A New Way of Thinking Revolutionary Common Sense by Kathie Snow
A New Way of Thinking Revolutionary Common Sense by Kathie Snow, www.disabilityisnatural.com Throughout history, a variety of strategies have embarking on the extermination of “undesirables,” been used to solve the “problem” of disability. In the Nazis experimented to ensure their methods ancient times, Grecian and Roman laws mandated would work. They first practiced on people with the abandonment or death of babies with disabili- disabilities before taking on the larger population of ties, to fulfill society’s quest of achieving “human Jewish people and others who didn’t represent Hitler’s perfection.” During the early part of the Christian view of a desirable master race. Isolation, segregation, era, the presence of disability was often thought to incarceration, sterilization, abuse, experimentation, be the result of the person being and murder were Hitler’s “cure sinful. Religious leaders tried to The world is a dangerous place, for deviancy.” cure individuals with disabilities not because of those who do evil, So, from the beginning through prayer or healing prac- but because of those who of recorded history, mythical tices, as well as by “beating the look on and do nothing. perceptions and stereotypical devil” out of the “afflicted.” Albert Einstein attitudes have portrayed individ- Fast forward to the first half uals with disabilities as different, of the twentieth century, when the solution to cure aberrant, deficient, incompetent, and more. But like “deviancy” was found in the “special training” available gender and ethnicity, a disability is simply one of only in institutions for the “feebleminded.” Hundreds many natural characteristics of being human.
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