Disability and Hate Crimes

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Name: Bear Wheelz
Email: bearwhlz@netscape.net
Date: 26 Jun 2000
Time: 16:10:55
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Recently, the US Senate, once again, passed a hate crimes bill that recognized, among other things, that a crime motivated by prejudice against people with disabilities fits the legal definition of a "hate crime." It is doubtful that the bill will go anywhere, this year, as it's too late (of course) for the conservative House to begin discussing the bill.

Having once identified myself among the able-bodied majority, it comes as little surprise to me that this seemingly reasonable legal realization should be so long in coming. How many indignities, obscenities, even horrors are committed every day, that are not seen as "crimes," until they happen to the person defining them? Much has been made of the fact that the US legal system targets racial minorities, i.e., "D.W.B.," or "driving while black." It's recognized by citizens of color as a cause for traffic tickets here in the Detroit, MI area. Our prison system holds an unreasonably high percentage of people from non-white minority groups. I have read numerous newspaper articles and seen many TV interviews focusing on these abuses.

How often do we see front-page headlines trumpeting involuntary institutionalization of the elderly, the mentally ill, and disabled people without the financial means to buy their independence? Isn't involuntary imprisonment a crime? Isn't this a "crime manifesting evidence of prejudice?" Where are the articles and interviews about inadequate care and slip-shod oversight of "nursing homes?" Isn't forcing someone to live in dirt and deprivation considered "abuse," and "neglect," when it is done to children? How can it not be a crime when it happens to our mothers and fathers, our brothers and sisters?

If any other minority, racial, ethnic, or religious, were targeted for such widespread imprisonment and torture, there would be no question that "hate crimes" were being committed by the institutions, hospitals, schools, and families that commit the atrocities.

How about the crimes of neglect committed by governmental agencies and businesses who base quality of care on ability to pay, creating a hierarchy of wealth in the Disability community? Right now, through hard work and good fortune or God's blessing, I'm able to support myself, and maintain my independence. How many others, like myself, live in fear of the day that the ability, the luck, the blessings prove insufficient to keep us out of "The Home" or force us to try to survive (as so many of us already do!) on the meager benefits of SSI and Medicare.

The Senate, like the rest of the nation, and the world, is too late. It's time for the A.B. population to confront the obvious and realize that "we are them," and our standard of care is the prime indicator of how they will live their lives when they join us, here in the Disability Community.

Copyright © 2000 K.B. Hetrick. All rights reserved.

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Date: 26 May 2008
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