Exploring Identity
“Who am I?” This question has been the central plot of many coming of
age movies, such as The Breakfast Club (1985), Superbad (2007), Love,
Simon (2018), Booksmart (2019), etc. In these movies, and in our own lives,
we have grappled with how to answer this question. According to Erickson’s
(1968) Psychosocial Theory of Development, adolescents enter a stage of
Identity vs. Role Confusion, in which they explore and experiment with their
identities, seeking to answer the question, “Who am I?” Identity exploration
is about determining a sense of self and figuring out who also shares similar
affiliations or social roles (APA).
Identity is marked by similarity, that is of the people like us, and by
difference, of those who are not. How do we know which people are the
same as us? What information do we use to categorize others and
ourselves? What is often important is a symbol, like a badge, a team scarf, a
newspaper, the language we speak, or perhaps the clothes we wear.
Sometimes it is obvious. A badge can be a clear public statement that we
identify with a particular group. Sometimes it is more subtle, but symbols
and representations are important in marking the ways in which we share
identities with some people and distinguish ourselves as different from
others. In the rest of this section, we will examine the various types of
identities that we develop and which identities we choose for ourselves and
those that are chosen for us.
Personal, Social, and Cultural Identities
Recall from our earlier discussion of self-concept that we develop a
sense of who we are based on what is reflected back on us from other
people. Our parents, friends, teachers, and the media help shape our
identities. While this happens from birth, most people in Western societies
reach a stage in adolescence where maturing cognitive abilities and
increased social awareness led them to begin to reflect on who they are. This
begins a lifelong process of thinking about who we are now, who we were
before, and who we will become (Tatum, B. D., 2000). Our identities make up
an important part of our self-concept and can be broken down into three
main categories: personal, social, and cultural identities (see Table 1.1
“Personal, Social, and Cultural Identities” below).
We must avoid the temptation to think of our identities as constant.
Instead, our identities are formed through processes that started before we
were born and will continue after we are gone; therefore, our identities aren’t
something we achieve or complete. Two related but distinct components of
our identities are our personal and social identities (Spreckels, J. & Kotthoff,
H., 2009). Personal identities include the components of self that are
primarily intrapersonal and connected to our life experiences. For example,
I consider myself a puzzle lover, and you may identify as a fan of hip-hop
music. Our social identities are the components of self that are derived from
involvement in social groups with which we are interpersonally committed.
For example, we may derive aspects of our social identity from our
family or from a community of fans for a sports team. Social identities differ
from personal identities because they are externally organized through
membership. Our membership may be voluntary (Greek organization on
campus) or involuntary (family) and explicit (we pay dues to our labor union)
or implicit (we purchase and listen to hip-hop music). There are innumerous
options for personal and social identities. While our personal identity
choices express who we are, our social identities align us with particular
groups. Through our social identities, we make statements about who we are
and who we are not.
Personal identities may change often as people have new experiences
and develop new interests and hobbies. A current interest in online video
games may give way to an interest in graphic design. Social identities do not
change as often because they take more time to develop, as you must
become interpersonally invested. For example, if an interest in online video
games leads someone to become a member of a MMORPG, or a massively
multiplayer online role-playing game community, that personal identity has
led to a social identity that is now interpersonal and more entrenched.
Cultural identities are based on socially constructed categories that
teach us a way of being and include expectations for social behavior or ways
of acting (Yep, G. A., 2002). Since we are often a part of them since birth,
cultural identities are the least changeable of the three. The ways of being
and the social expectations for behavior within cultural identities do change
over time, but what separates them from most social identities is their
historical roots (Collier, M. J., 1996). For example, think of how ways of being
and acting have changed for African Americans since the civil rights
movement. Additionally, common ways of being and acting within a cultural
identity group are expressed through communication. In order to be
accepted as a member of a cultural group, members must be acculturated,
essentially learning and using a code that other group members will be able
to recognize. We are acculturated into our various cultural identities in
obvious and less obvious ways. We may literally have a parent or friend tell
us what it means to be a man or a woman. We may also unconsciously
consume messages from popular culture that offer representations of
gender.
