On Fri, 26 Jul 2002, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> Michael, that is all true, but NYC is NOT the US.
Of course, I entirely agree, Wojtek. But again, my original question was how come the proportion of people who are disabled that I perceive on the sidewalks of New York is so much less than 20%. In a sense, the background of New York already includes back in the fraction rendered invisible elsewhere by private transport. But there was still a huge fraction missing, which I now see is at least partially an epistomologial question: one must think of the mentally disabled as disabled before you perceive them as such. One must accept that everyone who has self-reported trouble negotiating everyday life counts as disabled, and that that is the proper, sociological, definition of the term. Once that is granted as a definition, I don't think I have a hard time accepting 20% based on my everyday experience.
Michael