Living Life As A Disabled Person

Living life titled as a disabled person is hard enough, and discriminating against the handicapped isn’t making their lives any better. Longmore, a specialist on early America speaks of the history of people with disabilities. They've been discriminated by society in many ways for many years. The disabled suffers hardships that we non-disabled humans have never experienced. They should be treated with respect to help them make it through life easier.

Based upon Longmore's studies on the history of people with disabilities before the eighteenth century, people with certain kinds of disabilities like epilepsy or Down’s Syndrome were intensely stigmatized and put in insane asylums. People were being treated as sick individuals who needed care. His studies also show that by the late nineteenth century the insurability of disabled people came to be viewed by medical and charity professionals as dangerous deviance. Also more and more they called for strict supervision over the people with disabilities, including for some permanent incarceration. He also discusses how disabled people where used in freak shows as savages from foreign countries. Even in the twentieth century stereotypes and misgivings about disabled people were carried on in motion pictures on television.

The disabled have been discriminated from their childhood, in attending school to being an adult trying to get a job. For example, working for the company Goodyear tires you are required to be able to lift tires and work with your arms out stretched upwards and forward. A disabled person will not be able to qualify for this job because of their disability so they would be disqualified from the job. Disabled people also suffer the hardship of appearing in public. They have to worry about people staring, laughing, or talking about them. Our society is full of idiots without morals who negatively act towards people. Many of times I've seen disabled people appear in public with a slow walk, a bent head to avoid contact with anyone else, a look of fear in their eyes that looks the opposite way when someone passes by. There are also disabled children as well as adults who attend school and have to deal with others making fun of them calling them names, and making them feel uncomfortable just making life harder for them.

I believe the disabled should be valued because they are people just as we are and wants the ability to live life just like anyone else, and be treated the same. They should also be respected because they were bestowed with a challenge that is very difficult to live with. They already know they are not like any regular person, so we need to show much love