Steven E. Brown
Disability Culture: Beginnings
A Fact Sheet
DISABILITY CULTURE: BEGINNINGS
A FACT SHEET
By Steven E. Brown
© by Institute on Disability Culture, 1996, 2011
All Rights Reserved
The modern disability rights movement began during the 1960s when people with disabilities around the world successfully challenged dominant social stereotypes. In the United States, Ed Roberts, a post-polio, ventilator-using quadriplegic, broke American educational barriers when he became the first person with such a significant disability to attend college. Roberts entered the University of California at Berkeley in 1962. During a lifetime of fighting for equality for people with disabilities he became an international representative of human rights and overthrowing oppression.
But Ed did not act alone. At Berkeley, other significantly disabled individuals enrolled and coalesced into a group who called themselves the Rolling Quads. Providing a sounding board for each other, the Rolling Quads quickly determined their life experiences shaped a common, group understanding of the condition of disability.
People with disabilities recognized they shared a similar, but unique, history based on common perceptions about disability. An overwhelming need for political change dominated all other endeavors because of a legacy of oppression.
Political activism led to passage of national laws, like the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, and international ones, such as the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. While political change remained essential, other avenues of expression also developed.
A significant discussion about language and its meaning raged throughout the 1980s in a relatively new outlet: the disability press. American magazines like Mainstream, the Disability Rag, and Mouth, discussed these changes in published articles written primarily by individuals with disabilities.
One of the most important results of these debates was a (r)evolution in the perception of disability from weak and discounted to strong and valued. A traditional antipathy to identification as an individual with a disability turned into pride in both individual and group strength.
The pervasiveness of this change affected multiple constituencies. Grassroots efforts, such as the development of independent living centers, organizations that believed in street protests, especially ADAPT, and groups representing a variety of constituencies, like People First, reflected the movement’s roots. Academic interest sparked the growth of multidisciplinary Disability Studies programs worldwide.
One way to approach cultural characteristics of people with disabilities is through isolating historical facts and myths into positive and negative groupings:
NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES and some POSITIVE COUNTERPARTS
Weakness Strength
Sickness Wellness
Incapacity Ability
Isolation Peer Support
Alienation Identity
Institutionalization Integration
Oppression Resilience
Victimization Choice
Devaluation Pride
Inability to New ways of
act “normally” doing things
A reaction to these and many other historic negative perceptions led people with disabilities throughout the world to awaken to our positive attributes. In the process we began to recognize we have many reasons to be proud of who we are, both as individuals and as a group. In the mid-1990s I first published my definition of disability culture in Mainstream (republished in 2003), reproduced below:
“People with disabilities have forged a group identity. We share a common history of oppression and a common bond of resilience. We generate art, music, literature, and other expressions of our lives, our culture, infused from our experience of disability. Most importantly, we are proud of ourselves as people with disabilities. We claim our disabilities with pride as part of our identity.
We are who we are: we are people with disabilities.” (Brown, p. 80-81)
In the first writing of this “Fact Sheet,” I mentioned several specific artists. But in the years since, Disability Culture has advanced so rapidly there are far too many practitioners to isolate only a few. In a web search on August 2, 2011, the phrase “disability culture” returned 12,900,000 hits on Google and 50,700,000 hits on Yahoo. A starting point to explore some of these resources is the Institute on Disability Culture “Links and Resources” pages, included in the following References and Resources.
References and Resources
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. PL 101-336.
http://www.ada.gov/
ADAPT. http://www.adapt.org/
Brown, Steven E. (2003). Movie Stars and Sensuous Scars: Essays on the Journey from Disability Shame to Disability Pride. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.
