Stigmatizing Disability Using Ableist Language: Effects
Kathy Ryder, Graduate Student
University of South Florida
Abstract
More than 10 percent of the world’s population is classified globally as disabled (www.disabled-world.com), and this percentage increases annually. Disabilities make a child more vulnerable to maltreatment. One bulwark against maltreatment is an aware, pro-active school system using an inclusive approach to education. Inclusion is just one tool used against discrimination. However, while attempts are made to weed out ableist language from the classroom and from policy, bias endures in communications. There is more acceptance now of the victim’s story.
Using ableism to stigmatize disabilities: Effects
This is a review of studies written in the last two decades that aim unevenly at psychosocial priming and the impact of the disability metaphor on teachers and students. Many of the reviewed articles here do not directly address disability metaphors, although such metaphors are pervasive in culture. The articles generally address the effect of stigmatizing disability and persons with a disability. Seen through a psychosocial prism, disabilities are typically synonymous with abnormality and interpreted as such. Most of us develop a laundry list of activities, associations and appearances that we offer to others as well as to ourselves in a hierarchy that places us inside the golden circle of social favor. Those deemed abnormal or deviant are outside this circle. Often the distinction is simply, “I have a higher status, I am normal, so move out of my way.” Thus, the permutations of what is not socially acceptable lurk in the structure and abstractions of language expressed in public and private images. The disability metaphor and its corollaries abnormality and deviance find a home in a process called psychosocial priming, e.g., one stimulus that influences by association how we respond to another stimulus is activated.
Special education studies over the last 20 years have focused on eliminating the discourse of ableism, a microaggression that typically shows itself as bullying and discrimination. This elevation in awareness now occupies a privileged position in educational discourse. There are efforts to clear away the debris of negative psychosocial priming, but the projection of images of devalued individuals continues. Evidence cited by such research shows that the approach to teaching and mentoring students with disabilities is fragmented and discontinuous. For example, current data on “incidence and prevalence of maltreatment in children with disabilities” lacks coherence because researchers use different definitions of disability as well as different methods of “classification” (Legano et al, 2021, p. 2). Harping on the inclusive education theme and having frequent sensitivity training sessions in individual institutions works on a small scale, but more innovative methods are needed.
The disability metaphor’s effect, for example, may be seen in a casual comment tossed at an older person: “You have such vast experience …”. The lingering image is of an older person whose age disqualifies them from full participation and enjoyment of a spot within the circle of social favor. The same process may be seen when a person’s competence is questioned: “Are you crazy? Even third graders can figure it out.”
In general, disability studies in academic literature written since 2002 show a fragmented approach to a difficult topic that changes in scope over time but not in particulars. The solutions include a call for more inclusive education, more special needs faculty who accept the responsibility of working competently with such students, and more advocacy at the state and federal level. At the other end of the spectrum is the reality of abused, neglected, disabled children and adolescents dumped out of schools and into the legal system, which usually means jail, or death if they wind up on the streets (Walker, 2012). Walker focuses on young African American males, who because of racial and disability bias wind up disproportionately confined in juvenile detention. They leave school because of repeated school detentions, bullying, suspension, grade-level retention and boredom (p. 322).
There is a price to pay. Data shows that leaving school without a diploma sets young people on a rough path (Walker, 2012) that typically winds up in confinement or on the streets. A more recent article by Gagnon examining the neglect of youth with emotional and behavioral disorders in American and Finnish schools (2022) concurs with Walker’s finding in 2012, e.g., children who are not neurotypical are identified and “pushed out” (Gagnon, 2022, p. 604). They are thus excluded from contact with positive school resources and environments. This pushing out of disabled students is often the result of a conflict created when school reform and traditional expectations and perceptions about disability meet and fail to mesh (Hebron, 2017, p. 556).
Because of the institutional trend to implement evidence-based practice, there has been a shift away from research that stumbles over attribution error. This is the tendency for people to emphasize disposition or personality-based explanations for observed behaviors while paying less attention to explanations that consider social and environmental factors (McCleod 2018, 2010). Such errors give rise to victim blaming. Victim blame is a behavioral pattern that stigmatizes persons. It persists socially and culturally.