Any of these identity types can be ascribed or avowed. Ascribed
identities are personal, social, or cultural identities that are placed on us by
others, while avowed identities are those that we claim for ourselves (Martin
& Nakayama, 2010). Sometimes people ascribe an identity to someone else
based on stereotypes. You may see a person who likes to read science-
fiction books, watches documentaries, has glasses, and collects Star Trek
memorabilia and label him or her a nerd. If the person doesn’t avow that
identity, it can create friction, and that label may even hurt the other person’s
feelings. But ascribed and avowed identities can match up. To extend the
previous example, there has been a movement in recent years to reclaim the
label nerd and turn it into a positive, and a nerd subculture has been growing
in popularity. For example, MC Frontalot, a leader in the nerdcore hip-hop
movement, says that being branded a nerd in school was terrible, but now
he raps about “nerdy” things like blogs to sold-out crowds (Shipman, 2007).
We can see from this example that our ascribed and avowed identities
change over the course of our lives, and sometimes they match up and
sometimes not.
Although some identities are essentially permanent, the degree to
which we are aware of them, also known as salience, changes. The intensity
with which we avow an identity also changes based on context. For example,
an African American may not have difficulty deciding which box to check on
the demographic section of a survey. But if an African American becomes
president of her college’s Black Student Union, she may more intensely
avow her African American identity, which has now become more salient. If
she studies abroad in Africa her junior year, she may be ascribed an identity
of American by her new African friends rather than African American. For the
Africans, their visitor’s identity as American is likely more salient than her
identity as someone of African descent. If someone is biracial or multiracial,
they may change their racial identification as they engage in an identity
search. One intercultural communication scholar writes of his experiences
as an “Asianlatinoamerican” (Yep, 2002). He notes repressing his Chinese
identity as an adolescent living in Peru and then later embracing his Chinese
identity and learning about his family history while in college in the United
States. This example shows how even national identity fluctuates. Obviously
one can change nationality by becoming a citizen of another country,
although most people do not.
Throughout modern history, cultural and social influences have
established dominant and nondominant groups (Allen, 2011). Dominant
identities historically had and currently have more resources and influence
while nondominant identities historically had and currently have less
resources and influence. It is important to remember that these distinctions
are being made at the societal level, not the individual level. There are
obviously exceptions, with people in groups considered nondominant
obtaining more resources and power than a person in a dominant group.
However, the overall trend is that difference based on cultural groups has
been institutionalized, and exceptions do not change this fact. Because of
this uneven distribution of resources and power, members of dominant
groups are granted privileges while nondominant groups are at a
disadvantage. The main nondominant groups must face various forms of
institutionalized discrimination, including racism, sexism, heterosexism,
and ableism. As we will discuss later, privilege and disadvantage, like
similarity and difference, are not “all or nothing.” No two people are
completely different or completely similar, and no one person is completely
privileged or completely disadvantaged.
Exploring Specific Cultural Identities
We can get a better understanding of current cultural identities by
unpacking how they came to be. By looking at history, we can see how
cultural identities that seem to have existed forever actually came to be
constructed for various political and social reasons and how they have
changed over time. Communication plays a central role in this construction.
As we have already discussed, our identities are relational and
communicative; they are also constructed. Social constructionism is a view
that argues the self is formed through our interactions with others and in
relationship to social, cultural, and political contexts (Allen, 2011). In this
section, we’ll explore how the cultural identities of race, gender, sexual
orientation, and ability have been constructed in the United States. There
are other important identities that could be discussed, like religion, age,
nationality, and class. Although they are not given their own section,
consider how those identities may intersect with the identities discussed
next.
Race
Would it surprise you to know that human beings, regardless of how
they are racially classified, share 99.9 percent of their DNA? This finding by
the Human Genome Project asserts that race is a social construct, not a
biological one (Figure 1.8). The American Anthropological Association
agrees, stating that race is the product of “historical and contemporary
social, economic, educational, and political circumstances” (Allen, 2011).
Therefore, we will define race as a socially constructed category based on
differences in appearance that has been used to create hierarchies that
privilege some and disadvantage others.
