Over time I have come came to realise that the worst kind of disability that exists is called society. I discovered that disability is aggravated, if not caused, by society’s inability to accommodate and to take into account people who do not conform to what society perceives to be the norm. The socio-cultural and physical environments we construct morph impairments into disabilities.
Disability is aggravated, if not caused, by society’s inability to accommodate people who do not conform to what society perceives to be the norm- Fr Joe Borg
My father had quite a pronounced limp but, until old age, I never considered him disabled. His work was not only physically strenuous but also involved long hours. He did it with dedication and never allowed his impairment to stop him from working.
However, in his old age I recognised that while he could cope with his impairment he found it more and more difficult to deal with the disability inflicted by society. Some bureaucrat somewhere, to mention one example, had the wonderful idea that the level of street pavements should vary depending on whether they were situated in front of a house or a garage. This is as perfect a solution for cars but it is terrible one for the elderly and for people with mobility problems.
Our family received another painful blow when a relative less than half my age and very dear to me was diagnosed with a degenerative neurological condition which causes, among other things, mobility problems.
The pedestrianisation of more and more areas of Malta is fantastic for people who can walk around with no difficulty or who use wheelchairs. Yet people with mobility problems and do not make use of wheelchairs are essentially barred from these areas because whoever designed such projects did not take their specific needs into consideration.
This is very ironic particularly at a time when people with impairments were given more mobility thanks to the low floor Arriva buses.
We are faced with two contrasting situations. On one hand, we have very advanced laws and policies, which will soon be improved by amendments that will help disabled people fight discrimination in the workplace and provide the more vulnerable with greater protection.
On the other, our built environment discriminates against disabled people. To add insult to injury, our socio-cultural environment is still largely paternalistic as evidenced by the frequent use of ‘imsieken’ and ‘jaħasra’. The mentality behind such careless everyday language is perpetuated by the stereotypes portrayed in the media. Such attitudes constitute an across-the-board dismissal of the individuality of the disabled, a denial of their right to be seen as people with their own uniqueness leading to their depersonalisation.
In spite of our primacy for generosity, many people are not very comfortable recognising the rights of disabled people. Unfortunately generosity trumps justice. There are still many who react negatively whenever people with a disability ask for more access – physical, educational, economic or social for they fear that such widening of access will negatively affect them.
My criticism of the use of the word ‘immankati’ during the Bible readings at Mass was met with the retort that ‘they want to control the way we speak’. Some have also complained about employment schemes that strive to create a level playing field. Their gripe is that such schemes give preference to the disabled. Even parking for the disabled has become a bone of contention if this subtracts from the parking spaces of ‘normal’ people.
When all is said and done, society must not succumb to the Cartesian model which views the body as machine to be fixed in order to conform to what we consider to be normal. Rather, it is society that needs to fix itself. Fix its systemic barriers, negative attitudes and exclusion by bolstering social support, information and physical structures.
• Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (The Times, March 2, 2012) made an impassioned appeal for people to rise up in unison to throw away the chains that imprison them.
Marx would have been proud! We live in a country, the learned parliamentarian informed us, that “is still struggling to free itself from the shackles that bind the political class with the Catholic Church.” Oh my! Oh my! A clear example of this enslavement of the political class by Archbishop Paul Cremona and Gozo Bishop Mario Grech is the fact that Malta, horror of horrors, has not legalised same-sex marriage.
But let us backtrack a bit to understand the implications of the ‘logic’ of Pullicino Orlando’s argument about the shackles that enslave our politicians and the misguided religious arguments (as these are the only arguments, says he) that can be brought against same-sex marriage.
Does the enlightened gentleman want us to believe that the only politicians that have shaken off the shackles of the Church are those legislators in only 10 countries and few states/regions who have legalised same-sex marriage? Are we to understand that the politicians of around 190 countries are still the willing slaves of ecclesiastics of their country?
Had Pullicino Orlando made a reasoned appeal for the granting of legal recognition to same-sex couples he would have been helping their cause. But his misguided and mistaken arguments for same-sex marriage do not in any way advance the cause of gay people. Rather he alienates those among them who are in favour of civil unions.
• “At the root of America’s economic crisis lies a moral crisis: the decline of civic virtue among America’s political and economic elite. A society of markets, laws and elections is not enough if the rich and powerful fail to behave with respect, honesty, and compassion towards the rest of society and toward the world... Without restoring an ethos of social responsibility, there can be no meaningful and sustained economic recovery.” Sachs, J. (2011) The Price of Civilisation. Economics and Ethics After the Fall.