Book Review: The New Disability History--American Perspectives
The New Disability History: American Perspectives. edited by Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky. New York: New York University Press, 2001.
Reviewed by Laura Hershey
To some ways of thinking, disability is a medical condition; to others, it is a curse. Another view, purportedly more enlightened but actually reflecting a deep discomfort with the subject, holds that disability is really nothing at all, a minor difference best overlooked and unmentioned.
To those of us involved in the disability-rights movement, disability is most accurately described as a profoundly political experience, fraught with conflict. We know that achieving first-class citizenship does not depend upon getting well, nor upon passing as "normal." We know we can only secure independence and equality through struggle. And that struggle is not against the demons of our disabilities. That struggle -- let's be frank -- is against powerful political, economic, and cultural institutions and attitudes conceived and run by nondisabled people who have a vested interest in controlling our destinies.
The essays in The New Disability History: American Perspectives narrate many of the battles disabled people have had to wage for self-respect, autonomy, opportunity, and survival. Some of these battles have been waged in courtrooms, some in state legislatures, some in the pages of magazines. Throughout U.S. history, disabled people have had to organize in order resist the dominant culture's tendency to dismiss and/or bully them. As editors Paul Longmore and Lauri Umansky summarize in their Introduction, "People with disabilities themselves, as individuals and in organized associations, have, in all eras, struggled to control definitions of their social identity, to direct their social careers." (p. 2)
A few examples:
Deaf Americans have fought long and hard for the right to be educated in their own language, American Sign Language, as described in Susan Burch's "Reading between the Signs: Defending Deaf Culture in Early Twentieth-Century America." Burch's essay provides a thorough and fascinating chronicle of this ongoing controversy, illuminating its many dimensions. "Historians have commonly assumed that oralism triumphed in early twentieth-century deaf education," Burch writes. "In fact, Deaf people demonstrated consistent agency in their fight to maintain a role in Deaf education." (p. 214)
Soldiers injured in the First World War found themselves having to dispute medicalized definitions and racist stereotypes in order to claim compensation for their war-related injuries and illnesses. This predicament is described in "Medicine, Bureaucracy, and Social Welfare: The Politics of Disability Compensation for American Veterans of World War I," by K. Walter Hickel.
Several of the essays eerily evoke contemporary trends. Several recent stories of fathers killing their disabled children -- children like Christopher Rowe and Tracy Latimer -- prove to be nothing new. Two similar crimes occurred in 1939, as Janice A. Brockley describes in her essay "Martyred Mothers and Merciful Fathers: Exploring Disability and Motherhood in the Lives of Jerome Greenfield and Raymond Repouille." In both of these cases, boys with significant mental and physical impairments were murdered by their fathers. The subsequent trials, and press coverage, portrayed the fathers as responsible and compassionate, their killings as acts of mercy; and presented the mothers, in contrast, as unreasonable and foolish for trying to protect their "flawed" children.
Nondisabled citizens and scholars have remained largely unaware of these battles -- a fact which is beginning to change, as the field of disability studies has grown in sophistication, scope, and status. Still, historians and other researchers continue to overlook the importance and complexity of disability issues, resulting in an incomplete picture of U.S. society. The New Disability History: American Perspectives sets out to "bring disability from the margins to the center of historical inquiry," (p. 52) in the words of historian Douglas C. Baynton, a contributor to the volume.
In Baynton's chapter, "Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History," he makes clear that this field of inquiry is critical not only for understanding the experiences of disabled people, but also for analyzing the widespread oppression that has characterized U.S. history. "Disability has functioned historically to justify inequality for disabled people themselves, but it has also done so for women and minority groups," Baynton writes. "The concept of disability has been used to justify discrimination against other groups by attributing disability to them." (p. 33)
As a disability-rights activist committed to the ideals of equity, integration, and self-determination, I found my beliefs deepened by the new knowledge I gained from reading The New Disability History. These essays illuminate disabled people's struggles and aspirations, in all their complexity.
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