TRIPIL Web Article Archives

Still Not Equal - 'Myths and Stereotypes'

Article By: Observer Reporter
Published: 1998-07-26
By: Joe Smydo and Stan Diamond

Boys will be boys, and Kyle Glozier of Freeport Township is no exception. The 12-year-old once broke his collarbone by running his wheelchair off the sidewalk.

"It's part of life. Kids fall down," said Kyle's father, Jim Glozier.

Disability rights advocates say society's inclination is to protect and pity people with disabilities. But people with disabilities want to succeed and fail, fall down and get back up, like everyone else.

In addition to narrow doorways and buses without lifts, the disability community is trying to topple barriers of the attitudinal kind. Stereotypes and misconceptions are not easily eliminated, as the black community well knows.

John Lorence Jr., a civil rights specialist with Tri-County Patriots for Independent Living (TRIPIL) in Washington, went to a restaurant with three nondisabled relatives. A waitress in her early 20s gave menus to everyone but him, and he called her on it.

"She said, 'I didn't know if you could talk or read.' I said, 'In the future, I wouldn't make that assumption,' " Lorence recalled.

Becky Brandl of Somerset Township said the organizer of an Easter egg hunt tried to keep her daughter, Jocelyn, from taking part. The woman feared that the other kids might trip over Jocelyn's wheelchair or that Jocelyn might injure herself.

"It's pretty bad when you get up in the morning and you have to put your boxing gloves on. That's what it comes down to," Brandl said.

Shauna Eakin, a Trinity High School graduate now living in Ohio, said hospital workers balked at the idea of a speaking valve for her husband, Mike, who uses a wheelchair and had a tracheostomy about a year and a half ago.

"They said, 'Why does he need to speak?' I said, 'Why do you need to speak?' " Eakin recalled.

Hospital workers also questioned the quality of life her husband would have on a ventilator. No one has the right to judge the quality of another person's life, she said.

Eakin and other disability rights advocates traveled to Washington, D.C., in January 1997 for a rally against physician-assisted suicide.

Organized by the disability rights group Not Dead Yet, the rally was held on the steps of the Supreme Court, which later ruled that states have the authority to ban a practice thrust into the limelight by Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

Given her husband's experiences in the hospital, Eakin fears doctors wouldn't bother to argue with a person who just experienced a spinal cord injury and might consider physician-assisted suicide preferable to life in a wheelchair.

More than one person with a disability tells the story of sitting in a public place with a can of pop, only to have some well-intentioned but misguided soul drop change into the can.

In 1998, begging is out. Certain words and phrases would be out, too, if disability rights activists had their way.

Woody Osburn, executive director of Ohio State Independent Living Council, bristles at the phrase "confined to a wheelchair." He prefers "uses a wheelchair."

"The wheelchair is the one thing that keeps me independent," he said. "If I didn't have a wheelchair, where would I be? It's a different way to walk. It's liberating. It's one of the greatest inventions ever."

People with disabilities also object to the word "handicapped." Open Doors for the Handicapped, one of the earlier disability rights organizations, was founded before the word fell into disfavor.

"'Handicapped' is like calling me 'Negro.' 'Crippled' is like calling me 'nigger,' '' Osburn said.

People with disabilities say they're often shunned because of their appearance. A person sees a misshapen head or spindly legs and thinks, "Oh, God, that could be me," Osburn said.

Parents traditionally have told their children not to stare at people in wheelchairs. Osburn says, "Ask me about myself. I'll answer your questions."

In August 1993, Kathleen Kleinmann put her thoughts about independent living to paper. Kleinmann, executive director of TRIPIL, wrote that "the most limiting part of any disability is rarely the disability itself" but the attitudinal and physical obstacles that society puts in a person's way.

Some disability organizations have used the poster child to raise money for research projects.

But some disability rights advocates object to the practice, saying it perpetuates the notion that people with disabilities need pity. Glozier said he doesn't want Kyle to be a poster child or a china doll to be clucked over or patted on the head.

"We never sheltered him. We let him fail," Glozier said.

Similarly, some disability rights advocates object to the annual Jerry Lewis telethon, which raised a record $50.5 million last year for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

During the event, Lewis and other entertainers cajole viewers into donating money for research and other association projects. Walter Horner, a Canonsburg resident who has cerebral palsy, said the event reinforces the stereotype that people with disabilities are a "bunch of beggars."

Association spokesman Jim Brown said that view has been espoused by "a few" critics. Brown said the disability community as a whole supports the telethon and the work done with the proceeds, and he noted that the association has received awards from National Council on Disability and the President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities.

About 74 percent of working-age Americans with severe disabilities are unemployed, according to the committee's analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. A lack of transportation and attendant care is one problem; ignorance on the part of employers is another, advocates and others say.

"It is a sad but persistent truth that the fears, myths and stereotypes about people with disabilities continue to limit their employment opportunities and undermine their civil rights," Paul S. Miller, a member of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, wrote in the winter 1997 newsletter of the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems (NAPAS).

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination in the workplace.

The law requires employers to hire applicants with disabilities when they are the most qualified and can perform the "essential job functions" with or without "reasonable" accommodations, such as a modified work schedule or the assistance of readers or interpreters. The law does not require employers to lower their standards for workers with disabilities.

"There is a large misconception that the ADA is burdensome for businesses. Actually, many businesses can make workplace accommodations with little cost," NAPAS said two years ago in a special edition of its newsletter that focused on opposition to the ADA. The newsletter quoted one study that found a major department store chain spent only $45, on average, to accommodate an employee with a disability.

Some employers fear that people with disabilities would be unreliable, unproductive employees.

