61

19DiversityLennard J. Davis

What is diversity? Its message is beguilingly simple and

effective. Humans come in a variety of formats—with

differing genders, skin tones, hair color and types, eye

shapes, and sizes in the realm of physical differences,

and diverse languages, religions, nationalities, and

lifestyles in the realm of social differences. While

diversity acknowledges the unique identity of such

peoples, it also stresses that despite differences, we are

all the same—that is, we are all humans with equal

rights and privileges. No one group is better or superior

to another.

Disability would seem naturally to fall under the ru-

bric of diversity. Yet much of the time, when one sees

lists of those included under the diversity banner, dis-

ability is either left off or comes along as the caboose on

the diversity train. One could explain this negligence

by saying that disability is just not that well known as

an identity category; and that, when it is, disability will

then take its rightful place along with more familiar

identity markers such as race, gender, nationality, eth-

nicity, sexual orientation, and citizenship. One could

say it will just take time and more activism and even-

tually people will be educated. Or one could say the

problem is structural. This entry will explore the latter

position.

To understand the concept of diversity and how it

fits in with (or does not fit in with) disability, we might

want to understand when historically the concept came

into play and what preceded it. We might begin with

the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries, which stressed not the value of di-

versity but rather a “scientifically” determined notion of

normality. Various groups were statistically aggregated

based on their health, intelligence, size, strength, and

so forth, in an attempt to determine which groups were

normal (and therefore which groups were abnormal).

Using a bell curve, statisticians determined where in-

dividuals fit into various cohorts and how subdivisions

of the population compared with each other. Not sur-

prisingly, white, middle-class European citizens were

seen as more normal (or less abnormal) than immigrant

groups from eastern and southern Europe, Africa, and

Asia, as well as the indigenous working classes.

Thus the key distinguisher of groups during this pe-

riod was how normal or abnormal they were. The goal

of social policy and public health during this period was

to reduce the number of abnormal people, often called

“degenerate” or “feebleminded,” and increase the num-

ber of “fit” people. Obviously, there was no ideology of

diversity, since diversity was exactly what eugenics tried

to eliminate or minimize.

The idea that some groups were normal and others

were not began to lose public acceptance in the after-

math of the Nazi use of eugenic theories of normality to

eradicate groups like Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and

disabled and Deaf people. Further, the civil rights move-

ment of the 1960s made it harder for the label of “nor-

mal” to be applied to any ethnic or national group as op-

posed to another group that would be seen as abnormal

(although it took a few more years for gay and lesbian

citizens to lose the “abnormal” qualifier). During the

last half of the twentieth century, cinema, photography,

television, popular music, and artworks increasingly

argued for a “brotherhood of man” and later, as part

of the feminist movement, “sisterhood” as a powerful

good. The civil rights movement brought about changes

Copyright 2015. NYU Press.

All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – printed on 4/11/2022 12:12 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND GLOBAL CAMPUSAN: 992496 ; Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss, David Serlin.; Keywords for Disability StudiesAccount: s4264928.main.edsebook

d i v e r s i t y l e n n a r d j . d a v i s62

in laws that made discrimination based on differences

such as race and ethnicity harder to accomplish. The

feminist and sexual rights movements included gender

in this schema and, eventually, gay, lesbian, and trans-

gender groups were added as well.

Economic discrimination based on race, however,

continued, since human rights did not apply to eco-

nomic justice and income inequality. One way that eco-

nomic injustice based on race or gender was envisioned

as disappearing was through equal opportunity in edu-

cation and employment. The concept of affirmative ac-

tion arose in the mid-1960s as a counter to the former

discrimination based on race. At first not controversial,

the idea of placing one group over another based on for-

mer discrimination eventually became a flash point for

a new kind of racial prejudice based on the perception of

preferential treatment. As “affirmative action” became a

somewhat less acceptable phrase based on the ire it cre-

ated in nonminority populations who complained of

reverse discrimination, the word “diversity” may have

arisen as an acceptable substitute. Now we have “di-

versity officers” at universities and in businesses rather

than “affirmative action” officers or “minority affairs”

administrators.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, implemented

in 1990, may have changed some practices and abuses

toward people with disabilities. But it did not change

very much the way culture regards people with dis-

abilities in relation to diversity. Our current interest in

diversity is laudable, but websites and advertisements

touting diversity rarely include disability. It is not that

disability is simply excluded from visual and narrative

representations of diversity in university materials.

More significantly, disability is rarely integrated into the

general media or, more pointedly, in K–12 and univer-

sity courses devoted to diversity. Anthologies in all fields

now cover topics like race and gender, but the inclusion

of disability rarely happens. In popular media, it is rare

to see blind people or people with Parkinson’s disease

included except in settings that reek of melodrama or

sentimentality. Is there ever a depiction in a film or

television show of a Deaf couple talking or a group of

wheelchair users gathered in a park in which the point

is not to highlight their disability? When disability does

appear on the Internet, it is generally cloistered on web

pages devoted to accommodations and services or as an

exotic feature on a YouTube video.

