Transcript Microaggressions and Disability

MICROAGGRESSIONS AND DISABILITY: 2014
Microaggressions
“Microaggressions are the everyday verbal,
nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or
insults, whether intentional or unintentional,
that communicate hostile, derogatory, or
negative messages to target persons based
solely upon their marginalized group
membership.”
Derald Wing Sue, Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race,
Gender, and Sexual Orientation, 2010
Common Unconscious
Stereotypes and Beliefs
Disability is:
A lesser status, a bad or unfortunate condition, which
people should hide.
A punishment for immorality or a curse.
An opportunity for others to give charity, pity, or obtain
self-worth.
A condition to be fixed by doctors or avoided (eugenics
and the medical model).
Implicit Bias
“Implicit prejudice operates unconsciously
and outside awareness,
Is empirically distinct from explicit
prejudice, and
Uniquely predicts consequential social
judgment and behavior.”
Shafir, Eldar, The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy, “The
Nature of Implicit Prejudice” at 18. Princeton University Press
(2013)
Exclusion and the
Medical Model
Synthesis
Microaggressions are the outward
manifestation of unconsciously held
stereotypes and biased thinking on the
part of often well-meaning people or
groups.
Microaggressions
create/reinforce/evince significant
barriers to equality.
Taxonomy
• Microassaults: Conscious and intentional
actions or slurs.
• Microinsults: Verbal and nonverbal
communications that subtly convey rudeness.
May be couched as compliments.
• Microinvalidations: Communications that
subtly exclude, negate or nullify the thoughts,
feelings or experiential reality of a person who
identifies as disabled.
Theory Mapping
Academia (Social
science and psych
research)
Art & Popular
Culture
Law Review Articles
and Evolution of
Critical Legal Theory
EEO and Anti Bullying
Training (Intel, OHSU,
et al.)
Social
Science
Research
Nothing about us without us: A qualitative
investigation of the experiences of being a
target of ableist microaggressions” by Bell,
Ayoka K., Psy.D., JOHN F. KENNEDY
UNIVERSITY, 2013, 147 pages.
.
Legal Scholarship
Davis, Peggy C., “Law as Microaggression,” 98 Yale
L.J. 1559, 1560 (1989) (defining microaggressions as
“incessant, often gratuitous and subtle offenses”)
Chew, Pat K. “Seeing Subtle Racism” Stanford
Journal of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, 6 Stan. J. Civ.
Rts. & Civ. Liberties 183 (October, 2010)
Discrimination in the 21st Century: Are Science and
the Law Aligned?, 17 Psychol. Pub. Pol'y & L. 54
(2011)
EEO Training
Sources of Stereotypes
• Religious beliefs
• Legal Discrimination
• Eugenics
• The Medical Model
• Literature, the arts, and culture
• Covering
The Hierarchy
• In school settings, teachers’ attitudes toward students
vary based on types of impairments possessed by
students with disabilities (Barr & Bracchitta, 2008;
Hastings & Oakford, 2003).
• People with/without disabilities tend to react more
favorably toward individuals with physical
(paraplegia/leg amputation) and/or sensory (deaf,
blind) disabilities than ones with brain-injured
disabilities (epilepsy) or mental illnesses (depression,
bipolar disorder).
Microassaults
“Spazz!”
“Mental”
“Nut case”
“Gimp”
“Idiot”
“Retarded”
“Differently abled”
“Imbecile”
“Stupid”
“Crip”
“Vegetable”
“brain- damaged”
Handicapp
ed
“Bed-ridden”
“Psycho”
Microinsults
•
•
•
•
•
You have a disability?
What’s your disability?
Your disability must be mild!
But you do so well/seem so bright!
You don’t look/seem disabled.
Microinvalidations
• Everyone has problems.
• We all have a learning disability of some kind.
• I understand your AD/HD; I have a blind uncle.
• I get it: I’m totally OCD about my files!
• Whoops, I must be dyslexic! (when reversing letters/numbers)
Making it Better
Outmoded Language
Preferred Language
Handicapped, Crippled,
Suffers from...
Disabled or has a
disability
Confined/Restricted to a
wheelchair
Uses a wheelchair
Mentally retarded
People without
disabilities are “normal”
or in the “regular
classroom.”
Intellectual and
developmental
disability (IDD)
Other Microaggressions
Staring or ignoring PWDs/privacy issues
Offering help without assistance
Omitting disability as a source of pride
when mentioning diversity
Failing to serve or provide role models
The Classroom
A Socio-political or
Right’s Model
• Disability is not a moral flaw, a medical condition
that needs fixing, or a source of shame.
• Under the social model, disability is not based upon
individual impairment but on society’s failure to
enable all people equally.
• Disability is a different way of being in the world that
contributes value.
• PWDs are individuals whose disabilities don’t “carry
over.”
• The disadvantages of disability should be viewed as a
social construct.
Future Issues
Re-imagining disability as positive
Embracing the post-social model
Eliminating structural/systemic
barriers, including pressures to
“cover”
Examining interpersonal barriers.