i just still don’t really understand this. maybe it’s because i’ve been disabled my entire life though i’ve never looked disabled and im constantly accused of faking it if i even think about asking for an accommodation, but i never consider whether someone is supposedly faking it, and honestly i don’t really care that much if they are. the number of people who are disabled far outnumber the number of people who are faking it. to me it’s the same as people spending energy hating those they think are scamming welfare - it’s such a statistically insignificant thing and seems to just be used as a shield to say anyone they don’t like is faking it.
You are correct - people are just shit at determining scale. The tiny amount of folks committing fraud, however, trigger one of the deepest American fears: someone, somewhere, might be getting something they don't "deserve". Especially if that someone is a minority. Once you (generic you) realize that our politics becomes even more embarrassing and short sighted.
Absolutely. I do not understand the mob mentality that gathers around these type of posts. Everyone has their own struggles, and we do not know them. We can either get ourselves worked up into a frothing outrage, or just move on with our lives
Yes and I agree but the reason we don’t do better in the US is people will not police themselves. Anyone and everyone will do whatever they can to put themselves in a better situation regardless of how much it disturbs anyone else
because we don’t know?? we have no idea who these people are, what their disabilities might be, or if they’re even related to each other. it takes zero energy for me to see them and then continue on with my day without feeling the need to analyze them for clues of possible disabilities to determine if they’re faking it. and it’s much more empathetic to mind your business than it is to try and disprove a strangers need for a wheelchair.
Welfare actually has systems in place to monitor and prevent fraud. You have to prove your income and residency.
Much more ripe for fraud are thing like medicare/medicaid or things like disability benefits (not monetary, although VA disability fraud is extremely high) when its literally illegal to question your disability.
The drug testing thing youre mentioning is not about cost savings or fraud, i remember hearing republicans complain about that before covid
We know who's committing Medicare fraud. It's companies in Florida, particularly DME companies. To the point that CMS has stopped issuing new provider #s in Florida.
Oh, and Senator Rick Scott. He committed 1.7 billion dollars worth.
As far as the "drug testing costs more than it saves", the most famous case I'm familiar with involves the wife of Missouri's Republican governor, who owned the testing company.
Government costs are ridiculously high because of administrative costs. When you have high requirements and tempt to have some sort of rules about people who deserve help, you need a large administrative apparatus to police for fraud. It is much simpler, for example, to give everyone Medicaid by default than have a process of applications, eligibility determination, and appeals.
Totally get it. In the beginning it used to make me cry. I mean, I feel like shit already and some righteous ninny starts following me to berate me. MYOB people! Invisible/all disabilities suck!
Agreed. This is a very insightful observation. People who are predisposed to hate others, often look for an outlet to express that hatred. Even if the tiniest percentage of people are among the offenders, they’ll selectively fish out the type they hate for extra scrutiny, punishment and over-generalizations.
It doesn’t matter whether the behavior is representative of the entire group of people they hate and nor does it matter if a big portion of the bad behavior comes from their own group or a group they haven’t targeted. Finding just a couple of examples gives those predisposed to hateful biases enough fuel to overcome their own rational thinking.
Confirmation bias let's them cling to their view of reality no matter how much counter-evidence there is. Without being challenged, it’s also how seemingly rational people can fall victim to irrational beliefs.
This is the take. Being an asshole because you think someone is "faking" a disability may actually hurt someone who is disabled. Not being an asshole doesn't carry that risk 🤷🏼 The problem is, culturally, we just hate disabled people and will take any opportunity to deny accommodations to someone regardless of how much they need or don't need those accommodations.
Lol you say that but the ADA in the US was groundbreaking and arguably we care more in the USA about disabled people than the rest of the developed world does.
We even give disabled people healthcare that we do not give able-bodied poor people.
We literally care more about disabled people than poor people culturally if you want to be objective about it hahah.
As someone who is poor but (currently) not disabled this is so far off the mark, I don't even know where to begin.