For example, the parents of disabled children are also stigmatized. Away from the institution of school, parents of children with disabilities reported experiencing a greater number of stressors daily and more days when they experienced one stressor as compared to a control group (Seltzer 2009). Parents also reported “more arguments and tense moments with others” (p. 2). In other words, their presentation of social identity is limited by the disability itself or association with disability and carries a negative marker which acts to diminish the person’s range of opportunities and social exposure to resources and beneficial environments.
“Certain types of disabilities are associated with different forms of abuse” (Legano et al, p.8), e.g., behavioral issues invite more physical abuse while nonverbal or hearing-impaired children are at greater risk for neglect or sexual abuse (Legano et al, p. 8). Such abuse is in effect intended to subordinate persons deemed disabled to those in power.
In a 2021 qualitative study of 33 teachers, 12 parents and 90 students with disabilities in Zambia, researchers found that students with disabilities are at much greater risk of violence than their non-disabled peers (Njelesani, 2021, n.p.). The data also showed that in Zambia “special education teachers were undermined professionally and socially by stigma associated with disabilities” (Njelesani, n.p.).
Stigma-provoked social violence and unkindness is exacerbated in high school for male and female students with disabilities who were more likely to experience and report dating violence, according to a 2011 data analysis drawn from the 2009 Massachusetts Youth Health Survey. The study analyzed the dating violence experiences of high school girls with disabilities. They reported feeling sad or hopeless, suicidal, and their drug use accelerated in the months following the incident(s) (Mitra et al., 2013, p. 1090). In addition, the victims were revictimized. The researchers said that “Girls who reported dating violence were apparently subjected to social and reputational trauma in addition to the initial dating violence” (Mitra et al., p. 1090).
In 2018 the National Council on Disability released a report on the rates of sexual assault of college women with disabilities. More than 31 percent, or one out of three young women with disabilities, reported having been sexually assaulted (National Council on Disability, 2018). A similar survey in 2017 by Brown et al. found that there was a “significant association between disability status and students’ experience of unwanted sexual contact” (2017, p. 173). Brown et al. felt that their survey results underreported “the broader hostile sexual environment” for women with disabilities on college campuses (p. 173). Dammeyer and Chapman’s research on disability-related bias (2018, pp. 1-9) found that it is primarily of an institutional nature. They reiterated in different words the observations of Erving Goffman, e.g., the bias against people with disabilities “can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes, and behavior which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and stereotyping which disadvantage” them (p.3).
Olkin and Dunn (2021) suggest defining the different types and stages of disability. They note that language is fluid, ever-changing, and that people often don’t know how to talk about disability. The researchers argue that looking at health and disability as a unit will simplify the task. People can be healthy and have a functional impairment, they say. Following distinctions by the World Health Organization (WHO) among impairment, handicap, and disability (para. 3, 4, 5), Olkin and Dunn describe the shift from “an individual, medical perspective to a structural, social perspective,” or to what is commonly referred to as a biopsychosocial model (para. 6). In order to control perceptions of personal identity, the researchers recommend using identity-first language rather than focus on single-case disability. A key element of the holistic approach is to avoid using derogatory or negative words and phrases in reference to persons with a disability.
Avoidance of repetition of derogatory or devaluing language is an oversimplified answer to the perpetuation of stigmatizing words. But understanding the process and language of psychosocial priming is one aspect of reducing the risk of maltreatment. Others include: pediatricians as a resource for children with disabilities; referral of families of children with disabilities to community resources where available; and advocacy for at risk children with disabilities and their families at the state and local levels (Legano, 2021, p.8).
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About the Author
Kathy Ryder is a graduate student studying applied behavior analysis in the Department of Children and Families and special needs in the Department of Education at the University of South Florida, Tampa, Fl.
Keywords: metaphor, trope, disability, bias, discrimination, bullying
