William Peace has written a compelling post about “wheelchair dumping” over at Counterpunch.
He wonders why Americans don’t see abuses against people with
disabilities or crimes against the poor or the elderly as civil rights
issues.
The answer is essentially economic: Ronald Reagan taught Americans
that anything having to do with “minorities” costs money. If a thing
costs money, why by God it must be coming out of the pockets of the
middle class.
(The analogy with Fascist Germany’s public insistence that people
with disabilities were “useless eaters” who cost the ordinary German
pocket money isn’t terribly far fetched.)
In turn, after three decades of this commonplace Reganite
sensibility, Americans can no longer afford to use the term “civil
rights” because the very utterance is a disavowal of the comfortable
assumption that social equity costs too much and will rob the suburbs.
This is why Americans only use the term “civil rights” in a
historical context. We only required civil rights in the “old days”
before the GOP fixed everything.
That’s my “take” but have a look at William Peace’s excellent essay.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 