Disability is not just missing from a diversity con-

sciousness; disability could very well be antithetical to

the current conception of diversity. It seems clear, as

Walter Benn Michaels points out in his book The Trou-

ble with Diversity, that current conceptions of diversity

nicely suit the beliefs and practices of neoliberal capi-

talism. Michaels argues that the idea of diversity func-

tions to conceal economic inequality. But one could

add that diversity also represses forms of difference that

are not included under the better-known categories of

race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. In other words,

diversity may only be able to exist as long as we exclude

physical, cognitive, and affective impairments from the

diversity checklist. Perhaps these need to be repressed

because they are a collective memento mori of human

frailty; but more than that, they are narcissistic wounds

to the neoliberal belief in the free and autonomous

subject. The neoliberal subject’s main characteristic is

individuality and the ability to craft one’s destiny and

choose one’s fate as a consumer-citizen. But in such a

mind-set, disability seems a lot less like a lifestyle choice

and a whole lot more like an act of fate and evidence of

powerlessness.

Universities are not exempt from this neoliberal way

of thinking. College courses on diversity are intended

to celebrate and empower underrepresented identities.

But disability seems harder for “normals” to celebrate

EBSCOhost – printed on 4/11/2022 12:12 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND GLOBAL CAMPUS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use

d i v e r s i t y l e n n a r d j . d a v i s 63

and see as empowering. The idea presented by diversity

is that any identity is one we all could imagine having,

and all identities are worthy of choosing. But the one

identity one cannot (and, given the ethos of diversity,

should not) choose is to be disabled. No one should

make the choice that their partner be disabled or their

child be born with a disability. So how could disability

legitimately be part of the diversity paradigm, since it

speaks so bluntly against the idea of consumer lifestyle

choice and seems so obviously to be about helplessness

and powerlessness before the exigencies of fate? If diver-

sity celebrates empowerment, disability seems to be the

poster student for disempowerment.

Disability is not the only category eschewed by di-

versity. One never sees crack addicts, homeless people,

obese people, or the very poor in any celebration of

diversity. These all fall into the category of what some

might call the “abject” and must be forcibly repressed

in order for the rainbow of diversity to glimmer and

shine. This group of outcasts is excluded from the typi-

cal frame of university brochures or course materials,

and this exclusion emphasizes how limited and prob-

lematic the project of diversity really is. These limits

are laid out in diversity’s main message: “We are all

different—therefore we are all the same.” But if differ-

ence is equated with sameness, then how can being

different mean anything? That contradiction is usu-

ally resolved by finding one Other to repress—an Other

whose existence is barely acknowledged. That Other is

disability. What diversity is really saying, if we read be-

tween the lines, is that “we are different and yet all the

same precisely because there is a deeper difference that

we, the diverse, are not.” That peculiar sameness of dif-

ference in diversity has as its binary opposite the abject,

the abnormal, and the extremely marginal—and that

binary opposition gives a problematic meaning to the

general concept of diverse sameness.

One of those deeper differences might be thought of

as medical difference. Medicine defines a norm of hu-

man existence, while diversity superficially seems to re-

ject norms. There is no normal human being anymore,

as there was in the period of eugenics. Diversity seems

to say that there is no race, gender, or ethnicity that de-

fines the norm—as, for example, the white, middle-class

heterosexual European male used to do. Indeed, that is

a tenet of diversity studies. But in the realm of medicine,

the norm still holds powerful sway. No one wants to cel-

ebrate abnormality in the medical sense—no one is call-

ing for valuing high blood pressure or low blood sugar.

There is no attempt to celebrate “birth defects” or can-

cer (although we celebrate those fighting cancer). What

people most want to hear from the obstetrician is that

their child is “normal.”

If diversity rejects the idea of a normal ethnicity,

it has no problem with the notion of the normal in a

medical sense, which means of course it has no prob-

lem with branding some bodies and minds normal and

some abnormal. As long as disability is seen in this med-

ical sense, it will therefore be considered abnormal and

outside the healthy, energetic bodies routinely depicted

in celebrations of diversity. Recall that students of color

are referred to as African Americans, Asian Americans,

and so forth, but on the medical side of campus stu-

dents with disabilities are most likely to be referred to

as patients.

For a long time, in disability studies, there has been a

cherished belief that if we work long and hard enough

in the academic arena, we will end up convincing peo-

ple that disability is a real identity on par with the more

recognized ones. That position remains a hope, and

activists will help that moment come sooner, if it ever

comes. But it may well be that diversity as an ideologi-

cal paradigm is structurally related to the goals of neo-

liberalism. As such, diversity must never be allowed to

EBSCOhost – printed on 4/11/2022 12:12 PM via UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND GLOBAL CAMPUS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use