Disability As A Metaphor For Inferiority - 990 Words

Charlotte McCarthy 9.22.17 Prof. Rifkin Disability as a Metaphor for Inferiority While disability rights and awareness have advanced, disabled people have not been able to wrest total control of the discrimination placed upon them due to the way society uses the idea of disability as a metaphor signifying human incapacity. In Douglas C. Baynton’s, Disability and the Justification of inequality in American History, he analyzes the controlling metaphor of disability through race. Similarly, watching Donald Trump s infamous speech where he mocks a disabled reporter shows how the metaphor also relates to hierarchical ineqaulity. Throughout history, American culture has come to define disability as a social burden. Metaphors of disability†¦show more content†¦He shows this by saying, â€Å"It is this use of disability as a marker of hierarchical relations that historians of disability must demonstrate in order to bring disability into the mainstream of historical study† (Baynton 34). Subconscious associat ions surround disability in America; disability is linked with social burdens, differences with mental illness, and impairment with deterioration. Baynton employs the examples of women s suffrage and African American civil rights to display this metaphor of disability as inferiority. He explains that â€Å"the concept of disability has been used to justify discrimination against other groups by attributing disability to them†(Baynton 33). In a rejection of social equality, humanity understands women s perceived physical and physiological attributes to be disabling, solely because they are different from men’s attributes. These traits, including excess emotionality and physical weakness, are considered to be an impairment that makes life harder for women. Similarly, Baynton explains that disability arguments were common in justifying slavery in the nineteenth century. 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