Getting Off the Pity Pot

by Dora Raymaker

Published April 02, 2009 @ 09:35AM PT

Joseph P. Shapiro's book No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement starts out,

The poster child is a surefire tug at our hearts. The children picked to represent charity fund-raising drives are brave, determined, and inspirational, the most innocent victims of the cruelest whims of life and health...no other symbol is more beloved by Americans than the cute and courageous poster child--or more loathed by people with disabilites themselves.

Sure pity may sell, but does that justify its use? Does that justify ignoring the wishes those who are being targeted by the pity who clearly, repeatedly, state that pity undermines their human rights? Does selling raffle tickets or walk miles make pity something we should, if not support, at least ignore? And also, good grief, haven't we learned anything from history?

Evan Kemp Jr., Chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under George Bush, Sr. and EEOC commissioner under Reagan, said of pity use by the MDS telethons in the early 1990's (source, Shapiro),

"By arousing the public's fear of the handicap itself, the telethon makes viewers more afraid of handicapped people...playing to pity may raise money, but it also raises walls of fear between the public and us." Further, by focusing on innocent children, the telethon, he said, "seems to proclaim that the only socially acceptable status for disabled people is their early childhood. The handicapped child is appealing and huggable--the adolescent or mature adult is a cripple to be avoided." Kemp objected that the telethon focused on the tragedy of a small number of children who died from muscular dystrophy, when in reality a far greater number of adults, like himself, lead normal lives with neuromuscular conditions. Finally, he charged, "the telethon's critical stress on the need to find cures supports that damaging and common prejudice that handicapped people are 'sick.' As sick people, it follows that we should allow others to take care of all our needs until a cure is found."

Back to Shapiro's commentary,

Fear, disabled people understand, is the strongest feeling they elicit from nondisabled people. Fear underlies the compassion for the poster child and the celebration of the supercrip.

As "world autism awareness day" and "autism awareness month" bombard us with fundraising requests and panicked images of "innocent children" or the "bravery of those who overcome autism," remember that the path to eliminating these destructive stereotypes has been walked before. Major charities such as Easter Seals and United Cerebral Palsy have listened to their constituents, and changed their fundraising tactics to remove the pity messages--without hurting their fundraising. Pity is not required to make money.

Kemp's observations aren't specific to MD. They're not even specific to just physical disabilities. Kemp's observations are relevant to all disabilities. If we want a better world for disabled (including autistic) individuals, pity and fear have got to go.

For organizations that insist on perpetuating fear and pity messages despite the contrary views of the people they claim to serve, an important question to ask might be, what constituency are these organizations really serving? The disabled individuals as they claim, or someone or something else?