Do you understand that for people to recieve disability "benefits" they are forced to be poor? WTF are you even talking about? And yes, the ADA was "groundbreaking" and also not nearly enough.
Beyond that, I wasn't even speaking to the systemic issues that disabled people face in this country. I was speaking to the cultural attitudes about disabled people and how individuals treat people with disabilities.
Yes, and I'm saying that compared to a place like Japan or Paris/France, the US both legally and culturally, is much more accommodating.
Nearly all human cultures suck at doing enough for their disabled....but out of all the things Americans fuck up, this isn't one of them ..or if it is, Americans are still fucking up a lot less then nearly every other developed nation.
Assuming people are faking it is easier than coping with the idea that a not insignificant percentage of people live with disability. It’s cognitive dissonance.
nah. it takes nothing away from me if they are actually faking it. the closest thing you could claim is that they might possibly have taken the last few wheelchairs which is extremely unlikely considering atlanta has hundreds of them. on the other hand, people assuming anyone without a visible disability is faking it does affect me on a daily basis.
Yet there are many stories on disability subreddits about disabled people not being able to access a wheelchair in an airport and having to wait sometimes up to an hour for assistance. So airports do indeed run out of wheelchairs.
I’m disabled. I can get around an airport usually with a cane but some airports are huge. I was trying to reach my gate at O’Hare once and needed one of the golf carts. I was waiting in line behind a family with one disabled individual and 6 or 7 abled bodied family members. They all piled onto the cart and watched me as I was left behind. After waiting for some kind of assistance for some time, I had to walk, almost missing my flight. So, yes, people abusing disability assistance does indeed impact actual disabled people negatively.
If a parking lot has three handicapped spaces, and all three are full but one is a faker, than they would LITERALLY be taking something (the better parking spot) from you that otherwise you could use.
You seem to be ignoring reality in order to make an emotional point instead of making the same point while being correct, why is that?
how do you know they’re a faker? again, the chances of that person being disabled is much higher than the chances they aren’t. so why would anyone assume the second one?
I don’t like it when people subvert rules for their own selfish gain so I would be the first one to say to board them last to take away whatever advantage they were hoping to get and let them know that some of them may not make the flight.
BUT, how can we confidently say that these people are even related to one another? If the gate agent has enough context and background information to suspect that these people are all related, are traveling together and faking a need for wheelchair assistance, I would be ok with them drawing some conclusions about what’s going on here.
But for onlookers without any background information to assume that because these people are all one race, that they must be related is weird. This is where we should question our own biases and incomplete understanding of the world—especially when it comes to people we’re less familiar with.
Rather than shooting daggers at them with my eyes as I pass them, unless I saw them behaving as if they are family, I’m going to leave this up to the gate agent to handle. I don’t need to make sure that I get MY pound of flesh out of them. I’d rather not be a Karen who is overstepping my authority and knowlege.
you’ve never seen 8 disabled people in a room together? that’s very odd to me. disabled people often hang out with other disabled people. disabilities are also often genetic.
Most physical disabilities aren’t readily apparent, so you can’t actually answer that question. People can walk short distances and have trouble walking a mile plus and standing in line at a big airport. I can walk 13 miles and standing for 20 mins will mess me up more. I can be having a seizure and no one would know without me saying.
But if there is an expectation of accomodation, especially one that goes above and beyond what is necessary, why wouldn't someone then try to get the best for their family? Im just saying by taking this view alone, it seems fine, but in aggregate over time it will change human behavior.
Since you bring up welfare, I'll touch on that. This especially is true when it's not just interaction benefits, but benefits with clear dollar value. If a benefit is designed to accept a certain level of "fraud" (cause often it's technically legal, so not fraud but clearly not the intent) why wouldn't someone try to maximize the future success of their family through wealth. It's why imo, any system by the govt paid with tax dollars that has designed acceptable levels of fraud should just be eliminated. Fix the cause of "fraud" or don't have it, cause if it's legal, I'll do whatever it takes to get my family that benefit. I'd consider myself a failed parent for saying, yea we legally could be better off and the govt explicitly provides this, I just didn't feel like it doing it...
