Handicapitalism Makes its Debut
by Marta Russell

While a backlash is in full gear against the Americans with Disabilities Act
(ADA) across the nation, the Wall Street Journal (Dec. 15, 1999) recently
tagged disabled people as the “Next Consumer Niche.” Another icon of America
’s ruling class, Fortune Magazine (Feb. 7, 2000) picked up on the “Disabled
Americans are a vast market” theme and soon after Fortune 500 sponsored an
info-mercial on CBS (Feb. 12, 2000) which declared that disabled people have
$1 trillion in consolidated buying power. So it was that handicapitalism
made its media debut.
 

Handicapitalism, a term coined by Johnnie Tuitel (a lecturer with a
disability seeking to trademark the term), is firmly centered in free market
ideology. It has nothing to do with the ADA or the right of disabled persons
to employment, reasonable accommodations, and access. Rather the
handicapitalist philosophy is that disabled people “should not be viewed as
charity cases or regulatory burdens but as profitable marketing targets.”
Citing 1995 Census data that there are 48.5 million people 15 and older with
disabilities in the U.S., with annual discretionary income totaling $175
billion as support, handicapitalists pose that products and services ought
to “be spurred by the profit potential” lying in these numbers, “not by ADA
compliance.”
 

“Targeting people with disabilities for purely altruistic reasons,” Cheryl
Duke, president of W.C. Duke Associates Inc., a disability-consulting firm
in Virginia, explains to the WSJ "isn't going to get the return on
investment. If you do it because it's a moneymaking project, it will
continue."
 

Discounting the value of rights, the handicapitalists hold that in order for
disabled people to be tolerated by our capitalist society, rights must be
subsumed to the profit motive. Under this philosophy, social success will be
ours when disabled persons gain status as consumers with enough buying power
to command it. But where does the buying-power reside, who really controls
it and who benefits?
 

The handicapitalist $1 trillion-buying-power media blitz places in the
public mind the illusion that disabled people, as a class of persons, have
achieved economic prosperity. This flies in the face of the facts.
Buying-power data does not tell the story of the persistently high
unemployment rate and wide income disparities that dominate the economic
lives of the vast majority of disabled persons.
 

The majority of disabled people are not even working people. Despite a
growing economy and a 29-year-low unemployment rate, potential workers with
disabilities remain chronically unemployed. Ten years after the passage of
the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), national employment surveys show
that the unemployment rate for the disabled population remains at 70
percent - no where near to achieving economic parity with the nondisabled
population.
 

For example:
 

• Three out of ten (29 percent) working age adults with disabilities work
full or part-time compared to eight of ten (79 percent) of those without
disabilities, a gap of fifty percentage points.
 

• Of those with disabilities who are employed, only 18.4 percent of disabled
people work full time. The comparable figure for nondisabled people is 62
percent.
 

• The vast majority (79 percent) of those unemployed say that they would
prefer to work. The Census Bureau, however, finds that disabled persons are
less likely to have a job than people with no disability. While the
likelihood of having a job is 82.1 percent for those with no disability, it
is 76.9 percent for those with a non-severe disability and drops to 26.1
percent for those with a significant disability.
 

• There is a wage gap between disabled and nondisabled workers. In 1995,
workers with disabilities holding part time jobs (disabled are more likely
to work part time) earned on average only 72.4 percent of the amount
nondisabled workers earned annually. Such wage differentials were observed
for disabled persons working full time. Median monthly income for people
with work disabilities averaged about $1,500 in 1995 - 25 percent less than
the $2,000 earned by their counterparts without disabilities.
 

• Poverty remains disproportionate amongst disabled Americans. Census data
(1995) shows the nondisabled poverty rate to be 13.5 percent compared to a
poverty rate of 20.2 percent for disabled persons. Fully one third of adults
with disabilities live in a household with an annual income of less than
$15,000 compared to one in eight (12 percent) of those without
disabilities - a 22 point gap. Furthermore, the gap between disabled and
nondisabled persons living in very low income households has remained
virtually constant since 1986.
 

• The annual income cutoff at $15,000 doesn’t paint a complete picture of
the depth of poverty some disabled persons endure. For example, since $720
is the average per month benefit that a disabled worker received in 1998
from Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and $480 is the average
federal income for the needs-based Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the
real income of over 10 million disabled people on these programs is between
$5,000 and $10,000 - far below the $15,000 mark.
 

So where is all the consumer driven buying-power the handicapitalists rave
about? There are 17 million working age disabled people, 5.5 million of whom
have a job. The employed will have some extra money to spend beyond expenses
everyone must pay, such as rent, utilities, and food (the poor have some
buying -power). The rest of the 48 .5 million disabled people are under 18
or over 65. Some buying-power may rest with the parents of disabled children
and the elderly who have had a lifetime to accumulate a bank account before
they acquired a disability. It certainly does not rest with the 11 million
working age blind, deaf, developmentally disabled or mobility impaired
people who are unemployed, living on SSDI or SSI, and not earning fat
salaries on the upwardly mobile track.
 

