Inspiration

zic in reply to Patrick Cahalan says:

I came to say the same thing. How it works is that people who are disabled and competing become representative all all disabled people.

Sadly, we do this sort of thing frequently, and typically to groups of people we’re unfamiliar with or discomforted by in the role we’re witnessing. Some examples:

I think he got sick and tired of seeing his co-workers and peers respected for their accomplishments while he was held up as a ‘credit to his race,’ as a representative not of himself, but of all blacks. Because he’s black, and held up as an example of all blacks, he must be an affirmative action case, or so I guess his perceptions might flow.

So the successful CEO of a Fortune 500 who’s a woman becomes a symbol of all women in business. Or think of Sally Ride; was she an astronaut first, or ‘the first American woman in space?’ In her life, she was, I’d guess, the an astronaut and physicist first.

We also do the inverse; pity sympathy. We hear about a kid who’s been sexually molested, for instance, and in sympathy, we say stuff like, “Oh, poor thing, his life is ruined.” Well, it’s sure been set on a different path. But ruined? Give the kid a break.Report