I therefore welcome the oppor-tunity to consider the ways in which ableism worked in concertwith racism to undermine justice in the government’s responseto the Katrina disaster. We must craft a vision of the right andthe good in society that is adequately nuanced with respect toall social boundaries and the ways in which they interact witheach other.Discussing the inconsistent and inequitable provision ofemergency services during and after Katrina, Zack observesthat “prior disadvantage included at least disability and age, aswell as race and class” (Zack, 100). The available statistics onKatrina-related deaths are broken down by race (with a signifi-cant amount of missing information), gender, and age, but not bydisability status.1According to the National Council on Dis-ability, however, 23.2 percent of the residents of New Orleans atthe time of Katrina—over 102,000 people—were disabled.2Ihave heard surprise at this figure (“nearly a quarter of the resi-dents of New Orleans are disabled?”), but it is consistent withnational statistics. According to the 2000 census, 19.3 percent ofthe United States population age five and older are disabled.3In an insightful blog posted shortly after Katrina, MichaelBérubé—a Penn State literature professor, social critic, and dis-ability rights advocate—reflects on the invisibility of disabilityin our nation’s public discourse. Bérubé begins by noting scath-ingly the media’s racism in representing the harm done to poor,Race, Disability, and the Social ContractAnna StubblefieldRutgers University104-111Stubblefield.pm5/22/09, 2:55 PM104Race, Disability, and the Social Contract105black residents of New Orleans through the mishandling ofemergency response to Katrina. He argues that while focus onKatrina made race visible in our national discourse for at leasta brief moment, sometimes in useful and much more often inharmful ways (for example, the portrayal of black residents as“looting” while white residents “searched for food”), disabilityremained invisible, even when it was right there in front of us:recall the image of the dead woman in the wheelchair outsidethe Superdome. As Bérubé writes:Wesaw people in wheelchairs. We saw patients on gurneys. Weread about people abandoned in nursing homes; we heard of peoplewith cognitive disabilities trapped in houses with rising water. Weheard about the sick and the elderly and the dying … but nowherein mainstream media was this rendered, or understood, under amore general heading of ‘disability’ … Individual persons withdisabilities were depicted as objects of charity, or horror, or pity;but disability as a category of human identity, disability as a socialand political fact, disabilityas a factor in public policyremainedinconceivable.4Wecannot create a more just nationif we donot acknowledgedisability as a significant public policy concern. Inapproachingthis challengeas politicalphilosophers,we must address dis-ability in our theoretical work.Zack’s paper is drawn from her forthcoming book,Ethics forDisaster,in which she argues that government within the socialcontract tradition has an obligation to assist citizens in disasterpreparation and response. But who are these “citizens”? All toooften, theorists represent people without disabilities as self-sufficient and disabled people as dependent, thereby excludingdisabled people from participation in the social contract. Dis-cussing the responsibility of citizens to prepare for disasters,Zack states:Any small group can prepare for disaster by … thinking aboutwhat they would do and what their normal obligations to care forthemselves and others require them to do in a disaster. Collectingrainwater, basic first aid, and light search and rescue are examplesof survival skills now within the reach of all U.S. residents….Everybody who has dependents, whether professionally orpersonally, can begin to figure out what their needs would be in adisaster. (Zack, 96)It is not the case that “collecting rain water, basic first aid,and light search and rescue” are survival skills within the reachof all U.S. residents. Some disabled residents of the United Statesmay not be able to perform these functions. The conjunction of areference to survival skills with a call to those “with dependents”104-111Stubblefield.pm5/22/09, 2:55 PM105106Anna Stubblefieldto plan for the needs of their dependents constructs those whocannot perform survival skills as dependents who cannot parti-cipate in planning for their own needs.When we conceive of the social contract in the Lockean senseas an agreement between autonomous, self-sufficient heads ofhousehold to protect first and foremost their property rights,anyone who we take to be dependent is excluded, both practi-cally and theoretically. Women of all races and nonwhite menhave historically beenoutliersto the social contract on this basis,but so have disabled people.The notion that disabled people are inherently dependent iscaptured by what disability studies scholars call the medicalmodel of disability. According to the medical model, what makespeople either normal or disabled is the way their bodies andminds function. “Normal” people have sound bodies and minds;“disabled” people have damaged or dysfunctional bodies or minds.A person who is disabled can only become able if his impair-ment is cured. If it is permanent, the person simply has to livewith limitations. If these limitations prevent individuals fromeither participating as full citizens or from receiving equal pro-tection under the law, then this reflects the fact that somethingis wrong with their bodies or minds.When we understand dis/ability as a social construction, a dif-ferent picture emerges. What disables a person is not her physi-cal attributes, but rather that the environment in which she livesmakes it difficult for a person with her