September 7, 2014 - 17:17
The Supercrip story is one that sticks with me, one that I think about every day. Supercrip – the disabled people who “overcome” their disability and become inspirations for people.
The dominant paradigm is, I think, that these Supercrips are people who have a single “severe” disability. As Clare gives as examples – “A boy without hands bats .486 on his Little League team. A blind man hikes the Appalachian Trail form end to end. An adolescent girl with Down's syndrome learns to drive and has a boyfriend. A guy with one leg runs across Canada.” [2] In these examples, every individual is described with their disability as the focus, and they have a singular disability or their disability is condensed to a single word/idea.
What if your disability has a variety of symptoms? What if you have multiple disabilities? What if you have an invisible disability? These people are never Supercrips – and if they are, it all is erased. Not only are the Supercrip stories ableist, classist, and a bunch of other harmful things, they also don't detail how disabled people often have to fight to be recognized, have to fight against the ableist remarks or forced assumptions along the lines of, “Stop the laziness” and “___ other person with this disability can do this, why can't you” and other such nonsense. Comparing disabilities is as ridiculous as comparing ability. I have a friend who is completely able-bodied and has two legs – why can't she run a marathon like other able-bodied people with two legs? We don't tell her that she can do anything she wants, just has to want it hard enough – which is what the Supercrip story tells the disabled just as much as the woman at the base of the mountains told Clare as he left [9].
This line of thinking is connected to classism as well. The narratives are similar and often intertwined. The “bootstrap” theory revolves around this same 'want it hard enough' idea, the same 'don't be lazy, other people have done it' statement.
In both the disabled and class sense, this is all about resources - about access, employment, wealth. “[P]oor people are made responsible for their own poverty” [12] and in hand their malnutrition, their systematic oppression, and their other identities (race, ability, sexuality, education, etc) that affects their poverty. Disabled people are often made responsible for their own disabilities that stem from their impairments – so if you're disabled and malnourished, oppressed, and your other identities affect your disability and access, it's also your fault.
Not only are there parallels, though, they go hand in hand. Are you older and disabled? You most likely live in poverty or, if you had wealth, you have service providers to help with your disability. Poor and get hurt while working? You're going to stay poor and disabled. Born with a disability while poor and black? You're going to have little access to getting the tools you need to survive in an able -bodied and -minded world – in an “enabled” world.