I RECENTLY learned that it's impossible to be handicapped. If you ever refer to deaf or blind people as handicapped, then you will have deeply offended them and, most egregious in an academic setting, said something politically incorrect. The proper term is "differently abled."
This relatively recent PC term is a brilliant way to mitigate the self-esteem crisis faced by people with disabilities. It's hard to go through life constantly being told that you're inherently inferior to the rest of society. But rather than transcend physical limitations and focus on the universal aspects of humanity, namely morality, the handicapped community dwells on the differences. After all, they reason, those who can hear and see just happen to be the overwhelming majority. The same can be said for mental disabilities: There is no right or wrong personality, merely deviations from the mean. Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge University argues that "disorders" such as autism are "different cognitive styles, not disabilities."
Thus Americans who formerly suffered from disabilities, both physical and mental, don't actually have anything with wrong with them; they're just different. With a few word changes, the self-esteem crisis has been averted. But at what cost?
Going through life with a perpetual feeling of physical inferiority is a bitter pill to swallow. But the cure is far worse than the disease. Calling those who cannot see or hear just different takes us down a dangerous road of relativism. I find it self-evident that hearing is better than being unable to hear, but this language implicitly denies that anything can be "better" or "worse" than anything else. That certain physical traits are better than others makes no claims as to whether a handicapped person is better or worse than a non-handicapped -- that depends on their moral choices. But when academics argue that we should simply celebrate the diversity of human physical and cognitive arrangements, then we lose the ability to make moral judgements.
Such language destroys the very metaphysical foundations of Western civilization. Unless we can call physical attributes better or worse, we lose beauty. Although we may say that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," we don't act that way. Instead, Kant argued, we debate aesthetic judgments, like the beauty of a woman, say, and we tend to believe that such debates can actually achieve something. Similarly, if all cognitive arrangements are equally valid, then we lose the moral certitude to condemn the insane. Removing judgments of better and worse takes us down a Nietzschean road that leaves no room for morality.
The goal of terms like differently abled is, I think, to better establish equality within society. But they do so the wrong way. Great thinkers like Locke and Kant wanted to achieve equality by elevating ourselves above mere material differences, like physical deformities or mental disorders, and focus on the commonality of human nature. Locke called them "natural rights" given by God and, as such, could not be "alienated" away to anyone else. Kant called them "human rights" which were based on our capacity for moral choice.
Self-worth, then, stems from making moral choices to "pursue our own good in our own way" while not impeding others, as Mill put it. These ideas elevate those who feel inferior to a condition of fundamental equality. The PC terms try to disparage the notions of better and worse thereby bringing everyone down -- we're not good or moral, just different. This is especially pernicious because it divides us into arbitrary groups based on things like physical appearance rather than transcending them.
A perfect example of this happened last year at Gallaudet University, the world's only deaf university. Students protested and even barricaded themselves inside a building at the selection of a new university president: Jane K. Fernandes. Students were incensed that, basically, she wasn't deaf enough. As CNN put it, "Fernandes, born deaf, grew up 'mainstreamed'" -- meaning she went to schools with hearing children -- and did not learn sign language until she was in her 20s." The deaf community has embraced sign language as its means of communication and loathes anyone who reads lips. Many even oppose cochlear implants (Fernandes supports them) because they don't consider deafness to be a disability. So we've come full circle when deaf parents don't want their children to be able to hear, because deaf people are just differently abled.
But even though universal morality is a fundamental of Western civilization, things like deaf culture still have so much value. Rousseau wrote about how in order to achieve happiness and goodness, we must pursue them while rooted in our own culture. In order to transcend the mundane and make moral choices, we need support -- our cultures, ranging from deafness to religion, provide just that.
We cannot ignore our differences, but we need not dwell on them. Certain traits are better or worse than others, but these don't define how good we are. New PC terms that pretend there's no such thing as better or worse take away the best way for people to prove their worth: making good moral choices.
Josh Levy's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at jlevy@cavalierdaily.com.
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