Disabilities leave stains in people's lives.

University Degree Subjects allied to Medicine

December 11th, 2002

Disabilities Leave Stains in People’s Lives

Many times, by my family or friends, I’ve heard that it is not appropriate to occupy a disability parking space, walk and skate through the disability ramps on the streets to go into buildings, or go through the automatic sliding doors that are for people with disabilities, etc. I do agree with not doing these things because these facilities are there for people who suffer of a major disability problem. Many of these people that have major disability problems are discriminated. People, who are unable to walk, walk weird or with just one leg, people who suffer of STD’s (especially AIDS and HIV), or disabled in any way are criticized by many. People who suffer of disabilities should be respected, not be discriminated against and even acknowledged because they have to live with these really hard conditions and know how to keep it up with their illnesses everyday.

A perfect example of people who have been discriminated for years because of their problem with AIDS is Africa’s population. In Africa, people are not only discriminated because of their color, but also because of the terrible spread of AIDS that the country is going through, of how unhealthy the majority of its population is. Africans shouldn’t be judged by they fact that many of them are infected by HIV or AIDS because it is not their fault that they are not properly educated like to be aware of these sexually transmitted diseases.

Africa is the country known to have the most population of people infected with Aids and HIV in the world. This is why some people (especially those who racially discriminate) tend to feel sickened when talking about Africans. An article on health in Africa found in the website and written by Brooke Grundfest Schoepf states the following: “Sexual transmission of HIV/AIDS between heterosexual partners predominates in Africa. AIDS is the leading cause of death in youth and young adults in Africa (“title”1)”. In the same page, the article also says that most of the people with AIDS are part of the third world (or poor society) and that out of 40 million people that were reported to be infected by the AIDS virus in the year 1998, around 35 million of them were Africans. Having had that said, we know that many children are born with the virus, transmitted by their mother.

“In many countries, powerful interest groups have treated AIDS, like other STD’s, as a moral issue rather than a health issue. This makes it difficult for some governments to conduct rational prevention campaigns” (Schoepf 5). So society goes farther than just racism. It goes over the line and criticizes this people because other than just a sexually transmitted disease, it’s also “wrong and immoral in the eyes of society”. Not realizing that these comments affect the country’s culture. Now, when it comes to give education, Schoepf says: “Many adults believe that sex education and condoms will increase sexual activity (seen as immorality) among youth, although research carried out in numerous settings shows that this is not the case” (5-6). It is very stupid to think that communication and education are going to keep the problem going: by spreading the knowledge and the sexual education that is appropriate, Africans would know how to take care of themselves. It might take a long time, but it would surely work. Also, it is very selfish to think of it as a society issue and not to concern about a population dying by the lack of education that we could give. I think of it as if we’re keeping something –education- of what we could give some to save many people’s lives, but we just don’t because it’s seen as an illness that only low class people tend to have.

Still knowing that African people just need orientation, and that we could help them by giving them some knowledge, some people keep up the segregation, being racists and ignorant toward this black population. Many keep judging Africans because of the Aids issue and all this is never going to end. Like Schoepf said in his article: “HIV infection will continue to spread among the world’s poor. Since social structures limit the choices people make, stopping AIDS requires eliminating the barriers that deprive women of control over their sexual interactions, and poor men, women, and youth of control over their lives ...

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Now, the other side of the argument is a little bit tough. Sometimes people with AIDS are disgustingly discriminated when applying to a job position. However, people who have AIDS can’t be accepted to work at some places and it is not because of discrimination, but because of health issues. For Example, two people who are applying to a job position. The first job position is to be a secretary for a lawyer’s office. One of the two interested in the job is a smart healthy man, with his good degree. The other one is a very intelligent woman, with more degrees and knowledge than the first person, but she has the virus of AIDS. Knowing how society thinks and how people judge, we can assume that the healthy person has more possibilities to get the position. Why? Well, simply because people who have AIDS are discriminated. Even though this woman has AIDS she can develop the work perfectly for a few years. Now, if we’re talking about a job position at a hospital, where there are patients and health issues are involved, it’s something that should be given a little bit more thought about. A person with AIDS couldn’t work at a hospital, or as a doctor or a surgeon, because there is blood involved, and the virus could be spread, another patient could get contaminated, etc.

There is a law that protects people with disabilities from discrimination, especially at workplace. “Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 to protect disabled individuals against discriminatory practices in employment based solely on their disability” said Nathan L. Essex in the first page of his article “Americans with disabilities: Are they losing ground?” Nathan also mentions that when someone with a disability applies for a job opening and is not employed, the employer needs to give reasons that support the decision of not giving this person the job position that he applied for. Some reasons that could support his or her decision could be lack of resources to give the person the needed accommodations, the place has enough or too many employees, the person is not capable of performing certain tasks, etc. (1)

People who suffer from AIDS and HIV are benefited by this law. The website explains people their rights and gives them information about the laws that supports them. People can also write with questions and concerns about certain topics. An anonymous wrote asking if he was forced to answer when an employer to ask him if he was taking any prescription drugs or this was an illegal act of the employer. The answer of Auntie Nolo (this is how the person who answers the questions and concerns in known as in the website) was: “The ADA requires that all job decisions be based on the applicant’s ability or inability to do the job and not on any other disability that the applicant might have. This means that it is flat-out illegal for employers to ask during an interview the question that you were asked about prescription drug use. Employers cannot ask during a pre-employment interview questions about medical conditions, past or present, or about whether the applicant is disabled or about the severity of a disability.”

