American 'ugly laws' once banned people deemed unsightly from public streets
Until the 1970s, many American jurisdictions had so-called ugly laws that kept people with diseases or disfigurements judged unsightly out of public view. Such rules are an example of ableism, prejudice that treats disabled people as inferior and defines them by their impairments. The word itself is young, first recorded in 1981.
Ableism was built from the -able in disabled, with a nod to able, which comes ultimately from Latin habilis, plus the -ism of racism and sexism. British English also uses disablism, and prejudice aimed at mental disorders or cognitive impairments has its own name, sanism. Common stereotypes include assuming every disabled person wants a cure, that wheelchair users must also have an intellectual disability, or that blind people possess some special insight.
American attitudes shifted in stages. During the 1800s a religious view of disability gave way to a more scientific one, public stigma softened after World War II as many veterans came home disabled, and a disability rights movement followed the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s. In 1990 the Americans with Disabilities Act barred employers, unions, agencies and state and local governments from discriminating against qualified disabled people in hiring, pay, promotion and training.
Britain outlawed disability discrimination through Acts passed in 1995 and 2005, both later folded into the Equality Act 2010. That law defines disability as a physical or mental impairment with a substantial, long-term effect on everyday activities, and it obliges employers to make reasonable adjustments; failing to do so counts as discrimination in its own right. The same Act covers race, religion, sex, age and several other protected characteristics.
Japan presents a different challenge. Its culture values wa, a harmony in which individuals fit into society as a single whole, so disability can read as a break in conformity. School teachers practise mimamori, watching children protectively while leaving them to manage their own interactions, which can leave disabled pupils exposed to more socially adept classmates. Japan ratified the UN disability convention in 2012, wrote bans on discrimination and a duty of reasonable accommodation into law in 2013, and from April 2024 required private companies too to provide such accommodation.
Source: Ableism
