Over the course of my relatively young life, I have quickly grown accustomed to answering questions about my physical disability from people whom I had never met before. “What’s wrong with you?,” they always say with a perplexed look on their faces as if it is the first time that they have seen a young man with a walker in New York City, where more than one in every ten residents has a disability. These all-too-common interactions caused me to initially view “disability” as an innately negative concept – an encapsulation of all of the limits that society had placed on me from the moment I was born.
Disability studies scholar Fiona Kumari Campbell defines ableism as a “network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body…that is projected as the perfect, species-typical and therefore essential and fully human, [whereas] [d]isability…is cast as a diminished state of being human.” Therefore, society classifies people with disabilities like me as abnormal simply because our bodies do not conform to a socially-constructed archetype. These views are so pervasive that they sometimes affect how people with disabilities view themselves, as was my own experience. Ableism and the continued medicalization of disability often further manifests itself in unconscious biases, such as the false perception that people with disabilities are inherently less productive than our able-bodied peers, which prevents us from actively participating in our society.
My own experiences with ableism reflect how disability is framed in public life. People with disabilities are the largest minority group in the country and the world, yet we are often forgotten in everyday discourse. Indeed, contemporary conversations regarding diversity are often centered around issues of race, gender, and ethnicity. While those issues are equally important, we must acknowledge that people with disabilities have also faced considerable barriers to full inclusion in public life.
Disability does not discriminate – all of us, no matter who we are or where we come from, can obtain a disability at any point in our lives. It transcends all ethnic, racial, age, gender, education, and socioeconomic classifications. People with disabilities are a microcosm of our communities and the world at large.
Unfortunately, able-bodied people tend to ignore disability until it becomes personally relevant for them. As a result, the voices and concerns of my community have been largely silenced within the public policy process. While the Americans with Disabilities Act and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have worked to codify the rights of people with disabilities on both the national and international level, we continue to face barriers in all aspects of our lives including employment, education, transportation, and political participation.
No matter where they reside, people with disabilities have a comparatively lower quality of life as compared to the general population. Had my own parents not emigrated from the former Soviet Union in 1989, I may have been part of the approximately 30 percent of Russian children with disabilities who are currently ostracized from society in state-run institutions where they face violence and neglect. Even the Russian children who are fortunate to live at home are often barred from attending mainstream schools because proper accommodations do not exist or even as a result of outright discrimination.
While conditions in the United States are not as extreme, people with disabilities are about twice as likely to be unemployed and living in poverty as compared to individuals without disabilities. Inequities in transportation further prevent people with disabilities from fully integrating themselves in their communities. For example, only 116 of New York City’s 493 subway stations are currently wheelchair-accessible, thus greatly limiting the ability of people with disabilities to travel in an urban center where mass transit is arguably the lifeblood of the city.
To address these gaps in our legal and policy framework, society must recognize that accessibility is a public good that will ultimately help all people, not just those who currently have disabilities. People with disabilities must also be included within decision-making processes and in leadership positions throughout the public and private sector so that we can provide input regarding the public policies that affect our lives. More broadly, disability should be reframed as one of many human variations — as “normal” as having blonde hair or brown eyes. With enough advocacy, I hope that people will soon stop asking what is “wrong” with me and, instead, start asking what they can do to combat ableism in order to ensure greater equity for all people, both with and without disabilities.