Bender Consulting Services Inc. of Robinson Township, Allegheny County, sends employees with disabilities into other companies on assignments in the information systems field.

Owner Joyce A. Bender said she has proven that a company can flourish with workers who are disabled. And she said her employees have proven that people with disabilities can do exemplary work.

"I'm trying to change the way people think," said Bender, who has a seizure disorder and a hearing impairment.

"Jobs mean freedom. Independence means a paycheck, means working," she said.

In its newsletter, NAPAS reported that brain power, not dexterity, will be the prime requirement for more than 90 percent of the jobs created from now through 2000. With assistive devices that enable them to operate computers by voice and even with their feet, people with disabilities say they will be qualified for many of those jobs.

The disability community complains that it has had a difficult time publicizing its quest for independence and self-determination.

The disability rights movement has had some key leaders, such as the late Ed Roberts, co-founder of the first center for independent living, in Berkeley, Calif.; the late Wade Blank, co-founder of the radical group ADAPT; and Justin Dart, co-founder of Justice for All.

But the movement has never had a leader with the "communicative genius" of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said Dart, who lives in Washington, D.C., and sat at President George Bush's side during the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.

Some say the media has neglected the disability rights movement

"The media, in general, don't even know enough to ask the right questions," Osburn said.

Leye Jeannette Chrzanowski, president and executive editor of Disability News Service, said she attended a panel discussion on "diversity in the media," sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists.

The panel offered the female, black, Asian-American and Hispanic-American perspectives, but there was no representative of the disability community, the largest minority group in the nation. Chrzanowski asked why.

"You could have heard a pin drop after I got through," she said.

Chrzanowski began operating the Chantilly, Va., news service in January, saying no national news service or syndicate paid enough attention to disability issues. She figured low-cost articles would appeal to the mainstream media.

She advertised her business in Editor and Publisher, an industry journal, but never got a call. She sent out 7,000 pieces of promotional literature to editors around the country, but received no reply. Twice, she offered free samples of her work to 90 news outlets, but none published the stories.

Chrzanowski said the mainstream media don't see that there is a tremendous audience for the articles she's selling.

A lack of publicity hasn't been the only impediment to the movement.

The disability community includes people with mental illness, mental retardation, spinal cord injuries, developmental disabilities, visual impairments and hearing impairments.

Osburn said the variety of disabilities has hampered organization of the movement. People with disabilities, he said, don't have a "common denominator" such as black skin.

The civil rights movement had the Baptist church as a base of support, but the disability rights movement has no such infrastructure, said Fred Pelka, a writer from Northampton, Mass., who has a disability.

Indeed, activists say they have a difficult time mustering the troops when so many live in nursing homes and lack the transportation and attendant care they need to get to meetings and rallies.

Dart said the movement isn't as advanced as the civil rights, labor or women's movements.

"But we are gaining rapidly. We're a long ways ahead of where we were 10, 20 years ago," he said.

In the early 1980s, Dart said, he thought he accomplished something when a White House secretary returned his phone call.

In September, he noted, President Clinton took out a yellow pad and took notes during a meeting with disability rights leaders.

The disability community regards such meetings as historic occasions, as significant for their movement as King's audiences with Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson.

Change is coming even to the smallest communities in America.

John Lorence Jr., who had to be carried up the stairs of Greene County Courthouse on his first visit there in the 1970s, soon will be able to get into the building on his own.

The county is in the midst of a $4 million renovation project that will give the courthouse a wheelchair-accessible entrance and two elevators.

If America backslides on its treatment of the disability community, another generation of activists is likely to continue the movement into the next century.

Kyle Glozier wants the bleachers at his school district's stadium to be made accessible. If the school district doesn't comply, Kyle intends to lead a protest, his dad said.

America only hurts itself by excluding a group of talented and energetic people from the mainstream, said Jim Martin, a leader of Congress of Racial Equality, the organization that sponsored the Freedom Rides of 1961. Martin said people with disabilities can win their civil rights struggle if they persevere.

"The name of the game is continual pressure. They have the moral high ground," Martin said.

King envisioned a society in which black children and white children would walk hand in hand and people would be judged solely "by the content of their character."

People with disabilities have a similar vision. They yearn for the day when wheelchairs, hearing aids, guide dogs and ventilators will be overlooked and the individuals using them will not.

Article has been reformatted for archival purposes.

-- End of Part 6

Other Parts of the Story

• Part 1. Freedom Fighters:
  The disability rights movement is a struggle for independence, respect and equality. And that fight is far from over.
• Part 2. Access is a Civil Right:
  People with disabilities encounter barriers daily.
• Part 3. No Place Like Home:
  Disability rights advocates want to replace the hodgepodge of state programs with a national attendant care initiative.
• Part 4. Peers, not Classmates:
  Children with disabilities find themselves fighting for equal opportunities in the classroom.
• Part 5. 'We Will Ride':
  Transportation remains an acute problem, especially in rural areas.
• Part 6. Myths and stereotypes:
  People with disabilities are fighting attitudinal barriers, as well.
• Return to Main Article

Behind the Story

• Reporter Joe Smydo, 28, graduated from Washington and Jefferson College in 1991 with a degree in history. He was a staff writer at The Pittsburgh Press before joinging the O-R in June 1993. He covers county government and politics and has won Keystone and Golden Quill awards.
• Photographer Stan Diamond, 55, is a native of Burgettstown who began his career in 1966 in the Greene County Bureau in Waynesburg. He was a general assignment reporter and the bureau's primary photographer. In 1985, he transferred to the Washington office as a photographer. He has won several Keystone Press awards for his photography.

Copyright

Copyright © 1998 Observer Publishing Co. - Republished with permission