disability discrimination

Doyle Saylor djsaylor at ix.netcom.com
Thu Jun 18 16:25:56 PDT 1998


Hello everyone,

Marta Russell writes (June 18,98, Thursday): I find it interesting that NO one has commented on the fact that the individual was fired by the school board for having no fingertips got directed into a discussion about child molesters. I recieved this today, and think it may be applicable to this list. Correct me if I am wrong.
>
> as a church woman (I'm an Episcopal priest), I have made it my business over
> the last couple of years to write and write and write to people who publish
> lists of "the evils of the world to be righted" and include EVERYthing in
> their laundry lists but disability. it happens constantly. one of the best
> known Black ethicists and activists, well published, seminary prof, needed 3
> or 4 major papers from a disabled seminarian before he "got it" that
> disability is a justice issue!!!!!! in other words, we're even overlooked,
> discounted, oppressed, by those who are carrying the banners to end all
> oppression!
>
Is not the school teacher being OPPRESSED by having no fingertips?

Marta Russell Los Angeles

(Doyle) Yes! But what is happening is that a moral system against child molesters has supplanted the look at the person concerning their disabilities. So it seems to me that a moral system (principally we are talking about Christian ethics) acts to make it impossible to see the facts in a material sense of the word. Why is this so?

(Doyle) A moral system is a description of the brain functions is it not? Aren't reactionaries taking advantage of brain mechanisms to summarize information in a categorical sense to make it impossible to go beyond their assertion. Another similar category are social taboos. So in some sense then we are asking what is the means to understand things beyond the limits of moral systems. I mean we are trying to get at why moral systems cover information. We are asking how the brain works! Also notice how this applies to a disabled person! Also notice how for instance in medicine they attempt to open up the body to all material knowledge, in affect the powers that be understand how to move past moral systems thinking.

It completely covers the disability issues to summarize the moral question. This is a common problem in most human societies. It amounts to a barrier of some sort existing in the mind which are then externalized into the social system which acts to restrict behavior outside of what I would think of as "rational" debate. We would find similar problems in the left camp, where "sectarian" thought prevails.

(Doyle) Sectarianism is a form of disability. That is compulsive thought is OCD. So a text like Lenin's on Left Wing Communism is an attack upon disabilities! Doyle Saylor



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list