47 pages • 1 hour read
Kim E. NielsenA Disability History of the United States
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Introduction-Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
Content Warning: This section discusses ableism, racism, enslavement, and mental illness. The source text’s use of outdated and offensive terms is replicated only in quotations.
In the Introduction to A Disability History of the United States, author Kim E. Nielsen suggests that her work will place “the experiences of people with disabilities at the center of the American story” (xi). The book will not only tell the history of people with disabilities but will also tell the history of the concept of disability. Throughout history, argues Nielsen, disability has often been equated to deficiency and dependency, but those characterizations are in direct contrast to the American ideal of independence. They are stigmatizing and lead to a belief that citizens with disabilities are inferior citizens. Although the assumption has been that disability is a clearly defined category, Nielsen claims that it has been an elusive and changing one over time. Nielsen argues that “not only do people with disabilities have a history, but the concept of disability has a history as well” (xiv).
Because the concept and meaning of disability has changed over time, and because the definition is no longer limited to the categorization of bodies as disabled, disability can be contextual, unseen, and even temporary. In the latter half of her Introduction, Nielsen provides a chapter-by-chapter outline for her work, a special note about her use of archaic terminology referring to disability, and a personal note about her background and experiences as they relate to disability studies. She points out that while other scholars have retold the American story by using gender, class, sexuality, and race as tools of analysis, she will “use disability to help us better understand the history of the United States” (xvii). Using disability as a means of historical understanding alongside the analyses of gender, class, sexuality, and race will show how they intertwine with each other.
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Spirit Chooses the Body It Will Occupy: Indigenous North America, Pre-1492”
In Chapter 1, Nielsen examines disability in North America in the pre-Columbian era. She begins the chapter with an anecdote concerning how Indigenous peoples believed that everyone had a gift of some kind. She goes on to explain that disability both does and does not have a history within Indigenous communities. Disability does have a history because bodies and physical abilities varied, but at the same time, disability did not have a history because there was no concept of “disability” within Indigenous communities. Instead, the common belief was that “‘disability’ occurred when someone lacked or had weak community relationships” (3). In this regard, stigma only occurred when one’s body, spirit, and mind were in disharmony and when one was unable to participate in reciprocity within the community. While the millions of Indigenous peoples in North America belonged to various tribes and communities that had their own distinct languages, cultural customs, and political systems, most taught that “the spirit chooses the body it will occupy” (5). Nielsen argues that “there was no singular experience of disability, just as there was no singular definition of disability, among indigenous nations” (6).
In the latter half of the chapter, Nielsen focuses on the daily lives of those Indigenous peoples who had what today would be termed “disabilities.” Physical segregation for people who were hard of hearing was unnecessary because signed communication was common to almost all groups. Not only did illness and disease alter bodies, but so did the harsh conditions and physical requirements of life in the pre-Columbian era. Nielsen points out that “acquired handicaps were so common that little attention was paid to them” (9). However, the differences in consequences of such disabilities between today and the pre-Columbian era are very stark. Whereas today, a common disability can be managed over the course of a full lifetime, back then, it often resulted in death because of the harsh physical conditions and requirements of Indigenous life. Nielsen adds that just as the experiences of Indigenous peoples changed radically after the arrival of Europeans, so did their bodies. Nielsen writes that “Western concepts of wellness and medicine directly and tragically conflicted with the indigenous embrace of body, mind, and spirit as one” (11).
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Poor, Vicious, and Infirm: Colonial Communities, 1492-1700”
Ideas about appropriate bodies and minds strongly shaped the first two centuries after the arrival of Europeans in North America. Nielsen’s focus in Chapter 2 is not only on how the early Europeans in North America viewed and dealt with disability but also on how, for Indigenous peoples, disability became a product of European encroachment. Just as signed language allowed for communication with Indigenous peoples who were hard of hearing, it also allowed for communication between European and Indigenous nations. Nielsen points out, however, that signed language “was not enough to bring cultural harmony” (15). The early colonists brought weapons with them to the new land, and those who survived the grueling voyage across the ocean also carried disease with them. Nielsen argues that “disease, more than weapons, profoundly affected and decimated the bodies, and thus the societies, of peoples already living on the continent” (15).
Because of a lack of acquired immunological resistance and environmental stressors, diseases such as smallpox, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, whooping cough, malaria, scarlet fever, typhus, and diphtheria were widespread among Indigenous communities, leading to massive death rates, blindness, deafness, and disfigurement. According to Nielsen,
[T]he consequences of European colonization and conquest not only altered the ways in which indigenous peoples experienced what is now called disability, but it disproportionately killed people with disabilities and also produced disability (18).
