Disability, Identity, and Phantom Acceptance

In his canonical book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, Erving Goffman observed that the disabled are managed by the non-disabled with “phantom acceptance”–a dance of sorts where the disabled must replicate with every gesture the provisional codes of acceptance that “stigma management” has offered. Goffman puts it elegantly:

 

“The stigmatized individual is asked to act so as to imply neither that his burden is heavy nor that bearing it has made him different from us; at the same time he must keep himself at that remove from us which assures our painlessly being able to confirm this belief about him. Put differently, he is advised to reciprocate naturally with an acceptance of himself and us, an acceptance of him that we have not quite extended to him in the first place. A PHANTOM ACCEPTANCE is thus allowed to provide the base for a PHANTOM NORMALCY.”

 

People of color, LGBT folks, women, all those who hail from historically marginalized positions know this dance and fully understand their precarious position where phantom acceptance and phantom normalcy are concerned. The unspoken but implicit rules of discourse are famous: your phantom acceptance is conditional. Speak too passionately and you're “uppity”; a bitch; or a “bad cripple”. Contrarian opinions will disrupt the expectations that go with false acceptance. The burden borne by the uppity cripple is two-fold: (s)he must perform or conduct “identity management” at all costs; (s)he must negotiate the limits of the false acceptance that's been extended to her. But above all else (s)he must never raise her voice.

 

I've had a career teaching at 4 universities and have worked in the non-profit world as well. I've watched the disabled struggle with phantom acceptance and identity management in hundreds of settings. Over time I've come to believe the single biggest reason the disabled are unemployed at staggering levels has everything to do with the hoary circumstances Goffman outlined over fifty years ago. It seems some books just don't wear out.

 

Not long ago someone in a committee meeting called me a bully. I was speaking passionately but without vulgarity, ad hominem attacks, or meanness. But there it was: I'd stepped over the phantom acceptance identity management line–the invisible but ever present stigma trip wire of Goffmanism. I was officially uppity.

 

I was badly bullied as a child. I've written about it in two of my memoirs. I was a blind kid attending public school long before the Americans with Disabilities Act. I was beaten on the playground, taunted in the hallways, ostracized by both teachers and children. I've never forgotten what it felt like to be red faced and weeping alone in the woods. Someone who calls me a bully is of course outing my phantom acceptance but also demonstrates a failure of empathy. As a disabled person who teaches I always feel the implicit connection with my colleagues and students who negotiate daily around the Goffman wire. Bully is a synonym for uppity, which means something more than arrogance–in its original usage it meant a woman who presumed to climb beyond her proper station. I'm no bully. But just try saying it out loud under the great phantom circus tent.