Disability Rag (Ragged Edge online).
http://ragged-edge-mag.com/
Institute on Disability Culture.
http://www.instituteondisabilityculture.org/
MAINSTREAM: Magazine of the Able-Disabled. http://mainstream-mag.com/
Mouth: Voice of the Disability Nation. http://www.mouthmag.com/
People First. http://www.peoplefirst.org/
United Nations Enable: http://www.un.org/disabilities/
A FACT SHEET
By Steven E. Brown
© by Institute on Disability Culture, 1996, 2011
All Rights Reserved
The modern disability rights movement began during the 1960s when people with disabilities around the world successfully challenged dominant social stereotypes. In the United States, Ed Roberts, a post-polio, ventilator-using quadriplegic, broke American educational barriers when he became the first person with such a significant disability to attend college. Roberts entered the University of California at Berkeley in 1962. During a lifetime of fighting for equality for people with disabilities he became an international representative of human rights and overthrowing oppression.
But Ed did not act alone. At Berkeley, other significantly disabled individuals enrolled and coalesced into a group who called themselves the Rolling Quads. Providing a sounding board for each other, the Rolling Quads quickly determined their life experiences shaped a common, group understanding of the condition of disability.
People with disabilities recognized they shared a similar, but unique, history based on common perceptions about disability. An overwhelming need for political change dominated all other endeavors because of a legacy of oppression.
Political activism led to passage of national laws, like the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, and international ones, such as the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. While political change remained essential, other avenues of expression also developed.
A significant discussion about language and its meaning raged throughout the 1980s in a relatively new outlet: the disability press. American magazines like Mainstream, the Disability Rag, and Mouth, discussed these changes in published articles written primarily by individuals with disabilities.
One of the most important results of these debates was a (r)evolution in the perception of disability from weak and discounted to strong and valued. A traditional antipathy to identification as an individual with a disability turned into pride in both individual and group strength.
The pervasiveness of this change affected multiple constituencies. Grassroots efforts, such as the development of independent living centers, organizations that believed in street protests, especially ADAPT, and groups representing a variety of constituencies, like People First, reflected the movement’s roots. Academic interest sparked the growth of multidisciplinary Disability Studies programs worldwide.
One way to approach cultural characteristics of people with disabilities is through isolating historical facts and myths into positive and negative groupings:
NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES and some POSITIVE COUNTERPARTS
Weakness Strength
Sickness Wellness
Incapacity Ability
Isolation Peer Support
Alienation Identity
Institutionalization Integration
Oppression Resilience
Victimization Choice
Devaluation Pride
Inability to New ways of
act “normally” doing things
A reaction to these and many other historic negative perceptions led people with disabilities throughout the world to awaken to our positive attributes. In the process we began to recognize we have many reasons to be proud of who we are, both as individuals and as a group. In the mid-1990s I first published my definition of disability culture in Mainstream (republished in 2003), reproduced below:
“People with disabilities have forged a group identity. We share a common history of oppression and a common bond of resilience. We generate art, music, literature, and other expressions of our lives, our culture, infused from our experience of disability. Most importantly, we are proud of ourselves as people with disabilities. We claim our disabilities with pride as part of our identity.
We are who we are: we are people with disabilities.” (Brown, p. 80-81)
In the first writing of this “Fact Sheet,” I mentioned several specific artists. But in the years since, Disability Culture has advanced so rapidly there are far too many practitioners to isolate only a few. In a web search on August 2, 2011, the phrase “disability culture” returned 12,900,000 hits on Google and 50,700,000 hits on Yahoo. A starting point to explore some of these resources is the Institute on Disability Culture “Links and Resources” pages, included in the following References and Resources.
References and Resources
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. PL 101-336.
http://www.ada.gov/
ADAPT. http://www.adapt.org/
Brown, Steven E. (2003). Movie Stars and Sensuous Scars: Essays on the Journey from Disability Shame to Disability Pride. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.
Disability Rag (Ragged Edge online).
http://ragged-edge-mag.com/
Institute on Disability Culture.
http://www.instituteondisabilityculture.org/
MAINSTREAM: Magazine of the Able-Disabled. http://mainstream-mag.com/
Mouth: Voice of the Disability Nation. http://www.mouthmag.com/
People First. http://www.peoplefirst.org/
United Nations Enable: http://www.un.org/disabilities/
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