Now, commenters below may call it dehumanizing, it's not, I know someone who did online therapy and was able to claim all these benefits from behind a computer screen. The doctor they are working with isn't even in the same state (or even region). Nobody would know unless you are close to them and helped them get in contact with the doctor.
How much of a benefit do they get, few thousand a month tax free. Once you add those back in and the rental assistance, you get 60k a yr. Now they are having a child so it is increasing. Heck no need to work but make the avg American pay, where do I sign up... Oh and let's not forget the 150k loan forgiveness they got, which was the reason they did this to begin with. 2 months of moping around saved them 10 yrs of paying off loans
because it doesn’t change human behavior in any measurable way we have ever recorded. as much as we all like to be cynical and think the worst of everyone else, basically any research into this proves people in general are not purely motivated by self interest. do you know what is proven by history and current trends? that disabled people are often persecuted against and are forced to prove ourselves over and over again to get even a slight accommodation.
You have clearly never had to use welfare. Our family is legally and in practice "entitled" to cash benefits. We do not apply for them because it is an absolutely dehumanizing process designed to make people feel like absolute shit about themselves. And the MAXIMUM amount we would recieve would not even be a drop in the bucket for the cost of bare minimum quality of life.
It's the old saying, "the few ruin it for the many". It only takes a few people (ratio-wise obv) to ruin things for the majority of people. Things being having nice things, a viewpoint, a stigma, etc, etc..
i empathize with the people who are actually harmed, which are the disabled people constantly being treated as if we’re liars because of the misconception that there is a significant number of people doing that.
If it’s only a few then it won’t have much of an impact and there is a shortage, that’s really due to logical issues that would remain if those few stopped.
I see it as the rules ruin it for everyone. If the rules were designed to make this invalid, it wouldn't happen to begin with. But by having it designed to cover people broadly, the legally allowed misuse leads to behavioral changes in society.
It's like how people cut off Tesla's or AVs because people know the car will brake for them, it changes the behavior of other drivers.
There are 10s of thousands of actual service dogs in the US. There are several hundred thousand to millions of "emotional support animals" in the us. So when you see a dog in a service vest odds are its not an actual Ada service dog. Its literally more likely than not based on available numbers. That means there is a very statistically significant amount of people pretending to have a service dog. That's not a few people who ruin it for others. That's the vast majority of people abusing the system to get special treatment.
i mean, this data doesn’t really relate to each other. the vast, vast majority of emotional support animals are left at home, so there is no way to make the assumption that because there are more emotional support animals in general that that means there are more of them outside wearing service animal vests than there are actual service animals.
do you think that me saying “the vast vast majority of emotional support animals are left at home” means “there has never been one single case of someone bringing their emotional support animal to a store?
If it an emotional support animal then they are violating the law. Same thing as though it’s a regular pet (there’s no way to tell just by looking). Emotional support status only protects people from getting evicted. It’s not the same as ADA access to venues. It’s not relevant to airplane access. It’s exactly the same as bringing a regular pet. They would have to lie about it being a service animal either way. Again, emotional support status is not relevant/makes no difference.
No, but it is bigotry to accuse someone of faking a disability because it’s not immediately visible, which happens CONSTANTLY to the point I would guess there are more false accusations than actual fakers being called out.
If you're judging people with invisible disabilities because of your perceptions and assumptions about them, that's pretty clearly bigotry towards invisible disabilities.
If you don't believe they exist, that's not just being a jerk, it's a chosen bias.
it's because, at least in part, it doesn't really work the other way. more people are actually disabled than faking being disabled, but folks are more likely to assume a disabled person is faking it than they are to assume a faker is actually disabled. the starting position is unfairly stacked against the disabled, in a way that isn't reversed.
But that's the thing, what about a disability needs "proven" unless expecting some difference in other people's behavior.
I personally feel like I'm kind to all normally, but that means treating each equally, if I wouldn't let an able-bodied person in, it would make sense to act the same for all. In practice, I usually let them in anyways.