attributes to function. Forexample, what disables people who use wheelchairs is not thelack of function of their legs, but rather architecture designed tomeet the needs only of people who walk. If buildings, sidewalks,and parking lots were wheelchair accessible, people who usewheelchairs would not be disabled. Furthermore, people who usewheelchairs are disabled when others treat them as if wheel-chair usemakesthe wheelchair userlesshuman. Peoplewho usewheelchairs are not disabled in this way when others recognizethat requiring a wheelchair for mobility is simply an anomaly:atypical for a human, but not a characteristic that underminesa person’s humanity.The social interpretation also applies to the concept of cogni-tive disability. In this case, people are disabled by an environ-ment in which the definition of a successful or full life is basedon limited notions of independence, mastery of certain intellec-tual and social skills, and competitive accomplishment. Peoplewho are unsuccessful in these narrowly defined ways are dis-abled when they are therefore treated as less than fully human:deprived of the opportunity to challenge themselves develop-mentally, participate as citizens, use their skills and talents tomake contributions to society in ways that are beneficial to them-selves and others and meaningful to them, and enjoy full protec-tion of their rights.104-111Stubblefield.pm5/22/09, 2:55 PM106Race, Disability, and the Social Contract107Toinclude people with disabilities as full participants in asocial contract model, we have to abandon the dichotomybetween self-sufficiency and dependence. Whether or not one isfinancially self-supporting and making material contributions tothe general economy, whether or not one is able to engage inbasic life activities without assistance, or even—in the case ofcognitive disability—whether or not one is able to make andcarry out life plans without support would have to have nobearing on one’s status as a fully participating member of thesocial contract.InFrontiers of Justice,Martha Nussbaum argues that aban-doning the dichotomy between self-sufficiency and dependencein this way is inconsistent with social contract theory, and shetherefore rejects the social contract approach as failing to reflectthe needs of real human beings.5On the other hand, AnitaSilvers and Leslie Francis have argued for a revised under-standing of the social contract that would include all membersof a society regardless of self-sufficiency. In “Justice ThroughTrust: Disability and the ‘Outlier Problem’ in Social ContractTheory,” they argue that the value of the social contract approachto justice lies in its construction of citizens as deserving ofrespect as choosers in a broad sense of the term. Consequently,parties to the contract function as a source of political and moraljustification. According to Silvers and Francis:The challenge disabled people pose for social contract theory hasbeen misplaced and misunderstood. To embrace them, philosophicaltheory need not discard the ideal that justice in principle shouldemerge from committed participation by all. Meeting the challengerequires instead letting go of the presumption that cooperativehuman behavior reduces to reiterations of reciprocal dyadic inter-actions between similarly positioned individuals.6In other words, we must move beyond conceiving of the socialcontract as a glorified version of “you scratch my back and I’llscratch yours,” agreed to by parties who are equally powerfuland can manage without each other.Revising the social contract to incorporate people with dis-abilities is preferable to Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. InFrontiers of Justice,Nussbaum argues that all people have aright to themeansto achieve certainforms offunctioning. Inmore recent work in progress that she shared at a conference oncognitive disability in September 2008, she argued further thataccess toparticipationas a citizen—with assistance or by proxyas necessary for people with significant cognitive or physicalrestrictions—is a crucial aspect of well-being.7A vital elementof citizenship is lost, however, when we think first and foremostin terms of welfare rather than in terms of participation in theprocess through which welfare is provided. It is the subtle differ-104-111Stubblefield.pm5/22/09, 2:55 PM107108Anna Stubblefieldence between beginning with welfare and including politicalparticipation as a component of welfare, as opposed to beginningwith political participation as the means through which every-one has a role in defining and providing welfare. Society hasvalue not only as a tool for ensuring welfare but as a cooper-ative venture. The slogan of the disability rights movement is“Nothing about us without us,” because for far too long oursociety has at best constructed disabled people as dependentswith needs that should be met, but not as active participants inthe social project. At worst, and this is still the rule rather thanthe exception, our society relegates disabled people to the mar-gins and their needs are not met at all.Despite the 1990 passage of the Americans with DisabilitiesAct (ADA)—the culmination of attempts by disability rightsadvocates to align public policy with the social interpretation ofdisability—the medical model still holds sway in the UnitedStates. As a result, disabled Americans continue to be excludedfrom full protection of their rights as citizens. Survey datacollected in 2000 indicated that only 32 percent of disabledpeople questioned were employed full- or part-time, comparedwith 81 percent of nondisabledpeople. Two-thirds ofunemployeddisabled persons reported that they would prefer to be working.Twenty-nine percent of disabled people were living in povertywith household incomes of $15,000 per year or less, comparedwith 10 percent of