Options
An interesting article about prejudice against people with disabilities
pugamo
Posts: 18,039 Forum Member
✭✭
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/04/ian-birrell-prejudice-against-disabled
"Polls have found substantial increases in the number of disabled people experiencing aggression and abuse, with evidence that the attitudes of the rest of society towards them are worsening. Many disabled people were already scared to go out after dark or travel on public transport such is their justified fear of encountering hostility."
I would be interested to hear the views of someone who has a disability on this article. Apparantly as money becomes tighter, so people grow to use the disabled as a scapegoat, blaming them for being "scroungers". I had no idea this was going on, if so it is very sad and worrying.
"Polls have found substantial increases in the number of disabled people experiencing aggression and abuse, with evidence that the attitudes of the rest of society towards them are worsening. Many disabled people were already scared to go out after dark or travel on public transport such is their justified fear of encountering hostility."
I would be interested to hear the views of someone who has a disability on this article. Apparantly as money becomes tighter, so people grow to use the disabled as a scapegoat, blaming them for being "scroungers". I had no idea this was going on, if so it is very sad and worrying.
0
Comments
It's not even that which troubled me about the article though, its about the fact that abuse against the disabled is getting worse. The idea of disabled people being treated like a scapegoat for the countries financial problems, worsened or even instigated by the media, is like a big step back into the 1950's or similar unenlightened era. I don't understand how people can hate others to the point of shouting abuse at them because they don't feel well enough to work!
It's these small number of people that give those with disabilities a bad name, the majority are mostly doing the best they can in trying circumstances.
Unfortunately, there has been a sickening politicisation of this abuse, even though it was happening long before this government was elected and will happen regardless of who is in power. It has nothing to do with any government policies. It is simply to do with the nasty attitudes some people have and these people need taking out of society so that the types of people they target will be safer from them.
Though it is separate, there are also some disabled people who take advantage of or are hostile to the kindness of others. If the people who experience this treatment from disabled people think all disabled people are the same, they may be less helpful to disabled people in the future. The people they tell about their experiences may also be less helpful.
Where do you work?
Yes but the type of person who would label all disabled people after one or even a few bad experiences are tossers anyway, and their oppinion should be discounted.
I repair televisions.
.....
the people you describe are the absolute minority though - and would probably be the same type of person disabled or not. My son is classified as disabled though I havent picked up his disabled card, never refer to him as disabled and certainly havent shared the label with him (hes 9) - and although he knows he is 'different' and has 'issues' he wouldnt use them as a weapon for specialist treatment - rather he uses them as a 'weapon' to get the same treatment as his peers.
I doubt this is as big an issue as the papers make out - and my faith in humanity makes me hope this isnt a reflection of our society - if it truly is then I am just quite ashamed.
For a start you can't just lump all disabled people in together as if they are one big group, there are 1000s of disabilities and all of them are different, with different needs and different effects on the person who has it.
The trouble with articles like these is they are in danger of over simplifying disability. I mean just look at the picture they've used a boy in a wheel chair stuck in a darkened room.
There already is a law, it's called the "Disability and the Equality Act 2010".
Stop creating fights were there isn't any trouble.
I went to a college a while back that was set up for people with health problems and disabilities. There were some great staff there but when it came to management, jeez it was f*cked up. People were made to feel really special! and not in a good way.
Discrimination doesn't magically stop the second a law is introduced. I'm not talking about laws, I'm talking about public perception, which is the crux of the issue.
That's the thing. Whilst abusing the disabled is clearly evil, patronising them and treating them all like helpless simpletons isn't much better.
Please give me examples where the general public discriminate against disabled people where doing the same wouldn't be acceptable in terms of race or sexuality (as you originally claimed).
Not a one off incident featuring an obviously nasty person, but the general public.
Sadly, this very informative article reflects the reality for many people with disabilities.
The way that people with disabilities have been falsely portrayed, leading to gross misconceptions by the general public, was also highlighted in a recent report for Inclusion London which found that:
• A significant increase in the reporting of disability in the print media,
• A reduction in the proportion of articles which describe people in sympathetic and deserving terms, and a fall also in stories that document ‘real life’ experiences of living as a disabled person, with people with mental health issues and other ‘hidden’ impairments more likely to be presented as ‘undeserving’,
• A more than 100% increase in articles focusing on disability benefit fraud from 2004/5 to the present, despite such fraud being extremely low. When focus groups were asked to describe a typical story in the newspapers, disability fraud was the most common theme,
• A significant increase in the use of pejorative language to describe disabled people. The use of terms such as ‘scrounger’, ‘cheat’ and ‘skiver’ was found in 50 per cent more articles in 2010/11 compared to 2004/5,
• An increase in articles portraying disabled people as a ‘burden’ on the economy – with some articles even blaming the recession on incapacity benefit claimants,
• That this coverage is impacting on people’s perceptions: focus groups all claimed that levels of fraud were much higher than they are in reality, with some suggesting up to 70% of claimants were fraudulent (the actual official DWP estimates are 0.3% for IB and 0.5% for DLA). They justified these claims by reference to article they had read in newspapers,
• Disabled people are feeling threatened by the way disability is being reported as well as by proposed changes to benefits – with the two combining and reinforcing each other.
If you look at the actual evidence, you cannot help but come to the conclusion that the portrayal of people with disabilities has been totally inaccurate, leading to many people having a completely false picture. That in turn has led to a significant increase in hostility towards people with disabilities.
How can you know the amount of fraud, it's like trying to put a number on illegal immigrants. If you don't know about them, how can you count (or even estimate) it?
The DWP are hardly going to make themselves look incompetant by admitting a high levels of fraud are they?
They are done within the same standard statistical variations that many other organisations, such as the OECD, use.
The confidence levels used in the DWP estimates mean that, using DLA as a example, they are 95% sure that the true fraud figure is between 0.2% and 0.8% (hence the 0.5%figure in the report). Obviously, no estimate is going to be 100% accurate, but it certainly shows to any reasonable person that the fraud figure is very low.
Also, the National Fraud Authority reported that benefit fraud and tax credits fraud combined only account for 7% of public sector fraud. Estimated DLA and IB fraud, combined, account for just over 5% of that 7% figure!
Although all fraud is indefensible, the obsession that some people have with a comparatively minor area of total fraud is rather baffling to anyone with an open, non-prejudiced mind.
Obviously the exact numbers are unknown, but lets' face it, it's extremely, extremely unlikely that the fraud rate is 70%.
Few examples...
The UK abortion limit is 24 weeks. Unless the foetus is disabled, at which point there is no limit. So, if you were pregnant with a child with, say, Downs it would be perfectly legal to abort that child at 39 weeks. This isn't regularly challenged.
There's "does he take sugar" syndrome, in which a question that ought to be posed to the disabled person is instead asked to the able person standing next to them. Also, disabled people are frequently patronised, or assumed not to understand certain concepts. This doesn't happen because people are being nasty, this happens because people make assumptions, because they weren't educated about disability. With disabled people, incapabilty is often assumed. This is rarely challenged.
Groups that discuss disability positively often face very negative reactions. Deaf culture and Mad pride, for instance. The idea that a disabled person might not wish to be 'cured' is shocking to a lot of people. This shock is thought to be perfectly reasonable.
If "Retard" is used as a slur on television, there isn't likely to be much of a backlash.