Race didn’t become a socially and culturally recognized marker until
European colonial expansion in the 1500s. As Western Europeans traveled
to parts of the world previously unknown to them and encountered people
who were different from them, a hierarchy of races began to develop that
placed lighter skinned Europeans above darker skinned people. At the time,
newly developing fields in natural and biological sciences took interest in
examining the new locales, including the plant and animal life, natural
resources, and native populations. Over the next three hundred years,
science that we would now undoubtedly recognize as flawed, biased, and
racist legitimated notions that native populations were less evolved than
white Europeans, often calling them savages. In fact, there were scientific
debates as to whether some of the native populations should be considered
human or animal. Racial distinctions have been based largely on
phenotypes, or physiological features such as skin color, hair texture, and
body/facial features. Western “scientists” used these differences as “proof”
that native populations were less evolved than the Europeans, which helped
justify colonial expansion, enslavement, genocide, and exploitation on
massive scales (Allen, 2011). Even though there is a consensus among
experts that race is social rather than biological, we can’t deny that race still
has meaning in our society and affects people as if it were “real.”
Discussing race in the United States is difficult for many reasons. One
is due to uncertainty about language use. People may be frustrated by their
perception that labels change too often or be afraid of using an “improper”
term and being viewed as racially insensitive. It is important, however, that
we not let political correctness get in the way of meaningful dialogues and
learning opportunities related to difference.
Racial classifications used by the government and our regular
communication about race in the United States have changed frequently,
which further points to the social construction of race. Currently, the primary
racial groups in the United States are African American, Asian American,
European American, Latino/a, and Native American, but a brief look at
changes in how the US Census Bureau has defined race clearly shows that
this hasn’t always been the case (see Table 1.2 “Racial Classifications in the
US Census” below). In the 1900s alone, there were twenty-six different ways
that race was categorized on census forms (Allen, 2011). The way we
communicate about race in our regular interactions has also changed, and
many people are still hesitant to discuss race for fear of using “the wrong”
vocabulary.
The five primary racial groups noted previously can still be broken down
further to specify a particular region, country, or nation. For example, Asian
Americans are diverse in terms of country and language of origin and cultural
practices. While the category of Asian Americans can be useful when
discussing broad trends, it can also generalize among groups, which can
lead to stereotypes. You may find that someone identifies as Chinese
American or Korean American instead of Asian American. In this case, the
label further highlights a person’s cultural lineage. We should not assume,
however, that someone identifies with his or her cultural lineage, as many
people have more in common with their US American peers than a culture
that may be one or more generations removed.
History and personal preference also influence how we communicate
about race. Culture and communication scholar Brenda Allen notes that
when she was born in 1950, her birth certificate included an N for Negro.
Later she referred to herself as colored because that’s what people in her
community referred to themselves as. During and before this time, the term
black had negative connotations and would likely have offended someone.
There was a movement in the 1960s to reclaim the word black, and the
slogan “black is beautiful” was commonly used. Brenda Allen acknowledges
the newer label of African American but notes that she still prefers black. The
terms colored and Negro are no longer considered appropriate because they
were commonly used during a time when black people were blatantly
discriminated against. Even though that history may seem far removed to
some, it is not to others. Currently, the terms African American and black are
frequently used, and both are considered acceptable. The phrase people of
color is acceptable for most and is used to be inclusive of other racial
minorities. If you are unsure what to use, you could always observe how a
person refers to themself, or you could ask for their preference. In any case,
a competent communicator defers to and respects the preference of the
individual.
The history of immigration in the United States also ties to the way that
race has been constructed. The metaphor of the “melting pot” has been
used to describe the immigration history of the United States but doesn’t
capture the experiences of many immigrant groups (Allen, 2011). Generally,
immigrant groups who were white, or light skinned, and spoke English were
better able to assimilate, or melt into the melting pot. But immigrant groups
that we might think of as white today were not always considered so. Irish
immigrants were discriminated against and even portrayed as black in
cartoons that appeared in newspapers. In some Southern states, Italian
immigrants were forced to go to black schools, and it wasn’t until 1952 that
Asian immigrants were allowed to become citizens of the United States. All
this history is important, because it continues to influence communication
among races today.
Gender
When we first meet a newborn baby, we ask whether it’s a boy or a girl.
This question illustrates the importance of gender in organizing our social
lives and our interpersonal relationships. A Canadian family became aware
of the deep emotions people feel about gender and the great discomfort
people feel when they can’t determine gender when they announced to the
world that they were not going to tell anyone the gender of their baby, aside
from the baby’s siblings. Their desire for their child, named Storm, to be able
to experience early life without the boundaries and categories of gender
brought criticism from many (Davis & James, 2011). Conversely, many
parents consciously or unconsciously “code” their newborns in gendered
ways based on our society’s associations of pink clothing and accessories
with girls and blue with boys.
