5:03am July 11, 2013

➸ Disability Rights Timeline

clatterbane:

And further on that theme:

1848

The Perkins Institution, founded by Samuel Gridley Howe in Boston, Massachusetts, was the first residential institution for people with mental retardation. Over the next century, hundreds of thousands of developmentally disabled children and adults were institutionalized, many for the rest of their lives…

1883

Eugenics is a term that was coined by Sir Francis Galton in his book Essays in Eugenics. Americans embraced the eugenics movement by passing laws to prevent people with disabilities from moving to the U.S., marrying or having children. Eugenics laws led to the institutionalization and forced sterilization of disabled adults and children.

 

Disablist ideas have been around for a very long time in some cultures, but that’s how recently things turned really nasty.

And by now most people in certain cultures think this is normal and inevitable.

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