Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve and the Case Against Disability Rights

Rating:
Summary: Inequality Is Color Blind
Review: An on going problem for the disbility rights movement has been its failure to connect with other minority groups. The critical reviewer from Tulsa, OK highlights this with his prejudiced and poorly chosen words. I am glad the reviewer is proud to be an African American and embraces his civil rights. However, comments such as "over coming a handicap is honorable" is offensive. Indeed, it reminds me of a time when African American leaders were considered "a credit to their race". Rather than lashing out at disabled people, perhaps the reviewer from Tulsa might want to consider that in the civil rights struggle to ride on the front of the bus for example black Americans had a huge advantage--they could actually get on the bus. The reviewer may also want to consider that the main problem disabled people encounter is not their disability or the physical access to buildings but rather social prejudice. Moreover, many disabled people are proud of who they are--and that includes whatever disability they have.

Rating:
Summary: The ADA is not the same as African American Equality
Review: I do not appreciate this author trying to make the ADA equal to the suffering African-Americans went through with the civils rights movement.

African-Americans did not force every store owner to spend tens of thousands of dollars to change everything in and around their building. We just wanted to be able to go in the same places others were allowed to go in.

Overcoming a handicap is honorable. Being an African-American is something to be proud of. Forcing our struggling businesses to change their buldings to adapt to US, however, is little more than theft.

Rating:
Summary: Case for Disability Rights
Review: I found this book right on the money in regards to disability rights. I too was offended when it refers to "overcoming a disability as honorable". Unless you are disabled you have no right to tell someone who is disabled that "it is honorable." What's honorable about? Does anyone say the same thing to successful African Americans? Wouldn't they be offended by that remark? And I was offended by [e-mail]'s review as he complained about businesses having to spend thousands of dollars to accommodate the handicapped. Accommodation might actually help everyone involved, you think?
Apparently he lacks the intelligence to understand that the reviewer before him emphasized the parallel of discrimination in this country against African Americans and the disabled. The author of the book brings it home when she says disability can happen to anyone at anytime. Therefore, instead of [e-mail] criticizing and patronizing the disability issue, he should hope that he never has an accident, ages, or has an illness leaving him disabled because then he'll be quite glad of the ADA and those disabled people who had to fight tooth and nail for the rights and equality African Americans received in the 60s.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Like all books regarding social activism it can come across as a little preachy but that is really not the point. Point is that the ADA is a useless bit of legislation and the entire act needs to be revisited and firmer classifications need to be established and keep in mind that this is person with a disability talking. The points raised in this book are totally valid, please read with an open mind before you judge it. I say that the issues are exactly the same as other equal rights movments of the past. Good job authors.

Rating:
Summary: A well-written must-read
Review: Mary Johnson's book fills an important gap. We haven't understood the case against disability rights and we need to if we're going to refute it. As Johnson explains, we ignore it (with the claims of Reeve and Eastwood and of the right-wing law and economics approach) at our peril. Johnson's book is a call to take disability rights seriously, full of comment on court cases like Sutton, Williams and Garrett, and a plethora of disability issues including "special" education, accessible transit, employment and adaptive technology.

I've already had the pleasure of using this book in the undergraduate university classroom (at Chapman University) and I'm eager to use it again.