While it’s obvious to most people that colors aren’t gendered, they take
on new meaning when we assign gendered characteristics of masculinity
and femininity to them. Just like race, gender is a socially constructed
category. While it is true that there are biological differences between who
we label male and female, the meaning our society places on those
differences is what actually matters in our dayto-day lives. And the
biological differences are interpreted differently around the world, which
further shows that although we think gender is a natural, normal, stable way
of classifying things, it is actually not. There is a long history of appreciation
for people who cross gender lines in Native American and South-Central
Asian cultures, to name just two.
You may have noticed I use the word gender instead of sex. That is
because gender is an identity based on internalized cultural notions of
masculinity and femininity that is constructed through communication and
interaction. There are two important parts of this definition to unpack. First,
we internalize notions of gender based on socializing institutions. Then we
attempt to construct that gendered identity through our interactions with
others, which is our gender expression. Sex is based on biological
characteristics, including external genitalia, internal sex organs,
chromosomes, and hormones (Wood, 2005). While the biological
characteristics between men and women are obviously different, it is the
meaning that we create and attach to those characteristics that makes them
significant. The cultural differences in how that significance is ascribed are
evidence that “our way of doing things” is arbitrary. For example, cross-
cultural research has found that boys and girls in most cultures show both
aggressive and nurturing tendencies, but cultures vary in terms of how they
encourage these characteristics between genders. In a group in Africa,
young boys are responsible for taking care of babies and are encouraged to
be nurturing (Wood, 2005).
Gender has been constructed over the past few centuries in political
and deliberate ways that have tended to favor men in terms of power. And
various academic fields joined in the quest to “prove” there are “natural”
differences between men and women. While the “proof” they presented was
credible to many at the time, it seems blatantly sexist and inaccurate today.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, scientists who measure skulls, also known
as craniometrists, claimed that men were more intelligent than women
because they had larger brains. Leaders in the fast-growing fields of
sociology and psychology argued that women were less evolved than men
and had more in common with “children and savages” than an adult (white)
males (Allen, 2011). Doctors and other decision makers like politicians also
used women’s menstrual cycles as evidence that they were irrational, or
hysterical, and therefore couldn’t be trusted to vote, pursue higher
education, or be in a leadership position. These are just a few of the many
instances of how knowledge was created by seemingly legitimate scientific
disciplines that we can now clearly see served to empower men and
disempower women. This system is based on the ideology of patriarchy,
which is a system of social structures and practices that maintains the
values, priorities, and interests of men as a group (Wood, 2005). One of the
ways patriarchy is maintained is by its relative invisibility. While women have
been the focus of much research on gender differences, males have been
largely unexamined. Men have been treated as the “generic” human being to
which others are compared. But that ignores that fact that men have a
gender, too. Masculinities studies have challenged that notion by examining
how masculinities are performed.
There have been challenges to the construction of gender in recent
decades. Since the 1960s, scholars and activists have challenged
established notions of what it means to be a man or a woman. The women’s
rights movement in the United States dates back to the 1800s, when the first
women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848
(Wood, 2005). Although most women’s rights movements have been led by
white, middle-class women, there was overlap between those involved in
the abolitionist movement to end slavery and the beginnings of the women’s
rights movement. Although some of the leaders of the early women’s rights
movement had class and education privilege, they were still taking a risk by
organizing and protesting. Black women were even more at risk, and
Sojourner Truth, an emancipated slave, faced those risks often and gave a
much-noted extemporaneous speech at a women’s rights gathering in
Akron, Ohio, in 1851, which came to be called “Ain’t I a Woman?” (Wood,
2005) Her speech highlighted the multiple layers of oppression faced by
black women.
Feminism as an intellectual and social movement advanced women’s
rights and our overall understanding of gender. Feminism has gotten a bad
reputation based on how it has been portrayed in the media and by some
politicians. When I teach courses about gender, I often ask my students to
raise their hand if they consider themselves feminists. I usually only have a
few, if any, who do. I’ve found that students I teach are hesitant to identify as
a feminist because of connotations of the word. However, when I ask
students to raise their hand if they believe women have been treated unfairly
and that there should be more equity, most students raise their hand.
Gender and communication scholar Julia Wood has found the same trend
and explains that a desire to make a more equitable society for everyone is
at the root of feminism. She shares comments from a student that capture
this disconnect: (Wood, 2005).
