Autistic Grievance
Our Great Country is an embodiment of human integration. It is rooted in our ideals and our Constitution which unequivocally protects all the people. We espouse to rise above the segregation and discrimination of minorities that historically have plagued many human cultures in understanding that it is rooted in prejudice and ignorance. We have made large strides in protecting the human rights of our citizens, but as we continue the struggle to abolish the entrenched segregations of the past, none in our times seem as troubled and entrenched as the treatment of Disabled.
Disability is not a new thing, discrimination of ‘physically impaired’ and especially ‘mentally retarded’ goes far back in time, yet “during much of the 19th century mental retardation was viewed as neither curable nor dangerous and the retarded were largely left to their own devices” [1]. Systemic segregation of people classified with mental retardation began in earnest at the turn of 20th century with courts upholding opinions that mentally retarded “cause unutterable sorrow at home and are a menace and danger to the community”. The policy of segregation was accompanied by eugenic marriage and sterilization laws that extinguished for the retarded one of the “basic civil rights of man” – the right to marry and procreate, and the removal of voting rights among other. Institutionalizations of mentally retarded became a norm.
We cite CLEBURNE v. CLEBURNE LIVING CENTER, INC., (1985) from a dissenting opinion of Supreme Court Justice Marshall J. [1] to bring back our not so distant history:
[8] H. Goddard, The Possibilities of Research as Applied to the Prevention of Feeblemindedness, Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction 307 (1915), cited in A. Deutsch, The Mentally Ill in America 360 (2d ed. 1949). See also Fernald, The Burden of Feeblemindedness, 17 J. Psycho-Asthenics 87, 90 (1913) (the retarded “cause unutterable sorrow at home and are a menace and danger to the community”); Terman, Feeble-Minded Children in the Public Schools of California, 5 Schools & Society 161 (1917) (“[O]nly recently have we begun to recognize how serious a menace [feeblemindedness] is to the social, economic and moral welfare of the state . . . . [I]t is responsible . . . for the majority of cases of chronic and semi-chronic pauperism, and for much of our alcoholism, prostitution, and venereal diseases“). Books with titles such as “The Menace of the Feeble Minded in Connecticut” (1915), issued by the Connecticut School for Imbeciles, became commonplace. See C.Frazier, (Chairman, Executive Committee of Public Charities Assn. of Pennsylvania), The Menace of the Feeble-Minded In Pennsylvania (1913); W.Fernald, The Burden of Feeble-Mindedness (1912) (Mass.); Juvenile Protection Association of Cincinnati, The Feeble-Minded, Or the Hub to Our Wheel of Vice (1915) (Ohio). The resemblance to such works as R. Shufeldt, The Negro: A Menace to American Civilization (1907), is striking, and not coincidental.
5 Second, the mentally retarded have been subject to a “lengthy and tragic history,” University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 303(1978) (opinion of POWELL, J.), of segregation and discrimination that can only be called grotesque. During much of the 19th century, mental retardation was viewed as neither curable nor dangerous and the retarded were largely left to their own devices. 6 By the latter part of the century and during the first decades of the new one, however, social views of the retarded underwent a radical transformation. Fueled by the rising tide of Social Darwinism, the”science” of eugenics, and the extreme [473 U.S. 432, 462] xenophobia of those years, 7 leading medical authorities and others began to portray the “feebleminded” as a “menace to society and civilization . . . responsible in a large degree for many, if not all, of our social problems.” 8 A regime of state-mandated segregation and degradationsoon emerged that in its virulence and bigotry rivaled, and indeed paralleled, the worst excesses of Jim Crow. Massive custodial institutions were built to warehouse the retarded for life; the aim was to halt reproduction of the retarded and “nearly extinguish their race.” 9 Retarded children were categorically excluded from [473 U.S. 432, 463] public schools, based on the false stereotype that all were ineducable and on the purported need to protect non retarded children from them. 10 State laws deemed the retarded”unfit for citizenship.”
It is important to note how similar it all is today for autistic people – the trumpeting of autistic epidemic, the involvement of medical authorities, the possibilities for science and research, the view of autistic burden to society, and the resulting proliferation of segregation, isolation, captivity, and the overall erasure of autistic people who are being tragically marched into a subhuman category on ever increasing scale.
So let us look into the past, back in time before the year 1895 when the word “retarded”was first weaponized in a warfare against most vulnerable among our people. Let us look at the time when they walked free among the people and were “left to their own devices”. How did they fare, what did they do, what were they called in the archaic world?
Historians had not recorded their deeds, but in folklore and literature they were the heroes of many stories all over the world. Fools and far-seers, mad scientists and no-doers – they puzzled, surprised, amused, and angered; they were laughed at, chased away, left homeless, hungry, and cold, but they were also sheltered and comforted. They withstood wars and famine, holding onto the light in the darkest times of humanity. Whether they were God-sent or a random mutation they were the beacons on our path to wisdom, compassion, and humility. They had been woven into an arduous fabric of survival and evolution of human species. They came into the world with a purpose, we believed.
This grievance is on behalf of autistic people whose plight has placed them at the very heart of the Disability movement. The Disability rights movement had delivered important rights, and not surprisingly most of it after horrific wars – the important legal rights that translated into real action. It required courage and integrity, and we as society have found it, and widened the doors, and let THE WHEELCHAIR REDEFINE OUR CULTURE! It was good for Disabled and it was good for the country. The Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA] was an important achievement for all the people. It made us a better and stronger nation; yet it fell short for the multitudes classified and maligned as people with mental disabilities.
Our Slogan – Return our Freedom – Return our Rights!
11/8/18 AG2