Success at the Expense of Morality

In "Textual Practices of Erasure", Ellen L. Barton obviously has a problem with the discourse used by charities, specifically the United Way Foundation, when discussing the disabled. She chronicles the ways in which the United Way has advertised in the past for donations. Her issue has to do with erasure. In these advertisements, disabled people are seen as the "other" community. They are not part of normal human life but rather always different.

I personally don't see how one could look at it as anything but. People with disabilities are so very obviously different from people without disabilities and to refute that is nonsensical. These people, no matter what the disability is, conduct their lives with a very large and debilitating constraint. Not only do they have their physical or mental ailment, but they also have to deal with society and the stigmas towards disabled people. I think the United Way Foundation has been doing the best they can to help and Ellen L. Barton cannot see that because she has been blinded by her upstanding morals.

Barton's issue with the United Way Foundation is vast and layered. She doesn't agree with using the "perpetual child" image because it assumes that people with disabilities are dependent and helpless like children. She doesn't like their approach of businesses to donate once a year via reduced payroll because it completely takes the disabled people out of the picture and assumes that disabled people are not in the workplace. She also doesn't like the image of the "supercrip" because these people are presented as success stories or simple figureheads but the world doesn't see their struggle to get there. (Barton 196-197).

I say Barton needs to either calm down or come up with an alternative solution. I understand her moral issues with these advertisement techniques but she has failed to point out that they work! The United Way Foundation is a successful charitable organization that helps millions of disabled people. The reason they were able to do that is through their advertisements for donations. I agree that not all people with disabilities are helpless and dependent like children, but let's face it, some people are. Without the help of such charitable organizations, some of these people would be in really terrible shape. It is true that not all disabled people are like this, which is why we also have the trope of the supercrip. Barton's problem with the supercrip, in my opinion, is ridiculous. First she complains about the image of disabled people being too dependent, and then she complains about them seeming too perfect. Pick a side! The supercrip advertisements don't accentuate on the struggles these people had to endure to achieve their success but I believe any logical person knows that those struggles are a given. Obviously they exist. Does Barton really expect these ads to go into grave detail of the step-by-step process to success? At that point, they wouldn't be advertisements; they would be novels. She isn't being realistic. Her complaints are in conflict with the success of these campaigns. I'd like to know what her solution would be.

Barton is mainly concerned with society's view of people with disabilities. She wants people to know how they live their lives. She wants people to have a real change of perspective rather than just a pull on their heartstrings. She does not, however, give any suggestions as to how this should be done.

This made me think of an exercise I did in the second grade. Our class had a guest speaker one day. She was a woman with only one arm. She had lost the other in war. She explained to us that she was a normal human being, just like we were, and that she was able to function normally in every day life, just like everyone else, but simple tasks were just a little more time consuming. Rather than just telling us this, she had us experience it. We were then given all the ingredients to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. For each student, she tied one arm around our backs. We then had to make the sandwich with only one arm. I remember that being so extremely difficult. It really put it all into perspective for me. I knew that I was a smart girl and that I was able to do things, yet that task was so time consuming and frustrating. I knew how the woman felt.

I think this shift in understanding is what Barton really wants. She wants people to really know what it is like to live with a disability. I get that. It definitely makes a difference but what she has failed to note is that this is unrealistic. Most people will not take time out of their day to do tasks as if they were a disabled person, and some disabilities cannot be replicated like that. Barton is asking for too much.

~ Juliana Rodriguez

Barton, Ellen L. “Textual Practices of Erasure:

Representations of Disability and the Founding of the

United Way.”

Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture

. Ed. James C. Wilson and

Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2001. 169-199.