I would never call myself a feminist, because that word has so many
negative connotations. I don’t hate men or anything, and I’m not interested
in protesting. I don’t want to go around with hacked-off hair and no makeup
and sit around bashing men. I do think women should have the same kinds
of rights, including equal pay for equal work. But I wouldn’t call myself a
feminist.
It’s important to remember that there are many ways to be a feminist
and to realize that some of the stereotypes about feminism are rooted in
sexism and homophobia, in that feminists are reduced to “men haters” and
often presumed to be lesbians. The feminist movement also gave some
momentum to the transgender rights movement. Transgender is an umbrella
term for people whose gender identity and/ or expression do not match the
gender they were assigned by birth. Transgender people may or may not seek
medical intervention like surgery or hormone treatments to help match their
physiology with their gender identity. The term transgender includes other
labels such as transsexual, transvestite, cross-dresser, and intersex, among
others. Terms like hermaphrodite and she-male are not considered
appropriate. As with other groups, it is best to allow someone to selfidentify
first and then honor their preferred label. If you are unsure of which pronouns
to use when addressing someone, you can use gender-neutral language or
you can use the pronoun that matches with how they are presenting. If
someone has long hair, make-up, and a dress on, but you think their
biological sex is male due to other cues, it would be polite to address them
with female pronouns, since that is the gender identity they are expressing.
Gender as a cultural identity has implications for many aspects of our
lives, including real-world contexts like education and work. Schools are
primary grounds for socialization, and the educational experience for males
and females is different in many ways from preschool through college.
Although not always intentional, schools tend to recreate the hierarchies
and inequalities that exist in society. Given that we live in a patriarchal
society, there are communicative elements present in school that support
this (Allen, 2011). For example, teachers are more likely to call on and pay
attention to boys in a classroom, giving them more feedback in the form of
criticism, praise, and help. This sends an implicit message that boys are
more worthy of attention and valuable than girls. Teachers are also more
likely to lead girls to focus on feelings and appearance and boys to focus on
competition and achievement. The focus on appearance for girls can lead to
anxieties about body image. Gender inequalities are also evident in the
administrative structure of schools, which puts males in positions of
authority more than females. While females make up 75 percent of the
educational workforce, only 22 percent of superintendents and 8 percent of
high school principals are women. Similar trends exist in colleges and
universities, with women only accounting for 26 percent of full professors.
These inequalities in schools correspond to larger inequalities in the general
workforce. While there are more women in the workforce now than ever
before, they still face a glass ceiling, which is a barrier for promotion to upper
management. Many of my students have been surprised at the continuing
pay gap that exists between men and women. In 2010, women earned about
seventy-seven cents to every dollar earned by men (National Committee on
Pay Equity, 2011). To put this into perspective, the National Committee on
Pay Equity started an event called Equal Pay Day. In 2011, Equal Pay Day was
on April 11. This signifies that for a woman to earn the same amount of
money a man earned in a year, she would have to work more than three
months extra, until April 11, to make up for the difference (National
Committee on Pay Equity, 2011).
Sexuality
While race and gender are two of the first things we notice about others,
sexuality is often something we view as personal and private. Although many
people hold a view that a person’s sexuality should be kept private, this isn’t
a reality for our society. One only needs to observe popular culture and
media for a short time to see that sexuality permeates much of our public
discourse.
Sexuality relates to culture and identity in important ways that extend
beyond sexual orientation, just as race is more than the color of one’s skin
and gender is more than one’s biological and physiological manifestations
of masculinity and femininity. Sexuality isn’t just physical; it is social in that
we communicate with others about sexuality (Allen, 2011). Sexuality is also
biological in that it connects to physiological functions that carry significant
social and political meaning like puberty, menstruation, and pregnancy.
Sexuality connects to public health issues like sexually transmitted
infections (STIs), sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and teen
pregnancy. Sexuality is at the center of political issues like abortion, sex
education, and gay and lesbian rights.
