Shapiro No Pity
In his book No Pity, Joseph P. Shapiro looks at the physical and social barriers to the civil rights of disabled individuals. The main focus of his book is to create an awareness and understanding of the damaging role that feelings of pity play in the self-confidence and self-respect of many disabled individuals. Further, Shapiro clearly outlines the scope of the disabled struggle for rights, and notes some divisions within the movement. On a personal level, reading No Pity gave me a more empathetic understanding of the disabled rights movement, and also helped me to better understand the negative power of pity.
In his book, Shapiro masterfully describes the struggle that many disabled individuals face to maintain dignity in a society that sees them as pitiful. Former poster child for the March of Dimes, Cindi Jones, recalls in Shapiro's book the stigma and pain of pity. Initially, Jones loved the publicity of being on television, on billboards, and her notoriety. That all changed one day in her first-grade class when Cindi realized that her image was being used to invoke pity for the disabled. Writes Shapiro" She now understood...
It had been a lie; she was not special - she and her polio were feared" (13).
Shapiro's book, in addition to being an important look at the social and human cost of our perceptions of disability, is also helpful in getting the reader to understand the statistical importance of the disabled movement. Early on in the book, he notes that there are 35 to 43 million disabled Americans, a startlingly large number.
No Pity is also enlightening in describing many aspects of the disabled experience that are outside of the normal experience for the able-bodies. For example, Shapiro describes the hurtful image of the "supercrip," who "implies that a disabled person is presumed deserving of pity - instead of respect - until he or she proves capable of overcoming a physical or mental limitation through extraordinary feats" (Shapiro, 16).
Shapiro is also insightful in describing the struggle for rights for the disabled. In Chapter two, he notes the example of Ed Roberts, left quadriplegic by polio, who enrolled in the University of California at Berkley. Here, he notes that disabled rights have…
