Disability and the justification of inequality in American history

Abstract

Baynton argues that disability has been one of the most prevalent justifications for inequality in American history, and yet it has been rarely studied by historians. This essay focuses on three groups-women, African Americans, and immigrants-whose inequitable treatment has been justified when the concept of disability has been applied to them. Oppressed groups were routinely charged with myriad physical or intellectual flaws that both explained and justified their inferior social status. Even as the oppressed groups fought against inequality, they most often did so by insisting that they were not disabled rather than arguing that disability did not justify inequality. As the concept of normality became intertwined with social progress in the mid-1800s, nonwhite races were routinely understood as both disabled and lagging behind in human evolution. For example, pro-slavery advocates argued that African Americans lacked the intelligence to participate in society and were more prone to disease, physical impairments, and immoral behavior. This line of thinking served as a justification for slavery as a way to protect the slaves themselves. Similarly, opponents of women’s suffrage argued that women were frail, irrational, and excessively emotional. Thus women could be accused of being incapable of using the vote correctly and were imagined to be in danger of exhausting themselves if exposed to political participation. Baynton argues that even though historians acknowledge disability as away of limitingwomen’s rights, they tend to focus on gender inequality rather than the ways disability is used to structure social hierarchies. Baynton provides an overview of such a structure in the history of American immigration policy, which not only explicitly barred disabled people but also established quotas for particular ethnic groups by insisting they were unable to function as laborers or citizens. But when immigrants or any other group attain equality by arguing they are not disabled, Baynton says, this strategy “tacitly accepts the idea that disability is a legitimate reason for inequality.” Rather than continuing to operate on this assumption that disability implies the power to discredit a group, historians can now bring disability to the center of their historical inquiries.