The most obvious way sexuality relates to identity is through sexual
orientation. Sexual orientation refers to a person’s primary physical and
emotional sexual attraction and activity. The terms we most often use to
categorize sexual orientation are heterosexual or straight, gay, lesbian, and
bisexual. Gays, lesbians, and bisexuals are sometimes referred to as sexual
minorities. While the term sexual preference has been used previously,
sexual orientation is more appropriate, since preference implies a simple
choice. Although someone’s preference for a restaurant or actor may
change frequently, sexuality is not as simple. The term homosexual can be
appropriate in some instances, but it carries with it a clinical and
medicalized tone. As you will see in the timeline that follows, the medical
community has a recent history of “treating homosexuality” with means that
most would view as inhumane today. Many people prefer a term like gay,
which was chosen and embraced by gay people, rather than homosexual,
which was imposed by a then discriminatory medical system.
The gay and lesbian rights movement became widely recognizable in
the United States in the 1950s and continues on today, as evidenced by
prominent issues regarding sexual orientation in national news and politics.
National and international groups like the Human Rights Campaign
advocate for rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer
(GLBTQ) communities. While these communities are often grouped together
within one acronym (GLBTQ), they are different. Gays and lesbians
constitute the most visible of the groups and receive the most attention and
funding. Bisexuals are rarely visible or included in popular cultural
discourses or in social and political movements. Transgender issues have
received much more attention in recent years, but transgender identity
connects to gender more than it does to sexuality. Last, queer is a term used
to describe a group that is diverse in terms of identities but usually takes a
more activist and at times radical stance that critiques sexual categories.
While queer was long considered a derogatory label, and still is by some, the
queer activist movement that emerged in the 1980s and early 1990s
reclaimed the word and embraced it as a positive. As you can see, there is a
diversity of identities among sexual minorities, just as there is variation
within races and genders.
As with other cultural identities, notions of sexuality have been socially
constructed in different ways throughout human history. Sexual orientation
didn’t come into being as an identity category until the late 1800s. Before
that, sexuality was viewed in more physical or spiritual senses that were
largely separate from a person’s identity.
Ability
There is resistance to classifying ability as a cultural identity, because
we follow a medical model of disability that places disability as an individual
and medical rather than social and cultural issue. While much of what
distinguishes able-bodied and cognitively able from disabled is rooted in
science, biology, and physiology, there are important sociocultural
dimensions. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines an individual
with a disability as “a person who has a physical or mental impairment that
substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a
history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by
others as having such an impairment” (Allen, 2011). An impairment is
defined as “any temporary or permanent loss or abnormality of a body
structure or function, whether physiological or psychological” (Allen, 2011).
This definition is important because it notes the social aspect of disability in
that people’s life activities are limited and the relational aspect of disability
in that the perception of a disability by others can lead someone to be
classified as such. Ascribing an identity of disabled to a person can be
problematic. If there is a mental or physical impairment, it should be
diagnosed by a credentialed expert. If there isn’t an impairment, then the
label of disabled can have negative impacts, as this label carries social and
cultural significance. People are tracked into various educational programs
based on their physical and cognitive abilities, and there are many cases of
people being mistakenly labeled disabled who were treated differently
despite their protest of the ascribed label. Students who did not speak
English as a first language, for example, were—and perhaps still are—
sometimes put into special education classes.
Ability, just as the other cultural identities discussed, has
institutionalized privileges and disadvantages associated with it. Ableism is
the system of beliefs and practices that produces a physical and mental
standard that is projected as normal for a human being and labels deviations
from it abnormal, resulting in unequal treatment and access to resources.
Ability privilege refers to the unearned advantages that are provided for
people who fit the cognitive and physical norms (Allen, 2011). I once
attended a workshop about ability privilege led by a man who was visually
impaired. He talked about how, unlike other cultural identities that are
typically stable over a lifetime, ability fluctuates for most people. We have
all experienced times when we are more or less able.
Perhaps you broke your leg and had to use crutches or a wheelchair for
a while. Getting sick for a prolonged period of time also lessens our abilities,
but we may fully recover from any of these examples and regain our ability
privilege. Whether you’ve experienced a short-term disability or not, the
majority of us will become less physically and cognitively able as we get
older.
Statistically, people with disabilities make up the largest minority group
in the United States, with an estimated 20 percent of people five years or
older living with some form of disability (Allen, 2011). Medical advances
have allowed some people with disabilities to live longer and more active
lives than before, which has led to an increase in the number of people with
disabilities. This number could continue to increase, as we have thousands
of veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with physical
disabilities or psychological impairments such as posttraumatic stress
disorder.
