Open
the Job Market to the Disabled Community
An editorial from Academy member Henry B. Betts, MD*
I did not decide to go into PM&R until after serving in the Marine Corps in 1957. Making
this difficult decision was something that was preceded by a few very moving experiences.
Civil rights and PM&R
First, I was inspired to be a doctor by the country doctor we had in rural New Jersey.
My father had died when I was six, and the only man around the house my sister and I ever had was Dr. Abe
Garfinkle from Flemington, New Jersey. He was a very interesting, intelligent, and compassionate man, and I
thought that being like him would be a nice idea. (He was not disabled.)
The next person who influenced me was Miss Jenny Corcoran who taught me in a one-room
schoolhouse during my years in New Jersey. The schoolhouse had no electricity or indoor plumbing and was
heated by a potbelly stove. In this schoolhouse, she taught eight grades. She was an interesting person and
had a great influence on me, and I realized that I was living through an interesting experience – particularly
since Miss Corcoran was paraplegic from polio. She was brought to work every day in a horse-and-buggy by her
brother and carried to the front of the class where she sat all day.
Next, there was the outstanding professor at Princeton, perhaps the only person who I
would describe so glowingly. He taught the history of architecture and in an indirect way is responsible for
my trip to Chicago for my first interview at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. I went to see the
architecture; it never occurred to me I would stay there.
The next influential person I knew was Dr. Thomas Hunter, dean of the University of
Virginia medical school I attended. The school was founded by Thomas Jefferson (“Life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness and justice for all”). In spite of Dr. Hunter, I could see that the tenets of Thomas
Jefferson were far from the way we sent all disabled people to “The Home for the Incurables.”
Somewhere along the line in my teenage years, we moved to the South. I remember when a
bus stopped and a black woman moved to the back of the bus. I saw separate drinking fountains, separate waiting
rooms, and so on for African-Americans. We lived next to Miami Beach where I saw signs in the hotels that said,
“No Jews Allowed” or “Restricted.” I can’t say that I thought of these as
constitutional violations, but I felt that if Dr. Garfinkle came to see me he would be sorry to find a hotel
that had made it public that he was unwelcome.
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Jobs to create equality
I planned to help people with disabilities, and in my own mind I thought this would
involve a civil rights movement on their behalf. They needed to be brought into a sense of equality in a
world that had turned its back on them.
In the International Year of the Disabled, disabled people stated that their main problem
was society’s negative attitude toward them. I’m not sure they are referring to real prejudice such
as racism; but they certainly are misunderstood, and there is a strong feeling in the United States of denial.
The history of people with disabilities has been vile for long periods. When people had
disabled children, they were made to feel that God was “punishing them.” Disabled people were not
allowed to approach the altar, and in previous centuries they were simply killed. Today, the disabled
population is neglected and restrained from community activity. Such neglect is hard on disabled people; at
the same time, the community suffers because it lacks interaction with a group of people who have experienced
trials and have often come out stronger.
The great goal of society that must be reached in the near future is to include people
with disabilities. They should be given a chance to be recognized and admired for who they are. The major way
people with disabilities have a chance for some recognition is in the job market, where they have a better
opportunity to develop self-esteem and to experience social contact. This opportunity for happiness should be
made available to every American.
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Educating the CEOs about diversity
In order to do this, the one thing that has not been tried adequately is approaching
CEOs or high-ranking people in business. They should establish policies within a company to make a
significant effort to hire people with disabilities. There are many myths involving disparagement of a
vocation for people who have disability. Those myths have been proven wrong and should be discarded.
It should be remembered that CEOs and high-ranking executives are not hired to be
compassionate, but to make businesses thrive. Thus, destroying negative legends must be carried out more
vigorously. We should give up entirely the idea of “selling” people with disabilities to
businesses relative to pity and a sense of charity. They should be hired for their talents. Many things are
possible in this age of technology. For example, a disabled person with a financial mind could run the
entire finance department of Ford Motor Company with nothing but a sip-and-puff mechanism. Such facts must be
made available to the CEOs and high-ranking executives.
At this point, the risk to hiring people with disabilities lies entirely with people in
human resources and vocational counselors. If CEOs would make policies and indicate that they are going to work
toward equality, then personnel and counselors would not hesitate to hire them. In reading reports of large
businesses at the end of the year, there is a lot of positive discussion about diversity in the job market and
there has been a great effort toward achieving justice in the world for minority groups – but not for
people with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) gives people with disabilities the rights
for equal consideration in the job market. So the “threat” of ADA-related lawsuits also lurks among
the business community.
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The business world must spread the word
The most advantageous thing would be if the CEOs who believe in hiring people with
disabilities would be willing to be educators throughout the country. This could be a very successful
direction in a positive civil rights organization. CEOs like to hear from CEOs. They may be attentive perhaps
to non-CEO “do-gooders” but are perhaps less inclined to take action when hearing from them.
We are fortunate in Chicago that there is such a strong alliance between the private and
the public sectors. The mayor of Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley, was able to ally himself with William Osborn
the head of the Northern Trust to set up a taskforce and eventually an organization called DisabilityWorks to
work in this realm. The head of DisabilityWorks is now Karen McCulloh reporting through the Chamber of Commerce.
Business people should organize around this very worthy cause, a cause that would help
them as well as the rest of society. Then perhaps they could begin looking at ability, which is always
helpful in a business, as opposed to disability, which need not be mentioned at all.
Of course, the highest priority is set by the disabled themselves in their desire to be
part of society. This is what people in rehabilitation have always wanted for them. Rehabilitation’s base
was the fact that it would get people “back to work” and that goal was set long ago at the
beginning of the century. It was well known that bringing about this integration was economically sensible.
“The economy gained $8 in return for every dollar spent on rehabilitation by making a tax payer out of
a welfare recipient,” said Dr. Howard Rusk. Here is a great opportunity to use medicine as the engine
that makes it successful for this impoverished and brutalized group of people.
*Dr. Betts is a professor in the department of PM&R at the Northwestern University
Feinburg School of Medicine, and past medical director/president/CEO at the
Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. An excerpt of this editorial appeared in
the July/August 2009 issue of The Physiatrist.
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