Disability brought on by widespread disease was not limited to Indigenous peoples, as European settlers were affected as well, but the material realities were far less significant for them. For the colonists, physical disability was relatively routine and unremarked upon “unless it resulted in inability to labor in gender-, class-, and racially appropriate ways” (19)
In terms of how Europeans viewed disability and how they responded to it, Nielsen points out that the colonists “paid relatively little attention to physical disability, but substantial attention to cognitive or mental disabilities” (20). Massachusetts and other colonies guaranteed not only that those who were physically unable would not be made to perform public services but also that those who were described as “idiots” or “distracted persons” would have legal protections (21). While families bore responsibility for their members who could not support themselves due to physical or cognitive disability, poor people without families who were considered a threat to safety because of mental or cognitive disability became a community responsibility. In general, the early colonists defined disability as “the inability to ‘maintain’ oneself economically” (27). Nielsen also explains that “those unable to do so were discouraged from ever boarding ship for North America” (27).
Introduction-Chapter 2 Analysis
Nielsen begins A Disability History of the United States with an introductory chapter in which she explains the need for an examination that places the experiences of people with disabilities at the center of the American story, just as similar examinations have done with gender, class, sexuality, and race. She argues that in many ways, hers is a familiar telling, but in other ways, “it is a radical repositioning of US history” because it shines a new light on familiar stories using disability as a tool of analysis (xi). The first two chapters respectively focus on what is known about disability in the diverse cultures of Indigenous peoples of North America before colonization and how issues concerning disability helped to shape the new nation after the arrival of European settlers. By beginning her analysis here, Nielsen is able to point to the fact that US history involves a number of different communities and demographics, underscoring that it is important to avoid reductive or overly simplistic definitions of disability.
In a similar vein, a major theme of the book that Nielsen highlights in this section is The Changing Definitions and Perceptions of Disability. In Chapter 1, Nielsen discusses the understanding of disability among Indigenous peoples of North America. She explains that Indigenous communities had no word or concept for what today would be called “disability” and that disability only occurred “when someone lacked or had weak community relationships” (3). Although cognitive and physical impairments were common, those people lived without stigma as long as they participated in community reciprocity. This philosophy stems from the Indigenous belief in the relationship between body, spirit, and mind. Whereas Indigenous peoples held a strong belief that “the spirit chooses the body it will occupy” and that everyone had a gift of some kind regardless of disability (5), the European settlers perceived disability as an issue that required policies. Nielsen argues that “the fundamental mind-set of indigenous nations emphasizing balance and reciprocity […] later contrasted sharply with that of Europeans” (10). The way in which Indigenous communities defined and perceived disability compared to the European settlers who came later highlights Nielsen’s overarching theme. Nielsen’s analysis furthermore lends credence to the idea that how disability is understood, including in the modern day, depends on specific historical factors, and as such historical factors change over time, so too do popular understandings of disability.
In regard to how the Europeans who colonized North America defined and perceived disability, the definitions of appropriate bodies and minds shaped the experience, beginning with the fact that “individuals with bodies and minds deemed undesirable or unlikely to survive the voyage” were excluded (12). Nielsen argues that “the determination of ‘able-bodied’ depended largely on the perception that one conformed to communal expectations regarding class, gender, race, and religion” (12). Because bodily variations due to disease, accident, or birth were common, the inability to perform labor was the primary definition of disability among the early Europeans in North America. Whereas the colonists paid little attention to physical disability, those who today would be categorized as having psychological or cognitive disabilities “attracted substantial policy and legislative attention by Europeans attempting to establish social order, capitalist trade networks, and government in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century North America” (20).
Colonial settlements in New England enacted such policies when they promised that men who were maimed in settling the New World “shalbe mayntayned competently by the Colony during his life” (21). Nielsen explains that it also established legal protections for those considered mentally incapable—“any woman that is married, any child under age, Idiot or distracted person” (21). The colonies used the term “idiot” to refer to someone who is born with a cognitive disability and used the term “distracted person” to refer to someone who develops a psychological disability later in life (22). Families were expected to bear financial responsibility for their members who could not work or care for themselves, but those without families became a community responsibility. Nielsen argues that “local responsibility appears to have been accepted, but colonial communities strongly resisted caring for the stranger” (26). Her analysis indicates that factors such as one’s ability to labor or whether one had a local community were the key determinants in how disability was interpreted. Tracing this history thus indicates not only how people thought of disability but also why they did so in light of various historical factors (such as the importance that was placed on the ability to do physical labor or the tendency for communities to be insular and wary of strangers during the colonial era). By analyzing how these historical factors inflect different understandings of disability, Nielsen demonstrates the fluidity of disability as a concept, lending support to the idea that people’s preconceived and implicit notions about disability warrant reflection rather than merely being taken for granted.