As disability has been constructed in US history, it has intersected with
other cultural identities. For example, people opposed to “political and
social equality for women cited their supposed physical, intellectual, and
psychological flaws, deficits, and deviations from the male norm.” They
framed women as emotional, irrational, and unstable, which was used to put
them into the “scientific” category of “feeblemindedness,” which led them
to be institutionalized (Carlson, 2001). Arguments supporting racial
inequality and tighter immigration restrictions also drew on notions of
disability, framing certain racial groups as prone to mental retardation,
mental illness, or uncontrollable emotions and actions.
During the early part of the 1900s, the eugenics movement was the
epitome of the move to rehabilitate or reject people with disabilities (Allen,
2005). This was a brand of social engineering that was indicative of a strong
public support in the rationality of science to cure society’s problems (Allen,
2011). A sterilization law written in 1914 “proposed to authorize sterilization
of the socially inadequate,” which included the “feebleminded, insane,
criminalistic, epileptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf, deformed, and
dependent” (Lombardo, 2011). During the eugenics movement in the United
States, more than sixty thousand people in thirty-three states were
involuntarily sterilized (Allen, 2011). Although the eugenics movement as it
was envisioned and enacted then is unthinkable today, some who have
studied the eugenics movement of the early 1900s have issued warnings
that a newly packaged version of eugenics could be upon us. As human
genome mapping and DNA manipulation become more accessible,
advanced genetic testing could enable parents to eliminate undesirable
aspects or enhance desirable characteristics of their children before they
are born, creating “designer children” (Spice, 2005).
Much has changed for people with disabilities in the United States in
the past fifty years. The independent living movement (ILM) was a part of the
disability rights movement that took shape along with other social
movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The ILM calls for more individual and
collective action toward social change by people with disabilities. Some of
the goals of the ILM include reframing disability as a social and political
rather than just a medical issue, a shift toward changing society rather than
just rehabilitating people with disabilities, a view of accommodations as civil
rights rather than charity, and more involvement by people with disabilities
in the formulation and execution of policies relating to them (Longmore,
2003). As society better adapts to people with disabilities, there will be more
instances of interability communication taking place.
Interability communication is communication between people with
differing ability levels; for example, a hearing person communicating with
someone who is hearing impaired or a person who doesn’t use a wheelchair
communicating with someone who uses a wheelchair. Since many people
are unsure of how to communicate with a person with disabilities, following
are the “Ten Commandments of Etiquette for Communicating with People
with Disabilities” to help you in communicating with persons with
disabilities:
1. When talking with a person with a disability, speak directly to that
person rather than through a companion or sign-language
interpreter.
2. When introduced to a person with a disability, it is appropriate to
offer to shake hands. People with limited hand use or an artificial
limb can usually shake hands. (Shaking hands with the left hand is
an acceptable greeting.)
3. When meeting a person who is visually impaired, always identify
yourself and others who may be with you. When conversing in a
group, remember to identify the person to whom you are speaking.
4. If you offer assistance, wait until the offer is accepted. Then listen
to or ask for instructions.
5. Treat adults as adults. Address people who have disabilities by
their first names only when extending the same familiarity to all
others. (Never patronize people who use wheelchairs by patting
them on the head or shoulder.)
6. Leaning on or hanging on to a person’s wheelchair is similar to
leaning or hanging on to a person and is generally considered
annoying. The chair is part of the personal body space of the
person who uses it.
7. Listen attentively when you’re talking with a person who has
difficulty speaking. Be patient and wait for the person to finish,
rather than correcting or speaking for the person. If necessary, ask
short questions that require short answers, a nod, or a shake of the
head. Never pretend to understand if you are having difficulty doing
so. Instead, repeat what you have understood and allow the person
to respond. The response will clue you in and guide your
understanding.
8. When speaking with a person who uses a wheelchair or a person
who uses crutches, place yourself at eye level in front of the person
to facilitate the conversation.
9. To get the attention of a person who is deaf, tap the person on the
shoulder or wave your hand. Look directly at the person and speak
clearly, slowly, and expressively to determine if the person can
read your lips. Not all people who are deaf can read lips. For those
who do lip read, be sensitive to their needs by placing yourself so
that you face the light source and keep hands, cigarettes, and food
away from your mouth when speaking.
10. Relax. Don’t be embarrassed if you happen to use accepted,
common expressions such as “See you later” or “Did you hear
about that?” that seem to relate to a person’s disability. Don’t be
afraid to ask questions when you’re unsure of what to do.