The equally important question is how much of the money being spent on
disability specific needs and products is under the control of the disabled
individual? It is most likely that the real buying power resides with
government agencies who make purchases for disabled individuals under
programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of
Rehabilitation or with private insurance companies. Rather than the buying
power being in the hands of the disabled “consumer” these agencies make the
purchases on behalf of their disabled clients. The decision-making power is
far removed from the disabled individual.
 

As it turns out, the WSJ story was spurred by WE media, an an Internet
portal whose corporate partners include HotJobs.com Ltd., a job-search site
that pushes products and real estate targeted at disabled persons. Best
known for its New York City billboard proclaiming “"We've been called gimp,
cripple, and our new favorite, retard," it also publishes WE Magazine, a
slick yuppie life-style publication that outs disabled persons in
fashionable clothing in luxurious and chic public environments and
advertises $500 Bulova watches. Politically, WE seems to be equally
comfortable with Mayor Guiliani as they are with Al Gore.
 

But who are WE? Voice of the people? WE is not even controlled by a pack of
disabled entrepreneurs. I had to search far and wide to find any disabled
persons associated with it. All three main movers and shakers in this
enterprise are white non disabled males, though there are some disabled
persons listed on the advisory board and as contributing editors. As have
other civil rights movements, Disability Rights Movement must question who
profits from the disability specific buying that does goes on?
 

Canceling his subscription to WE, Mike Brannick of Arkansas writes, “you put
far too much emphasis on high dollar items. How may of us can travel to
Europe or dine in five-star restaurants?”
 

Millions of disabled people, like Brannick could never afford these products
slickly reproduced on the pages of WE. Many have only acquired some
disability-specific items because a government program will pay for them. WE
and its philosophy of handicapitalism glorifies what amounts to a wee
disability consumer constituency in the face of gross inequality while
undercutting the value of equal rights.
 

Rights, contrary to the handicapitalist opinion, are not "altruistic." Civil
rights laws, though certainly not a complete remedy for the inequality
described here, are an important element in the struggle in building
oppressed groups economic parity under capitalism.
 

There is a gaping hole in the handicapitalists’ vision. Employers do not see
disabled people as “a moneymaking project” when faced with the nonstandard
costs of providing reasonable accommodations, higher health insurance
premiums and other expenses that may arise. They come to view the disabled
employee as a liability and want to unload them. The unregulated labor
market has not rectified the high disabled unemployment rate, yet, as is
necessary under capitalism, the consumer market cannot grow without more
disabled people making the money to buy products. The consumer market, then,
depends on advancing the employment of disabled persons.
 

If the courts continue to rule against disabled plaintiffs in employment
discrimination cases (studies show employers win by wide margins), states
continue to challenge the constitutionality of the ADA where employees have
brought suit against them for disability discrimination, and the EEOC
continues its lax enforcement of our employment rights -- our economic
condition will continue to stagnate. How might the handicapitalists’ much
anticipated “Next Consumer Niche” fair then?
 

Disabled people (an eighth of the world population) remain the most
impoverished, the least likely to rise above subsistence in EVERY nation in
the world. The wee middle class of disabled persons in the U.S. does not
exist in many countries. In the underdeveloped nations disabled people have
no rights, no ADA. They can be found sleeping on sidewalks without
wheelchairs, crutches or other goods they need to live a life with dignity
(not that we don’t have this in the U.S. too). There are no curb cuts in
Africa or Asia and very few in Western Europe. There are no accessible buses
to provide transport to a job. Disabled people in the U.S. only have what
little we have now because we have struggled for our rights. Holding up
yuppie life-style consumerism - handicapitalism - as a solution to disabled
people's problems in the face of such reality is a terrible hoax.
 

Making their debut, here are a few  wealthy people with corporate sponsorship
stepping up and calling for a capitulation to capitalism when the ADA is
under a viscous attack by the conservative courts. Handicapitalists are
forging a partnership between wealthy and powerful nondisabled persons with
the aspiring-to-be entrepreneurial disabled middle class ready to jump
onboard. This forebodes a political alliance between conservative and
liberal disability leaders and government not to push for civil rights but
to rely on the handicapitalist strategy for disabled advancement within
capitalism.
Let the market rule?
 

Unless disabled people see ourselves as active creators of equality (which
means undoing capitalism which can never be made equitable) we will be
doomed to be tools of the owning class and our people, like other oppressed
groups, will remain impoverished.