Who expects preferential treatment ?

Detractors from the cause of civil rights for people with disabilities, often claim that people with disabilities don't just want equal treatment, we want preferential treatment. A few even claim that we get preferential treatment. What planet are they living on ?!?

First of all, is it "expecting preferential treatment" for us to demand that buildings are built with ramps - which are no more difficult of costly to install than steps - to get us access to those buildings, on equal terms? Is it "expecting preferential treatment" to demand that we are not discriminated against in employment, travel, housing and access to leisure facilities? Is it "expecting preferential treatment" to demand that people stop using derogatory expressions about us (many of which "went out with the square wheel", anyway) ?

It is sometimes claimed that people with disabilities can do as they please, and nobody will dare tell them off for fear of upsetting a disabled person. Maybe a small minority of people with disabilities do take advantage of people's sympathy (which is wrong, and re-inforces patronizing attitudes towards us). But far more often, people with disabilities are more likely to be noticed doing something wrong (even if accidentally or unwittingly) because so many eyes are on us. And there are a lot of people who wouldn't dare call us a disabled-ist name in public, but would love any excuse to harrass us (including one which wouldn't bother them if the misdemeanor was done by a non-disabled person). Indeed, far from being immune from reproach, it is more often the case that people with disabilities get harrassed in the street for doing nothing and by people they don't even know.

The "preferential treatment" brigade also point to the tiny minority of jobs which are reserved for people with disabilities - mostly in charities or local government. Yet compare this small number to the thousands of jobs in the armed forces and emergency services which people with disabilities are excluded from, and it is clear that the balance is tilted against  disabled people. And that's before you take into account disabled-ist employers, who do exist (see A Chip On Your Shoulder if you need proof of this). And some of the jobs which are  specifically for disabled people are at lower  rates of pay than for non-disabled people doing the same work (an article in Socialist Worker, around the time of the Remploy redundancies, mentioned a disabled Remploy worker in a factory and said that he got paid less than his non-disabled colleagues).

Then there's the common complaint that disabled parking spaces are allocated which are vacant, while there is nowhere else for people to park. As well as being a selfish attitude, it also ignores the fact that only a minority of disabled people can afford their own cars. Indeed, some people with disabilities (eg blind or with uncontrolled epilepsy) are legally excluded from holding a driving licence. And public transport remains largely inaccessible to many people with disabilities.

Which leads me to my next point. I have heard the DAN (Direct Action Network for Disabled People) decried as "selfish" for their sit-down protests against the inaccessibility of buses - because they hold up people on buses. Well, sometimes protests need  to cause inconvenience, and (more to the point) loss of profits, to have any effect. Workers who protest do so by going on strike, stopping production at a factory, for exactly that reason. And let's face it, would bus segregation for black and white people in the USA have ever ended if Martin Luther King had decided on a letter-writing campaign instead of the bus boycott? I think not ...

Besides, the main reason for delays to people using public transport - that includes waiting ages for buses - has nothing to do with disabled or other protests. It has more to do with the lack of investment and deterioration in services following the privatization of the bus services in the 1980's. This lack of investment, and greed for profits by the bus companies' fat cat owners, is also to blame for the piss-poor accessibility of buses to people in wheelchairs.

So it is not people with disabilities who get preferential treatment. It's certainly not people with disabilities who are taking all the jobs, council funds etc., and leaving ordinary non-disabled people without.

It is the capitalist system, and the rich who control that system. And capitalism cannot be ended if working class people - whether we have disabilities or not - are at each other's throats! To overthrow capitalism, we must all unite - disabled and non-disabled, black and white, male and female, unite and fight !