, although I could go on and on about the origin of attitudes towards individuals with disabilities I'd better leave it at this. I still need material for a later posting.

Keep on keepin' on...

Matt