nondisabled people. Twenty-eight percent ofdisabled people reported that they had deferred needed healthcare because they could not afford it, as compared to 12 percentof nondisabled people.8The effectiveness of the ADA has beenseverely limited by Supreme Court rulings that have reinforceda medical model understanding of disability by requiring plain-tiffs, contrary to the intent of the ADA, to demonstrate that theyare disabled by impairment rather than by how they are treatedbyothers.9But what does disability have to do with race? A completeanswer to this question could easily fill a book, so I will only ges-ture at the answer. Turning to the past, chattel slavery was aconspicuous producer of disability. Loss of limbs, vision, and hear-ing were common results of corporal punishment and physicalhardship. Poor maternal health and healthcare led to physicaland cognitive impairment in children, as did accidents and dis-ease.10Beginning in the nineteenth century, the project of sup-posedly measuring intelligence, upon which the classification ofcognitive disability continues to rest, developed as a means tojustify the exclusion of nonwhite and not-quite-white peoplefrom the social contract.11This dynamic continues to play outtoday, as schools disproportionately label black students in par-ticular—along with Hispanic and Native American students inmany cases—as intellectually impaired and move them to segre-gated special education classrooms and schools.12104-111Stubblefield.pm5/22/09, 2:55 PM108Race, Disability, and the Social Contract109In contemporary society, poverty results in disability anddisability results in poverty. Because black and many other non-white Americans disproportionately experience poverty, theydisproportionately experience disability. Disability results frompoor healthcare, low-birth-weight and premature birth, exposureto environmental toxins like lead and air pollution, and violence.War causes disability, and black Americans constitute a dispro-portionate percentage of the lowest ranks of the United StatesArmed Forces, those who are most likely to be harmed while onactive duty. Being more likely to experience disability and lesslikely to receive the best social services is a significant aspect ofthe legacy of racism with which black Americans must cope.Our nation’s discourse around disability and resources placespoor, black Americans—those who suffered most as a result ofthemismanagement of response to Katrina—in a double bind,as captured in Bérubé’s blog. The blog is based upon a talk thatBérubé gave a few weeks after Katrina at a Pennsylvania Asso-ciation of Rehabilitation Facilities conference at Penn State Uni-versity. According to Bérubé, conference participants on anotherpanel pointed out that Medicaid is the major funding source forhundreds of disability-service providers throughout the country.Yet legislators are loathe to increase support for Medicaidbecause they do not want to be seen as proponents of “welfarespending.” Rehabilitation support advocates at the conferenceurged their allies to help legislators understand that supportingMedicaid is not “welfare spending as you traditionally know it.”The problem, as Bérubé explains, is:Wealready knew that the United States has the worst health-and-human-services policies, for people in poverty, of any industrializednation, and we already knew that this had everything to do withthe fact that many Americans, and their elected representatives,think of the poor as so many shiftless Negroes. But now we haveanother dynamic to consider: according to the logic of stigma andabjection by which American politics operates, disability advocacygroups will be funded under Medicaidto the extent to which theycan rhetorically distinguish people with disabilities from African-Americans in poverty.From single mothers and their innumerablebabies. From welfare spending as you traditionally know it.13This is a rhetoric that pits the supposedly “deserving” and“undeserving” poor against each other for resources. It leavespoor, black Americans with disabilities—including those who aresingle mothers—with the conundrum of how to distinguish them-selves from poor, black Americans and single mothers.If we try to address disability oppression without acknowl-edging its entanglement with racial oppression and racial oppres-sion without acknowledging its entanglement with disabilityoppression, we will not achieve social justice in our nation. If we104-111Stubblefield.pm5/22/09, 2:55 PM109asekeep the questions showingand type your answersbeneath them. Thank you!Questions1.Throughout the article, how is disability discussed with relation to race, age, andgender? Give 3 brief examples with their page numbers.~Continued next pageHumanities 2319: Minority Cultures in the U.S.Professor Stamper, Lone Star College, CyFair, p.22.On the first page, Stubblefield writes that she has “heard surprise at this figure . . . but itis consistent with national statistics” (104). What is she discussing, and what is thenational statistic?3.On P. 104-105, Stubblefield discusses a blog post by professor Michael Bérubé. Whatdoes he say about how people with disabilities were portrayed in the media during andafter Katrina? And, what “remained inconceivable?” (105)4.On p. 105, Stubblefield examines how the concept of “citizens” is understood andportrayed – how is this concept written about in this section?5.What does this idea mean: “When we understand dis/ability as a social construction, adifferent picture emerges” (p. 106)?6.According to Stubblefield, what has to happen to “include people with disabilities as fullparticipants in a social contract model” (p. 107)?7.Stubblefield argues that we need to revise the social contract on p. 107. How does shethink it should be revised,and what do you thinkabout the idea/argument
