Disabled Equality Essay

Submitted By lexierains2
Words: 902
Pages: 4

Disabled Equality Throughout Uncle Tom’s Cabin we get to see first hand the inequality of the black society in America. This group was seen completely different than all of the other people living in the states in this early time. Stowe proves this hatred towards this group of people when she says, “You loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you are indignant at their wrongs. You would not have them abused; but you don’t want to have anything to do with them yourselves. You would send them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously.” White Americans didn’t want any part of the black community they saw them as something different, like these people were not human. Today many people see people with mental retardation in the same sort of way. When we hear the terms “retard”, “mentally challenged”, “slow”, “disabled”, or “mental” we think of them in a negative light. These words have become a bad thing in our society because of the thought that people with mental handicaps are not all that smart and they are not capable to do as much as people without handicaps. All through high school I would hear people, even my friends, use these terms to make fun of someone else if they did something that was not exactly “smart”. Sometimes my friends would look at someone that was wearing something that may have not been all that cool and they would accuse that person of looking “retarded”. This is not the way this word should be presented. It seems that people tend to forget that there are people out there with mental handicaps that cannot defend themselves. Extremely ignorant people who like to believe that retardation is a bad thing use the negative connotation of this word on the daily. It is completely and utterly disgusting to me when people use this term as a description of something that is bad or dumb or even when something isn’t exactly perfect. We forget that this group of people does have feelings and they do have self worth. Growing up, I have always been around children with severely mental handicaps. As a very generous giver, my father started a charity golf outing for The McGuire Home, which houses children and adults with the most severe mental handicaps. I have been very privileged to get to work with these people and it has been such a growing experience for me. While working with this group of people I have learned that they are all very happy, to be exact they are the happiest group of people I have ever been around. They are also the most affectionate people I have been around and they let you know how much love they have for life everyday. They are very complex people with very complex feelings. They feel pain, love, happiness, and sadness just like any other human being, the only thing that is different is their mental state. Not only have I volunteered with my dad’s charity I also helped with the service learning kids in my high school. As to many peoples surprise not all of the kids that were in the service-learning program were quite normal teenage kids. Their only problem was that they had a slight mental retardation that set them back educationally. Although they looked and acted normal that are classified as “disabled”.