An avalanche of possible retorts flowed through my mind as this statement was expressed to me.  I pinched my lips together allowing the words, “Yes, you don’t.”  After four years of requests to the local, municipal government to install a pool lift at their beach and pool facility, it will finally be resolved beginning Memorial Day 2018.  Yes, I was reassured that a pool lift would be operational this coming summer.   For 28 years, elected officials and staff had ignored federal laws with outright lies and stalling tactics hoping “people like me” would go away.  Sun, sand, and beach was exclusively for the robust of the borough; the disabled could disturb the scenery.  As told to me, pool lifts are too expensive with installation too destructive to the existing pool decks, the pool was not owned or operated by the borough therefore the borough was not required to abide by the law and “we are working on that.”  These were just a few of the false excuses for keeping barriers to the pool for exercise and enjoyment.  Their intent was clear; we do not want your kind here.  Your money, yes.  However, do not expect to us provide you with access.  So, why would the disable want to be here?  For the same reasons everyone else goes to the beach!  We want to participate also, not just observe.

A quiet, subversive, systematic apartheid still prevails throughout our country.  Our nation’s projection to the world of an ideal of individualism and strength still pervades our psyche to prevent disabled persons from integrating into the population of the healthy.  The religious concept of associating affliction with sin still sanctions the attitudes and acts of seclusion for the benefit of society’s well-being.  Removal of the imperfect was considered a basic element of Darwin’s theory of natural selection and the survival of the fittest.  In Germany, this concept was the foundation of an attempt to produce a pure race of “acceptable” humans by dehumanizing the flawed.  Eugenics practiced by the Germans evolved into the Nazi regime.  In the United States, society persuaded their governments to enact laws to make Americans appear superior at home and to the world.

In the United States, the “ugly laws” were enforced in cities and states during the late nineteenth century making it illegal for a person with a physical disability as slight as a limp to appear in public.  Fines, incarceration or warehousing in public poor houses could be the result of being on a sidewalk.  The “ugly” were barred from employment, education, participating in government and social activities.  With a single exception, entertainment.  Yes, a person with a birth defect or survived polio could not walk with a limp down a street to shop for food or commute to a job but, they could join the circus, be part of an act in a traveling carnival or appear on a stage for the amusement of the acceptable population.  Our society allowed the disabled applause or exhibition but not an intellect.  The first recorded arrest in 1867 of a former Union Army soldier injured in the Civil War was in San Francisco.  In 1974, the last arrest due to the enforcement of “ugly laws” in Chicago was of a man with visible scaring.  The last of the “ugly laws” were repealed the following year.  Fifteen years later, “ugly laws” were replaced by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; never the less, public perception still lingers throughout our society today.

Particular government officials along their constituents view the disabled as “takers”, powerless objects of distain deserving of ridicule.  U.S. Representative Ted Poe of Texas introduced H.R.620 – ADA Education and Reform Act of 2017 on January 24, 2017.  The brave, spiritual and patriotic House of Representatives sought to roll back the rights of the disabled (many former military) as they voted to pass this bill.  This deceptively named bill will prevent the removal of barriers for the disabled established twenty-seven years ago with Title III of the ADA of 1990.  If signed into law, it could take a disabled person years of litigation to gain access to doctors’ offices, restaurants, theaters or anywhere the able-bodied have immediate access.  This bill rewards establishments currently ignoring ADA laws for decades to continue with immunity.  So, do you think we have evolved as a society?  Supporters of a nihilistic bully defend his public humiliation and mocking of a disabled journalist.  Acceptance of this type of sanctioned ridicule creates a pervasive atmosphere promoting exclusion and encouraging the creation of this bill.

“…people like you…”  Why am I not surprised by this remark?  These words are a societal validation of my status as defective and invisible.  No, you say.  Then, please explain how 63 million of my fellow citizens spent a portion of their day in November 2016 to demonstrate their approval of this nihilistic bully by acknowledging that, “he is my kind of guy.”  Welcome to the 1860’s and thank you for making America great.  Again!