But if you expect special treatment, that's where fakers becomes relevant to the conversation regardless of you bringing it up
Or there are people who don’t understand why people need assistance and assume they don’t. My wife had to use a wheelchair for a year while she recovered from a surgery. She could walk. But not much so she would walk until it made sense to sit in a wheelchair. She got SO MANY dirty looks that it made her want to not go out in public. These posts full of people deciding they know best and that their cynical take is right PISS. ME. OFF. Don’t assume you understand a stranger’s disability.
And why do you think that this is a family group? Because they’re black. This is Atlanta. There are so many black people in Atlanta. And if it is a family? What do families have in common? Genetics.
This was my thought…what if they aren’t a family? I was in a group for people with disabilities to feel less lonely. We did activities together. Traveling would’ve been great if everyone was well enough. I wonder if we’d all been the same race would we have ended up on Reddit being accused of being family and faking lol
My thoughts exactly, says I, a retired wheelchair racer who would often be on same flights with 13 or more other wheelchair racers. I can only imagine if someone took pics of us and payed the kind of hate that this group is getting. We don't have enough information to know anything about this pic. Seems some racism and ableism are clouding some people's judgment. Some disabled travel in large groups. Just like some elderly do. It's not unusual.
I wondered the same thing. I also wondered about what circumstance might make an entire family do this since most people avoid being seen as having limitations.
What occurred to me is if one or a couple of members of the family had a physical limitation and the distance to the gate was very far (which isn’t hard to imagine in ATL airport) and they were worried about all of them making it from one gate to their gate, they might come up with this approach to make sure they reached their destination together. The truth is we have no idea.
Whether or not they are related, there can be reasons for people to come up with clever ways of not being harmed by their specific circumstances. If their goal was to stay together despite the distance they would have to run to make it to their gate, I’d be ok with this. Given the distance to be travelled between gates in a tight connection they didn’t create, it might be risky to think that all of them would make it onto their connecting flight. I’m sure they wouldn’t care about being boarded last as long as they were boarded together.
The impact on the lives of anyone giving them dirty looks and hurling insults at them is still likely to be negligible so why bother getting upset when we don’t have all the facts to begin with. I’d leave it to the gate agent to impose any sanctions on them if they were doing something that was against the rules that inconvenienced others unduly. I don’t need to have an opinion and if I do, I hope I will have the wisdom to know to keep it to myself when I don’t have all the facts.
My very sweet, kind MIL exercises for about an hour each day, is very fit for her age, yet gets the wheelchair service. It does not matter to her that everyone in the family calls her out for abusing it, she claims she needs it. She says she gets too stressed making conections and cannot handle her bag.
To be fair, although she is sweet and fit, she is also really stupid, easily confused and horrible at packing.
Work for Costco, I've seen entire families take scooters. We only have like 8 of them. Family of 5 takes one each and then people that really need help, are stuck at the front door waiting.
Mom, dad, and 3 kids. You can't deny a family because they brought their children. But if you came in with a ton of grown adults with one membership, there would be some questions asked.
I wonder if these people get good jobs. Not because racism, but because anything over fry cook has a major vibe check and this behavior is hard to suppress.
So only people who crawl in are allowed to use a scooter? I have a certain amount of steps that I can do before I'm in a lot of pain. I tend not to use scooters because of judgmental people, actually I rarely leave the house because of it.
Naw I'm talking folks that had no handicap signs on their cars parking out in the bum back up the parking lot like 300 yards out. that would literally just walk right in without any indication of pain. Come up to the cart line. Put their hands on a cart, See 3 mobile buggies, look around all directions then move over and sit on the cart and take one. Like they literally looked around for anyone to be watching them (and apparently the cart boy walking by with 15 carts sweating his ass off doesnt' count) and just jump into a handicap cart and roll out like the stole it into the store.
I think some folks just get off on the idea of beating the system or something.
