This sections looks at how disability is socially constructed. The two models of disability:
Individual or medical model defines disability in terms of some physiological impairment due to genetics, accident, or disease and focuses on individual special needs and personal difficulties.
Social model asserts that the real problem is not just medical but social. Society creates barriers by limiting physical access and displaying negative attitudes and focuses on removing social and environmental barriers.
1. Watch the video of a the disabled man riding the New York City subway:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000004791816/ride-the-subway-in-a-wheelchair. html?playlistId=100000004687548
(Links to an external site.)
a) How do structural barriers such as stairs or broken elevators create unequal access to buildings, transportation, and public space for people with physical disabilities?
b) How does unequal access isolate and exclude people with disabilities?
c) How does it show structural ableism?
2. Watch the video, “Retro Local: Isolation to Inclusion,” about how children with intellectual disabilities were institutionalized.
https://www.pbs.org/video/retro-local-isolation-to-inclusion-6istxn/
(Links to an external site.)
a) Why were children with intellectual disabilities institutionalized and isolated from society (“out of sight, out of mind”)?
b) What were the beliefs about the lives of children with intellectual disabilities?
c) How was it institutional ableism?
3. Watch the PBS Newshour report, “Pandemic means Americans with Disabilities are not getting the services they need,” on structural inequality in health care for people with disabilities:
Pandemic means Americans with disabilities aren't getting the services they need
(Links to an external site.)
a) What does it mean for people with disabilities to lose home services such as being turned over in bed?
b) At the 7:25 minute of the video, the speaker talks about “medicalized ableism” to refer to medical discrimination against people with disabilities with health care rationing during the pandemic. Why are people with disabilities put the last in line behind abled people for services they desperately need?
4. Watch the “Lives Worth Living” trailer about the disability rights movement:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXqXieHAE2Q
(Links to an external site.)
a) How did the disability rights movement challenge the negative beliefs that people with disabilities do not want or are incapable of living a full life?
b) How did the movement challenge institutionalized ableism by getting the American with Disabilities Act passed?
Crime and Justice
Social Class and Crime
1. Why are street crimes committed by poor and working class people defined as crimes while corporate crimes committed by the wealthy are not defined as crimes even though they cause greater harm to society, including harm to human health such as knowingly producing and profiting from cancer-causing chemicals and highly-addictive opioids?
Note: In the video, “The Corporation,” a CEO says, “If I shoot you, it is a crime. But if I knowingly expose you to chemicals that will give you cancer, it takes longer to kill you, but what is the difference?”
The corporation, Purdue Pharma (owned by the Sackler family), that made Oxycontin marketed it to doctors as “less additive,” knowing it was highly additive, made billions while tens of thousands of people became addicted and died from overdose.
a) How is crime defined by the powerful and wealthy? How do they benefit from the definition of crime as street crime but not corporate crime?
b) How does the definition of crime as street crime disadvantage poor and working class people, especially poor people of color, and keep them under the control of the police and criminal justice system?
Race and Crime
1. Watch the video, “A Brief History of the United States,” on why guns and gun violence are so prevalent in the U.S.
A Brief History of the USA – Bowling for Columbine – Michael Moore
(Links to an external site.)
a) How does the video explain the high rate of gun violence in the U.S. in terms of white conquest and control of Native Americans and black people?
b) What does the video suggest is the link between the National Rifle Association and the Klu Klux Klan and white terrorism against black people?
c) How is a white man with a gun a symbol of white nationalists in the U.S.?
2. Read the article, “The Killing of Ahmaud Abery,” about the black runner shot and killed by two white men.
(Links to an external site.)
a) What does it say about why the white men believed they had the right to get a gun and follow and shoot a black man they believe committed a crime?
b) Would it be defined as a crime if black men killed a white man who they believe committed a robbery in the neighborhood?
3. Read the article, “Killings of Blacks by Whites Are Far More Likely to Be Ruled ‘Justifiable,’” about how when whites kill black men, the killer often faces no legal consequences.
Scroll to the first graph to see how when one person kill another, 2% are ruled justifiable. When a white person kills a black man, 17% are ruled justifiable.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/upshot/killings-of-blacks-by-whites-are-far-more-likel y-to-be-ruled-justifiable.html
(Links to an external site.)
a) Why are whites killing black men far more likely to be ruled justifiable than whites killing whites 2% or blacks killing blacks (2%)? (When blacks kill whites, only .8% are ruled justifiable.)
b) What does it say about white privilege to use violence against black people?
4. Read the article, “Louisiana’s Color-Coded Death Penalty,” on racial disparities in death sentencing.
Scroll to statistics: In Louisiana, black men who kill white women are 30 times more likely to be sentenced to death than black men who kill blacks. When the victim is is white rather than black, black men are 6 times more likely to sentenced to death and 14 times more likely to be executed. No white man has been executed for a crime against a black person since 1752.
(Links to an external site.)
a) How is the fact that black men much more likely to be on death row for killing a white person than killing a black person a form of institutional racism?
b) Why are no white men who kill a black person on death row?
c) Why are most if not all people on death row poor? (Do they have access to good lawyers like middle-class and wealthy people?)
Gender and Crime
1. How would patriarchal masculinity explain why most crime, especially violent crime, is committed by men?
2. Read the study, “Triple Entitlement and Homicidal Anger: An Exploration of the Intersectional Identities of American Mass Murderers,” and why most are heterosexual middle class white teens and men:
Intersectionality refers to your relative position of power and privilege or powerlessness and disadvantage based on race, gender, class, and sexuality (as well as age and disability).
Read the first paragraph and scroll through the subheadings.
Mass Murder and Intersectionality.pdf
a) How does white entitlement and high expectations make white men feel they deserve power and privilege?
b) How does downward mobility in class or status, losing a job, rejection by a woman, losing money, etc., affect their sense of entitlement and high expectations?
d) How does heterosexual masculinity, domination over women and other men, and masculine violence as a solution to downward mobility create mass murder?
e) How does the triple privileges of white heterosexual masculinity make downward mobility and life loses even more shameful and result in a final act of violence against family members, co-workers, people at a nightclub, music festival, or school to stave off subordinated masculinity?