Our friend "Blue Wren" has asked that we post something about disability and language because Connie, in her post about Walgreen’s effort to recruit employees with disabilities mentioned their unfortunate use of the word "handicapped". Wren wonders why the term handicapped might be offensive or in turn, why it is any more offensive than the term disability.
I feel like a man who is poised to enter a mine field but here goes:
Disability emerged as a term during the 19th century and it was first widely used by the German economist Karl Marx to designate workers who had been injured in the factories and who in turn could no longer work. In effect, disablement meant economic disablement in the world of industrial economy.
I don’t like the word "disabled" and I don’t like the glued on article, "the" as in "the disabled" since that term takes the humanity out of our village. In Britain they prefer the term "persons with disabilities" in an effort to solve this problem. Still, one is haunted by the historical negative concerning employment in the term. So the "D" word isn’t all that good.
Handicap means that a person is physically unable to perform an essential life task and there’s nothing wrong with the term except that for many people with disabilities it feels old fashioned: a handicapped person calls to mind someone who is quasi helpless. A friend who is a wheelchair user once put it to me this way: "turn the word around and it means having your cap in your hand".
My friend, the poet and nonfiction writer Nancy Mairs calls herself a cripple. She has written a wonderful essay on that decision called "On Being a Cripple". Many people with disabilities also use the term "crip" in the same way. The idea is that if there’s no good language for disability then why not use the old nasty pejorative lingo to good effect and be up front about it?
The big issue is economic. Capitalist economies don’t generally have enough imagination to employ and include people who have physical differences in the work force. Rather than solve this we tend to spend time fashioning varieties of euphemisms when what we really mean is: "a person who the society doesn’t want to include in the work place or the mainstream". I have often argued that we should substitute for the word "disability" or the term "people with disabilities"a new phrase: "Officially Socially Marginalized People".
As I said above, this feels like walking in a minefield. The accommodations that I need in order to work effectively in a white collar environment cost money. How much money? I’d estimate that I cost about 3,000 additional dollars because I need to read and scan texts using talking computers and peripheral devices. Of course the costs of these gizmos goes down year by year.
It does in fact cost employers a bit more to hire people with disabilities. There are progressive employers in our capitalist economy who believe in this kind of inclusion. There are tens of thousands of corporations and companies that do not believe in this principle and these enterprises look for ways to take their operations overseas where they can employ people without the pesky costs associated with occupational safety and medical benefits.
I told you this was a minefield.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
I was about to say what Kay said. Handicap came originally a gambling game, hundreds of years ago, became common use in gambling (see it’s regular usage in golf and horse-racing) and was only came into use for us lot in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, the myth that it’s about begging is very pervasive.
Also, for some reason, the area that it stuck on longest seemed to be intellectual impairments; when I was growing up, my uncle was always described as “mentally handicapped” even though I can’t remember regarding people with physical impairments as anything other than disabled.
Some people take against “disabled” because of it’s use in computer language; if something is disabled, it is turned off, rendered completely non-functioning.
But “people with…” I cannot abide (although if I kicked up a fuss every time I saw it, I wouldn’t be very popular!). I don’t have disability; disability is something that I experience.
However, all this language is imperfect and most attempts at addressing it have involved changing the way we understand the words as opposed to trying to find new words.
On the Ouch! Blog where I’m guest-blogging just now, I did a post about what we should call non-disabled people (able-bodied, normies etc.). One non-disabled person suggested that given the difficulties folks have with saying the right thing, he’d like to be called “disability-challenged”. 😉
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Though apparently it is not true, so many people do believe that “handicapped” comes from disabled people begging cap in hand in the streets. That association alone is enough to make me wish the word would go away, but I also find that use of “handicap” versus “disabled” is a bit of a barometer on how well a person is educated about disability rights. It’s useful to me to hear one or the other in discussion and know that much. But, “disabled” is bothersome to me too. If there were a catchy catch-all alternative, I’d go for it.
“Officially Socially Marginalized People”? Accurate, but not so catchy. 😉
Have a good trip.
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Hi Moggy,
Thanks for introducing yourself and sharing your thoughts.
I just took a quick look at your blog and look forward to returning to explore further. Right now though I have to get ready for a trip to SC.
Thanks for stopping by…
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Hello! I think I’ve commented perhaps once before, but I’m new as a regular reader. 🙂 Just as a quick fyi — I’m autistic (among other things), so while my writing might sound aggressive, it’s not intended that way at all.
I agree on the language seeming like a minefield, that’s for sure…
“Handicap means that a person is physically unable to perform an essential life task…”
Odd, I’ve usually seen the term used in the more generic sense of having an impairment… I know that the origins aren’t at all associated with total physical inability… A ‘handicap’ was an extra measure of difficulty given to a strongly talented athlete so others would have a chance of winning. The more powerful the individual, the more severe the handicap.
If viewed that way, it looks more like a variant on the Social Model of Disability… Rather than natural impairments being an issue, it’s a burden imposed by society; “overcoming” it means succeeding despite that artificial hindrance.
I like that it relates to horses, myself, and that it reflects how it felt to succeed in academically advanced classes growing up despite schools sometimes being uncooperative or worse. I don’t say handicapped, though, as I know how the majority of other people feel about it.
I don’t like Person With ___, at least for myself. That construct normally is used in negative views of a trait, and it also suggests the trait isn’t essential to who/what the person is. “Cripple” is good as a reclaimed word, but much like using “able-bodied” as an opposite, it doesn’t include all impairments.
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