The Erasing of Disability

      The United Way had been raising money for disabled children and adults using advertisements since the late 1940s. The poster advertisements are what Ellen L. Barton calls a "discourse of disability". The representations of the disabled in said posters has been embedded into American history and culture have created a more complex social construct then the simple definition of "a individual's physical and/or mental impairments (169). Ellen L. Barton's article "Textual Practices of Erasure: Representations of Disability and the Founding of the United Way" explores the use of rhetoric and textual erasure in campaign advertisement posters created by the United Way.  The textual practice of erasure is employed by the ads of the United Way. According to Barton, "charity fund-raising of this era constructed simplistic and stereotypical representations of disability by erasing the complex experience of individuals, particularly adults, with disabilities" (172). The United Way used three textual practices to accomplish this erasure. They used children rather then adults, used the extraordinary rather then the ordinary and the focus on the United Way as a business.  

     The United Way made the move away from adult and toward children in their advertising campaigns that rely on pity and fear (172). Barton writes that "The textual practices of charity fund-raising erased the complex experience of people with disabilities. The coif means by with the United Way fund-raising of the 1950s accomplished this was to reduce the experience of disability to the figure of a child" (178). For example, A united way poster from 1955 (176). Barton says the rhetoric in the posters uses pity and fear to "evoke readers' feelings of good fortune, their suppressed fears of vulnerability, and their pride in American values and institutions" (195). On this poster you see a young child standing in his underwear where you are able to see the child's abnormal physical features caused by arthritis are emphasized. The text with the photographs say that he was crippled by arthritis at five years old and the donations made have helped him live a normal life. This ad would have created fear and pity in the public who saw it. The public would be scared and feel said for the child; they would be able to imagine it as someone that they knew or would see and innocent child that would never have a normal childhood and would want to help. Barton says that "it was pity aroused in able-bodied adults who were carefully constructed as separate from the experience. The use of other people's children this distanced disability and erased a fuller version of the complexities of its experience (184)."   

     The United Way also made a move to the extraordinary and focused on business. They would use people in their ads who were extraordinary in the way the have overcome their disability. The term supercrip is used to describe someone who has overcome the adversity of their disability (185). Text such as "James Stearns still can't walk across a room with out crutches. But he can run circles around his opponents in a courtroom" and a picture with a caption about how the person is the real winner of a marathon is the person with a disability because the used it to make a positive statement are both example of how the extraordinary was used in ads (186). These show the progress that seems to have been made, no longer is " the cripple hoping for a normal human life" instead they are "brave sports heroes and super achieving corporate executives" (186). Supercrips are used to raise donations for the United Way because supercrips can boost the morale of the public and show them that the donations they have made are really helping. As stated by Barton, they are also used because they "exist comfortably with society's designations of cases that are worthy or pity, praise, and charitable support" (187). The focus on the United Way a business farther erased the experience of disability. Barton says that the shift toward business, and the relationship between donor and the disabled as a business, is one of the most effective ways of erasure of the experience of people with diabilites (188).   

     These textual practices of erasure according to Barton, "erase the need for able-bodied American workers to think any further about disability and its complex experience". The poster advertisements of the United Way helped erase what the experience of have a disability is like by evoking pity and fear and making the disabled the "Other".  Although campaigns operating this way are most often  successful, Barton warns that it "regularly diminishes the experience of the people with disabilities and ultimately diminishes the understanding of disability by society at large" (195).

Work Cited: 

Barton, Ellen L. "Textual Practices of Erasure: Representation of Disability and the Founding of the United Way."    Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture. Ed. James C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2001. 169-199.