Not only people who suffer from AIDS and HIV are discriminated. Another example of a large group of people that are discriminated is people who have physical disabilities. Many times, people think that people who suffer of disabilities are unable to do things right. People don’t know, but many times they can be capable of doing things better than a very healthy person.

When I came to FIU during summer semester, I had an English class in which we made essays and then turned them in for a grade. It was good to make an appointment with the Learning Center to check our grammar and organization before turning them in. So one day I made an appointment to revise an essay with tutor that could help me in English. When I got to the place at the time of my appointment, and I went to the front desk, they took me to the tutor that I was assigned. His name was Carlos. He was in a wheelchair, and he could move his arm but with some difficulty. To be honest, the first time I saw him I didn’t quite understand. But after I sat down and we started revising my essays, I figured I learned with him so much more than what I learned with my actual professor. He was one of the smartest people I met at FIU. Still he was had a disability and was in a wheelchair. So maybe he wasn’t physically perfect, but he had a wonderful intelligence, and people do not discriminate against him at the Learning Center.

Carlos is treated nicely at his workplace, but I have seen many people that suffer of disabilities and are discriminated against. In his article “Disability harassment in the public schools”, Mark C. Weber said: “A key example of intentional discrimination against individuals with disabilities is harassment on the basis of differences in physical or mental characteristics. Nowhere is the injury more common or more severe than in elementary and high schools.” (1). I totally agree with Weber. My friend Francisco has Down syndrome. Our friends used to make fun of him all the time, especially when we were little. They didn’t understand his illness, so they would always be saying that he had weird eyes, or that he looked funny when he run, or that he was stupid because it was hard for him to learn things. The comments from our friends hurt him very much. He was always sad because of how our friends always made fun of him. I always tried to help him with his classes, and his dad always loved me for it. Francisco is still a very good friend of mine and he has tried to make things better and look a little bit more normal. But he’s happy with who he is. And that’s how every person with a disability problem should be, happy with whom they are.

Francisco was very brave and, even though he was sad and mad at times because of how much our classmates made fun of him, he did not make things harder for him by fighting against our friends. He showed them that he was strong, and now our friends talk to him just like to any other one of us. Francisco does not hate or feel anger against any of our friends for things that happened in the past. This related to the story “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison, in which the main character (a black young man) made his point across without hate and anger. He was hardly discriminated by whites because of his race. He acted in a very mature way and got what he wanted: to give his speech and a scholarship to the State College for Negroes. In the end he doesn’t express any feelings of hate against whites, yet he was treated very badly by them.

In contrast from the young man in “Battle Royal” in the story “Notes of a Native Son” by James Baldwin the main character doesn’t quite understand why his father hated whites so much, and he finally understood it when he had to go through it. He has to live by his own to learn how it is like to live like a real black man, to learn that his father hated white people because of how much they discriminated against his race: “When [my father] died I had been away from home for a little over a year. In that year I had time to become aware of the meaning of all my father’s bitter warnings, had discovered the secret of his proudly pursed lips and rigid carriage: I had discovered the weight of white people in the world” (great 41). The same way the main character in Baldwin’s story didn’t understand what his father’s anger was all about until he went through it, we’ll never understand how much disabled people suffer until we feel the anger that they feel at times for those who discriminate them by living the way they do and with the illness they carry. Those who are disabled suffer of so much discrimination, that some of them get to hate and feel anger for people.

Many disabled people get to have low self esteem, and most of the times it is because of how people discriminate against them, making their health condition even worse. Just like in the examples that Weber mentioned in his article. He gives three cases as examples. The saddest one of the three is the case of Shawn Witte diagnosed with “Tourette’s Syndrome, asthma, attention deficit disorder, an emotional disability and deformities of the feet and legs” (Weber 1), because he had so many disability problems, and yet he was attacked so much by his superiors in school. With only 10 years old, his teacher forced him to eat oatmeal, and with the help of the aide, she would mix it with his own vomit and keep feeding him of it. The principal told his mother that they did this as a punishment when he didn’t do things right. The teacher and aides sat on Shawn when he did involuntary movements (such as tics) and would make him write sentences like “I will not tic” and “I will not tell my mom”. Shawn was taken to the emergency room because the aide choked him when he didn’t run fast enough in his class of exercises. (Weber 1-2)

People with disability problems should be proud of themselves for knowing how to fight against something we’ll never know how it is like, unless we go through it ourselves. All the information in this document shows that the strongest reason for us not to discriminate against people with disabilities is that segregation against them hurts them very much, and causes them to deteriorate and suffer. By discrimination against them we’re only helping to make them more depressed, weaker and, for some of them, even shorter life term period.