I remember when I was a student at an elementary school for physically
disabled children in Los Angeles, they added some classes for
mentally-retarded students when I was in the fifth grade.  However the two
groups didn't mix at all, and whenever one of them would wander over into
our "territory"  on the playground, they would be run off.  They usually sat
apart from the others on the bus and I don't recall even seeing them at
school assemblies (but they may have been and I just don't remember. Kids
can be quite cruel. 



As a grad student in Antrhopology, I can tell you just about every culture
has its pecking order and every subculture has the same.  It's universal. 
It may be more subtle and/or more open in some than in others but it's there
 all the same.  And it's not neccessarily based on money or education, or
disability but on the perception of status and one's place in the scheme of
things.



Kat

 

-------Original Message-------

 

From: St. John's University Cerebral Palsy List

Date: Thursday, April 10, 2003 12:56:10 PM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: PWD's prejudiced against other PWD's

 

I've got kind of a strange question that I thought Bobby, as a retired

academician, might have the best handle on, but that others might have

an interest in as well; Is there information available about people

within a minority group expressing prejudice against other members of

that minority group, or a smaller subset within that group? The

situation I've encountered is a person with CP and some cognitive

challenges explicitly expressing prejudice against other people with

physical and/or cognitive disabilities that he interacts with. This

persons cognitive issues are mild enough that he can reason, but it just

floored me when he expressed such obvious prejudice against others who

were not much different than himself.



Kendall Corbett

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.