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.