The University of Rhode Island Honors Program kicked off its annual Honors Colloquium via YouTube on Tuesday with a discussion on why disability is highly stigmatized by society.
To coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act, this year’s theme is “Disability in the 21st Century.” Each talk will cover contemporary issues people with disabilities face.
The first lecture, titled “The Implausible Pursuit of Perfection and its Impact on Our Perception of Imperfect People,” was delivered by Dr. Rick Rader. He is the director of the Habilitation Center at the Orange Grove Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Through Rader’s position and his training in internal medicine and medical anthropology, he has devoted his life to increasing the longevity of disabled populations. Rader is responsible for the creation and implementation of innovative health delivery systems of individuals with complex intellectual and developmental disabilities. He is also one of six board certified physicians in developmental medicine and has served as a consultant to five former surgeon generals in the area of neurodevelopmental disabilities.
Rader took the opportunity to celebrate this year’s theme, but also took a moment to reflect on why it has taken the Honors Colloquium so long to address disability in this format. He noted general discomfort around discussions of disability, as well as impairment to the societal contributions of people with disabilities, as a main reason for this delay.
“When it comes to the disability rights movement,” Rader said, “it’s more than talking and thinking about it. It does indeed require watching, feeling and acting.”
Rader’s lecture focused largely on the historical stride towards an unreachable idea of perfection, as well as ways society has discouraged and marginalized those they deem to be imperfect. This idea of human perfection, Rader believes, has led to the adoption of eugenics as a way to disenfranchise people who do not meet traditional standards of beauty or intelligence.
“Evolutionary biologists believe we are hardwired, programmed for an affinity for perfection,” Rader said. “It’s part of our innate survival tactics. It’s ingrained, it’s intrinsic, it’s replicated and fortified by our own choices.”
He related the historical connections to perfectionism to the stress of raising a child with developmental disabilities. The stigma surrounding disabled children as “imperfect,” Rader said, has led to a society that is unable to provide them access to adequate resources and treatment.
“Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities have been stigmatized,” Rader said, “thus allowing generations of isolation, institutionalization and inhumane treatment.”
According to Rader, modern scientific advancements have renewed the conversation surrounding human perfection in the developed world. While nothing about the quest for human perfection surprises him as a clinician, Rader is continually frustrated with the continued mistreatment of those deemed “imperfect.”
“To appreciate children as gifts is to accept them as they come,” Rader said. “Not as objects of our design, or products of our will or instruments of our perfection.”
There will be seven more speakers in the series on most Tuesday nights throughout the semester.
According to Donald DeHayes, provost and vice president of student affairs at URI, there has never been a more important time to be holding informed discussions about disability.
“This will be an engaging and important colloquium that’s aimed not only at the URI community of students, staff and faculty,” DeHayes said, “but to the broader community of Rhode Island who always enjoy Honors Colloquia each year.”