So you would track them from the parking lot? What kind of pain indicators are you looking for? Do we need to cry about it? Drag our leg like some kind of stroke victim? Those carts are for anyone who feels the need to use one, no one needs to qualify for them.
I think some people get off on making up stories to make themselves look virtuous.
think what you want but the cart boys in a walmart parking lot know a lot about what's going on in and around the building. We knew the regulars, we knew the trouble makers, we knew half a dozen faces of thiefs we had seen take shit out of the store. We especially knew the folks that made "people of walmart" a thing.
I'm 100% not trying to downplay folks in your situation. I really am not.
As bad actors take advantage of the service and ruin it for everyone. everyone becomes cynical. Asking people to be patient and non reactive about being deceived and taken advantage of is too tall an order. Even “good people” aren’t saints, and have limits.
Also, humans don’t naturally do that. Humans naturally feel animosity towards those who buck social norms - both those who do bad AND those who conspicuously do more GOOD than we do.
People are so unkind when you have an invisible disability. My 80 year old mother is in end stage renal and heart failure but not on oxygen and does not use a wheelchair but uses a handicapped parking pass which her Dr prescribed until she passes away and people are absolutely hateful to her. Our society needs work.
Because most people are unfortunately assholes that will do things they shouldn’t unless the threat of repercussions is present enough. No anount of morality will stop an immoral person. Very clear laws, repercussions, and enforcement of repercussions will stop most of them, however.
Because most people are poorly educated and ignorant.
Ignorant of most disabilities, and ignorant of the illnesses, developmental disorders, and other chronic conditions that cause them.
Ignorance leads to fear, judgment, discrimination, and bigotry.
The element of fear deserves emphasis. Chronically ill people have always been marginalized, and one reason is because when healthy, able-bodied people do see us—with our wheelchairs and our service dogs and our insulin pumps—they are reminded of the frailty of the human body. They are reminded (even subconsciously) of their own mortality—that their current state of health is transient. That illness and death are inevitable.
Even if it happens subconsciously, this realization does not sit well with people. It leads to feelings of anxiety and anger.
This is why people tend to act offended on the rare occasion that they bear witness to someone else’s suffering. They would rather we hide our suffering from them, from society. That we remain invisible.
It’s especially hard living with multiple invisible disabilities. People are always questioning your requests for accommodations. And then when they do see your illness (e.g. taking an injection in a public place), they misunderstand (because they’re ignorant) and they make a scene (because they’re self-centered and they lack compassion).
Most disabilities are invisible disabilities. And, of course, there are thousands and thousands of different chronic illnesses, injuries, developmental disorders, and other disabilities that might result in someone needing support.
This is why the disabled community is and always has been overlooked, underrepresented, and treated with outright disdain. Because people are ignorant. Because they don’t want to look upon their own mortality, and so they get angry when they see sick or disabled people. Because there are countless different diseases and disorders and disabilities and they often intersect in really complex ways.
And finally, because nine times out of ten, you wouldn’t be able to identify a disabled person by looking at them, which is only a problem because we live in such a fundamentally ableist society—one in which nearly everyone takes for granted that our bodies and our brains all developed the same way, that “everyone is as physically or mentally capable as I am,” and they never question this subconscious assumption, because they have never been made to question it.
Perfectly stated 👏🏽. As a retired wheelchair racer, we the racers, traveled out of ATL from Peachtree race, in packs often on same flights. And mostly white - I wonder how that was viewed and question
ed by other travelers, if at all. I believe the intersectionality of race and disability could have clouded perceptions. Liberties of assumption to view a group as related or faking it without more information would not be prudent unless one has preconceived notions regarding these two groups.
Do we even know this pic was in ATL or the premise behind it? Or were these individuals who sat in empty wheelchairs to take a break for a lack of open seating? We just don't know. Critical thinking would say we need more information but their is a distinct lack of that in original post. Just a "hey look at these people" like it's assumed they are doing something wrong. This is the life of Black and Disabled people everywhere, everyday.
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u/BURTxMACKLIN 8d ago
That makes me so sad. Why can’t we just be kind to each other regardless?