![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniI'm trying to find photos (and pre-photographic art) to illustrate This 'Disability Rights Protest Song' video I'm working on... trying to find pictures of the disabled [both physically and cognitively] in settings where they've been shut away from society.
Putting keywords like: "Nineteenth Century Almshouse Disabled History" in Google's image search has pulled up nothing but images of the outsides of buildings, looking all romantic and pretty, with emphasis on the gardens that were around them (and quite a few advertisements for "historic" almshouses that have been converted into luxury apartments for wealthy people... [Sad facepalm]).
Putting keywords like "Nursing Home Disabled residents" and "Residential School Disabled" into the search pulls up images posted by the nursing homes themselves -- online versions of glossy brochures, touting what wonderful, happy, places they are.
Then, there are sites like this: Disability History Panels that make all sorts of "shocking" claims about how horrible people were to the disabled in the past... And while I have no doubt as to the truth of the claims, I can't find a single citation for where these facts come from... so that those people who do doubt the truth would find it easy to dismiss the history as 'hype'.
Meanwhile, that particular site, though posted in connection with Alaska's Health and Social Services website, was plagiarized, word-for-word and image-for-image from an online interactive Flash-based history project done by the Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities.... And the Minnesota site doesn't give any sources, either ... And their eleven-question "Quiz Show" on history of disability is more editorial than fact (asking whether calling someone an "idiot" is acceptable, or not, and claiming for a fact that it is not -- period. While I may agree with the opinion -- that is still an opinion. And "educating" in this manner only plays into the arguments of those who say "Disability Rights" is nothing but "Political Correctness.").
Our elected officials. Are they all fourteen-year-olds?
Putting keywords like: "Nineteenth Century Almshouse Disabled History" in Google's image search has pulled up nothing but images of the outsides of buildings, looking all romantic and pretty, with emphasis on the gardens that were around them (and quite a few advertisements for "historic" almshouses that have been converted into luxury apartments for wealthy people... [Sad facepalm]).
Putting keywords like "Nursing Home Disabled residents" and "Residential School Disabled" into the search pulls up images posted by the nursing homes themselves -- online versions of glossy brochures, touting what wonderful, happy, places they are.
Then, there are sites like this: Disability History Panels that make all sorts of "shocking" claims about how horrible people were to the disabled in the past... And while I have no doubt as to the truth of the claims, I can't find a single citation for where these facts come from... so that those people who do doubt the truth would find it easy to dismiss the history as 'hype'.
Meanwhile, that particular site, though posted in connection with Alaska's Health and Social Services website, was plagiarized, word-for-word and image-for-image from an online interactive Flash-based history project done by the Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities.... And the Minnesota site doesn't give any sources, either ... And their eleven-question "Quiz Show" on history of disability is more editorial than fact (asking whether calling someone an "idiot" is acceptable, or not, and claiming for a fact that it is not -- period. While I may agree with the opinion -- that is still an opinion. And "educating" in this manner only plays into the arguments of those who say "Disability Rights" is nothing but "Political Correctness.").
Our elected officials. Are they all fourteen-year-olds?
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 04:13 am (UTC)Just letting my mind blabber late at night
Have you tried the Disability History Project yet? Last listed update was a year ago, but there are tons of resources there.
http://disabilityhistory.org/
Ooo! One more thought and then bed: for the inside of institutions I searched on "Willowbrook 1971" and came up with what looks helpful:
http://www.asylumprojects.org/index.php?title=Willowbrook_State_School
These TV investigations made a star out of Geraldo Rivera, and I'm afraid to even brwose the links.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 04:31 am (UTC)Okay. Good to know it's not just me, and my impossibly high standards for things like knowing what a fact is.
And thanks for the links. I did try Disabilities Studies Quarterly, but that's not a good site for illustrations.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 06:10 pm (UTC)With my mother in the room, however, I answered all questions perfectly, so luckily, that diagnosis was withdrawn. ...But if my mother had been the sort to be intimidated by experts, and if I'd picked up on her fear, and continued to be silent, where would I have ended up?
This was 1966. We were living in Northern New Jersey, just outside Manhattan, getting treatment for me from Columbia Presbyterian Baby Hospital in New York City. ... Would that have been in the circle of Willowbrook's influence? Might I have ended up there?
How's that for a spooky Halloween thought?
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 06:22 pm (UTC)I've had friends who were institutionalized — from brief stays to decades — and it destroys a person as thoroughly as cancer or MRSA or monsters in the attic. The ones who survived institutionalization sometimes made it through with their humanity, autonomy, and self-concept intact. Sometimes. I'm sure you know folks as well.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 07:12 pm (UTC)There but for the anger of an iconoclast go I...
As annoyed as I am at the Alaska/Minnesota history timeline, for not citing their sources, or giving background information, I may end up snagging individual images from them, anyway. When I try to do individual image searches on them, to find out where they came from (if they were taken from some other news sources on the Web, etc.), a lot of the time, they just circle back to the timeline source. One such image is a row of young men, most of whom appear to have various levels of spastic CP, lined up in a hallway in an institutional setting. Clicking to enlarge gives no further detail as to photographer or original publisher, but there's a hand-penciled date in the lower right-hand corner that reads 4-something-'72. So now, my guess is that it was from Willowbrook.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 05:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 06:17 am (UTC)No. "Rememberences of Patients Past" found no results in any library -- unquote.
Searching for 'Asylums," as a subject gave me six results -- all fiction. One historical fiction. Five Horror/thriller/crime fiction...
Sigh. The broadest subject heading I could think of: "disability" gave me 35 results (out of seven connected libraries) nearly all about dyslexia, and navigating the school system. Or about the legal maze around the American Social Security system. Or they were children's books with a disabled character... But on the upside, there was this:
The new disability history : American perspectives / edited by Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky. Longmore, Paul K.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 05:59 pm (UTC)There is one book in the local library on the history of the State Asylum for eastern Virginia. But it's kept in the Local History room, which is hidden in the back, behind a closed door. And you can only read it there, you can't take it out.
...And this is why people are surprised there's even such a thing as Disability History. And because folks don't ask about it, books on the subject don't get bought for the stacks.
*the Sigh*