Disability Culture Watch

Last week, the International Association of Athletics and Federations ruled that Oscar Pistorius – a sprinter and double amputee who uses prosthetic racing blades - is ineligible to compete this summer in the Beijing Olympics (or any other sanctioned “able-bodied” competitions) because his Cheetah Racing Blades are “technical aids” that they claim give him a clear advantage.

“An athlete using this prosthetic blade has a demonstrable mechanical advantage (more than 30 percent) when compared to someone not using the blade,” said the IAAF, track and field’s governing body.

Anita Hollander - East Coast national chairwoman of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists Performers with Disabilities – best summed up this ludicrous situation in her recent letter-to-the-editor of The New York Times:

“As a high-thigh above-knee amputee actress who has tap danced in ‘Nunsense’ and played a three-legged Grizabella in ‘Cats,’ I take enormous umbrage at these dilettantes who have no way of knowing what it takes to run on two prostheses.

“Oscar Pistorius has beaten incredible odds by his own determination and struggle to stand toe-to-toe with two-legged athletes. If the rules of the International Association of Athletics Federations are too archaic and lacking in vision that disabled athletes may someday compete with the so-called able bodied, then I strongly suggest that those rules be changed to meet the accomplishments of people with disabilities in the 21st century.”

[Picture: Oscar Pistorius running, using his prosthetic racing blades.]

All of this reminds me of a similar story from a few years ago - the controversy about Casey Martin and the golf cart

Martin, a professional golfer, has a mobility impairment that makes it difficult to walk. He petitioned the Professional Golfers Association for the right to ride a golf cart in professional tournaments. They turned him down; Martin took the case to court and it was eventually deliberated in the Supreme Court. In that decision, Casey Martin prevailed.

Pistorius was born in South Africa without a fibula in his lower legs and had a double amputation when he was eleven months old. He grew up as a successful runner, went on to rank among South Africa’s best and shatter Paralympic records.

Now that his bid to run in the 2008 Beijing Games has been turned down, we are hearing the same tired arguments we heard about Martin all over again.

“It affects the purity of sport,” said Elio Locatelli of the IAAF. “Next will be another device where people can fly with something on their back.”

Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, adds that, “As prostheses continue to improve, you might have a situation ten or twenty years from now in which it is impossible for anybody to win who does not have a prosthetic limb. We don’t want a situation where you have to amputate your leg to be an Olympic runner.”

While beggars around the Indian subcontinent may be driven to amputate a limb in efforts to increase their begging potential (here’s the link), it seems doubtful that approach will ever take root in Olympic sports.

Casey Martin doubts it will ever come to that point (obviously). Said Martin, in a recent interview: “There’s not one runner in the world that would give up his legs to have what this runner does. That’s the situation I went through. I’d say, yes, having a golf cart would be nice at times for anyone, but no one would be willing to swap legs with me to have it.”

The most significant outcome of the Martin debate is that the discussion came down to asking question: “What is the game of golf?” Some people said: “If he rides a cart, that is not golf.” The question I’d like to ask: What, then, is golf and who has decided?

To my mind it was one of the most public displays of the way that the presence of disabled people or ideas about disability can cause disruption. I’m using disruption in a positive sense here - meaning the type of disruption that leads to new ways of thinking and new ways of behaving that I deem progressive. Disability, like race, gender and other critical lenses force us to question the very nature of ideas, constructs, and the validity and reliability of information we hold to be true.

A situation like this challenges people to think not only about disabled people’s participation in the social world, but it challenges us to think about rules that have typically excluded that participation. It spurs us to ask what is the nature of those rules, who has constructed them, and whose interests have they served?

As record numbers of disabled people enter mainstream society, we test the rules of participation in societies that have typically excluded us. Similar to the way that other rules such as “only men can vote” or “people of African descent can’t own property” or “women can’t be police officers or fire fighters” or “two people of the same sex cannot marry” have been challenged, the “rule” that people in professional golf tournaments can’t ride in golf carts has been challenged. Of course, disabled people have challenged rules not only about golf carts, but also about access to housing, jobs, education, and to the rights and privileges of citizenship.

I hope that the Pistorius controversy will have the same effect – that it will raise more questions and make people think about the way that society labels, divides and cordons off its members.

The presence of disabled people in the wide variety of public and prominent places these days, calls into question these accepted ideas about disability. Similarly, a dancer, such as Alice Sheppard in her sporty lightweight wheelchair, demands that we ask the questions “What is dance?” and “Who is a dancer?”

[Picture: Alice Sheppard dancing, with arms outstretched and arched to her side. Her wheelchair is slightly tilted away from the wall.]

Our job is to challenge exclusion and to ask the big questions. Who defines running, golf or dance; who defines citizenship or equity? Who makes the rules and, significantly, whose interests do those rules serve?

Because Pistorius is continually cited as “courageous” and simultaneously labeled a cheater for using prosthetic racing blades, Kara Swims posed the question “Since When Is Cheating Courageous?” in a recent blog on www.disaboom.com.

And, just for the record: World 100-Meter Champion Tyson Gay said in a recent article in Sports Illustrated that he’d have no problem racing against Oscar Pistorius.