Rants & Ruminations on Ethics & Disability
Rants & Ruminations on Ethics & Disability
Super Crips & Ambivalence Amplification
Katz’ classic studies of stigma and ambivalence amplification are important for understanding social reactions to disability. This work demonstrates that it is rarely useful to think that there are good people with good attitudes and bad people with bad attitudes. Instead, Katz tells us that we all share some good and some bad attitudes. For most of us, the good attitudes come out when everything is going okay. As long as a person with a disability is doing as well or better than everyone else, we are generous in our appraisals. We may even rate their performance as better than everyone else’s, because, after all, they accomplished something “in spite of enormous obstacles.”
Everybody loves stories about savants.
The bad attitudes tend to come out, however, when something goes wrong. The problem, whatever it may be, tends to be seen as an extension of the person and his or her disability, rather than just the luck of the draw.
This theory has a lot to say about “super crips.” When people have to be “perfect” to be seen as just as good as anyone else, there is a lot of pressure to excel. Of course, there are many people with disabilities who are gifted and talented, and no one should be expected to “hide their light under a basket” just because they don’t want to be labelled as an overcompensating super crip.. But people with disabilities should also be allowed to have the same faults and vulnerabilities as the rest of us. — Dick Sobsey
Thursday, December 13, 2007