Susan Wendell’s article, The Social Construction of Disability was unlike anything I’ve ever read or considered before. When she first stated that pace of society affects disability rates, I had no idea how she would form her argument. As I continued reading, however, I found myself embarrassed that I had never considered “pace” a means of establishing, highlighting, or increasing perceived disabilities. I found her example about quick travel, and those who are incapable of moving quickly, most relevant.
At times, I did feel like her argument failed to note some of the allowances society has made for “real people.” At one point in the essay, she states that society assumes a strong, healthy male as its citizen and explains that while exceptions might be made for the common cold, they are not made for menstruation. I think that here, Wendell fails to recognize some comman allowances society has made. For example, what about an allotted number of “sick days” that most jobs give employees? Or maternity leave—also allowed by most jobs to allow women to rest during their final months of pregnancy and not have to return to work immediately after giving birth? Later she describes how the architecture of many buildings assumes that people will be able to walk long distances, climb stairs and reach door handles. I could be wrong, but I believe that since the 90’s any renovations of old buildings or construction of new buildings must be more accommodating—such as the inclusion of an elevator. (I know this because of rumors when I was a freshman that the reason Emory didn’t renovate my freshman dorm was because they would have to add an elevator which would be very expensive.—I’m not sure if this is true, but it might be relevant to this discussion).
By the end of the article, Wendell ultimately claims that an ideal society would not cure disability, but accept and make accommodations for disabilities. This reminds me a lot of our discussion regarding intersex and transgender individuals. Like with that discussion, I’m really not sure how I feel about this idea. I think pondering this “ideal” world seems somewhat pointless. Personally, in my ideal world, disabilities wouldn’t exist, but since this will never be the case, we should just work with the society that we have, and make accommodations as necessary. While I certainly feel that Wendell overlooks some accommodations society has made for disabled individuals, I do agree with a number of Wendell’s points and think we need to continue to think about possible disabilities before we assume that everyone works the same way.
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I too never considered the pace of society as a creator of disability for people who cannot keep up even thought they may have no physical or mental disabilities. As Wendell points out, most non-disabled people take the ability to keep up for granted so they do not realize it as a problem for someone who is disabled or lacks the resources to maintain the pace. The importance of transportation in America was one of the first things that came to mind when I read this section. I’m sure that most of us felt that we were disabled without our cars during our freshmen year. We no longer had the luxury of being to go anywhere or leave whenever we wanted to. We were thus limited by how much we could do especially since in Atlanta most things are not within a convenient walking distance. Though not having my car my freshman year was an inconvenience, it made me realize how limited someone’s options might be for finding a job if they didn’t have a car. I have traveled to Europe a couple of times and besides the wonderful history and beauty of the places I have visited I was also impressed at the efficiency (at least compared to Marta) of their public transportation systems. With better expanded public transportation systems in America there would be more travel options for people and an increase in the pace of society by reducing the amount of traffic.
An excellent point that was made in class and one that probably connects better to disability than a lack of a car was how America’s economic system influenced the disabling pace of society. As someone described in class, capitalism works by producing a product or labor as efficiently as possible with the smallest expense possible. So when people with disabilities cannot achieve maximum efficiency in their work, the “[e]xpectations of individual productivity can eclipse the actual contributions of people who cannot meet them, making people unemployable when they can in fact do valuable work.” In comparison, Wendell writes that Sweden is the leading country in developing devices for people with disabilities and also provides aids to those who need them. She also gives the statistic that the gap between the average income of a household with a disabled person is just a little less than the household income without a disabled person. In the U.S., however, a disabled person makes considerably less. I feel the difference arises mainly because Sweden has a socialist economy which distributes resources and money more evenly throughout society. Instead of a dependency on individual efficiency as in America, Sweden has a collective or communal society so all contributions are beneficial. Anyways the point I wanted to make was that it’s just interesting that the economy of a country seems to play a role in how the society handles people with disabilities.
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