The following video is a trailer for a documentary about the Empowered Fe Fes (females). These young disabled women take to the streets of Chicago to interview non-disabled people regarding their feelings about disabilities and the handicapped and disfigured. The women also talk about their experiences of being treated differently and discriminated against because of their physical disability. This video ties in to the Erving Goffman reading from class, “Stigma and Social Identity”, which discusses interactions between the disabled and the non-disabled.
In the video, a disabled interviewer asked a non-disabled man what he would do if he were to become handicapped. The interviewee responded that he would pray to God and ask God to make him like everyone else, meaning a non-disabled person. This reminded me of the part in the reading where it discusses that people develop justifications for discriminating against the disabled.
“Further, we may perceive his defensive response to his situation as a direct expression of his defect, and then see both the defect and response as just retribution for something he or his parents or his tribe did, and hence a justification of the way we treat him” (Goffman, 3).
The interviewee’s would-be plea to God to erase his disability reflects a view that can be held by religious people. A Christian might believe that if you do everything right in your life, you will be rewarded by God. Therefore, that Christian might feel that if one suffers from a handicap, then that person did something wrong and, as a result of their actions, is now being punished by God. This could lead the Christian to feel justified in treating the disabled person harshly, as if the person deserves the disability for some supposed wrongdoing.
A young disabled women in the video describes what non-disabled people call her:
“They call me stupid, slow.”
These words used to describe the girl are what Goffman calls “stigma terms.” These are words that people use to label and marginalize the disabled.
“We use specific stigma terms such as cripple, bastard, moron in our daily discourse as a source of metaphor and imagery, typically without giving thought to the original meaning” (Goffman, 3).
Another disabled girl tells us how she was treated in high school differently because of her physical handicap:
“It was totally awful! Because I would get talked about and put down because of my disability.”
And another girl says how people told her she wasn’t able of accomplishing certain things. They would say:
“You can’t do this, you don’t know how to do that…”
These situations clearly reflects the property of a stigma, that it is an
“attribute that is deeply discrediting.” (Goffman, 2)
– Kelly Reznick
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix8ZPEC4qSE
After reading this article, I could understand the pain and suffering and prejudice against people with handicap in United States. Although pity plays an important role for these people, they are and should be viewed as normal human beings, with the capability to work, and function in society with brain power of a normal being. Although handicaps, have several levels, I personally believe that the reason any person is prejudice against any other person with a disability, because they have a need to feel they are superior to some one else or another group. Some people may not understand a disability a person has, and that not understanding makes them uncomfortable being around the person.