By Eric A. Shore, Founding Attorney, Law Offices of Eric A. Shore
Like a lot of people, I couldn’t stop watching the videos of Jimothy, the raccoon believed to have a rare condition called short spine syndrome. He was adorable. The way he ran around and climbed looked different, but he just kept going. I found myself smiling every time another video popped up.
Then I realized he wasn’t just an unusual raccoon. He appears to have a disability. That made me uncomfortable.
Was I supposed to laugh because he looked different? Was I supposed to feel sorry for him? Neither reaction felt right.
Then I started reading the comments.
What surprised me was that most people weren’t making fun of him and they weren’t treating him with pity either. They were rooting for him. They wanted him to survive. They were telling people to leave him alone and let him live his life.
I’ve spent more than 30 years representing people with disabilities, and I couldn’t help thinking how often people with disabilities are put into those same two categories. They’re either treated like they’re a joke or they’re treated like they’re helpless. In my experience, most people with disabilities want neither.
They want to be treated like people.
I’ve represented people with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, blindness, deafness, chronic pain, depression, PTSD, cancer, heart disease, and countless other medical conditions. One thing many of them have in common is that they get judged before anyone knows what they can actually do. Employers assume they can’t do the job. Insurance companies assume they’re exaggerating. Coworkers assume they’re lazy. Those assumptions can change someone’s life.
That’s one of the reasons disability discrimination laws exist.
The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t require employers to lower their standards. It requires them to stop making decisions based on stereotypes and to give qualified people with disabilities the same fair opportunity as everyone else. Social Security Disability
doesn’t ask whether someone looks disabled. It asks whether a medical condition prevents someone from working under the law.
Even some of the headlines about Jimothy called him “deformed” or a “mutant.” Those words get attention, but they also show how quickly we define someone by a physical condition instead of looking any deeper.
Jimothy is just a raccoon. But I think the reaction to him says something about us. Maybe we’re getting a little better at looking past what’s different. I hope so, because after more than three decades practicing disability law, I’ve learned that the hardest part of many disability cases isn’t the disability itself.
It’s how other people react to it.
Eric A. Shore is the founder of the Law Offices of Eric A. Shore. For more than 30 years, he has represented people with disabilities and injured workers in Social Security Disability, long term disability, employment discrimination, workers’ compensation, and personal injury cases. He has helped more than 40,000 clients and continues to advocate for people whose medical conditions have changed their ability to work or live their lives.
