The Armed Forces and the Exclusion of Persons with Physical or Intellectual Disabilities as a Modern Form of Discrimination Grounds of Fitness
17 Pages Posted: 30 Sep 2015
Date Written: June 2015
Abstract
The piece is inspired by the fascinating facts of Keith Norman, who on learning about his grandfather and great-uncle's experiences fighting in World War II; Keith Nolan has wanted to follow in their footsteps. Unfortunately, Nolan was born deaf to deaf parents, and the U.S. Army requires all soldiers to pass a hearing test. Consequently Nolan decided to under a tour visiting deaf soldiers in Israel, and enlisting a congressman to his cause to change U.S. Army policy.
This paper uses the concept of survival for the fittest to critically analyse how and when the fitness tests might in some respects be portrayed as another form of physical Darwinism with regards to the exclusion of persons with physical or intellectual disabilities from joining the armed forces. Some of the tests include; visual acuity, hearing test, these tests have for a while applied to traditions of military recruitment. The paper draws examples from the attitude of the military and armed forces in comparing and contrasting concepts of Darwinism in relation to the rating and ranking of the productiveness and the abilities among individuals. The study bases on facts of those comparisons to deconstruct the likely stereotypes of social-legal nature in analysing might result from those stratifications within contemporary armed forces. Prior the influence from human rights that trend was used to associate certain groups with inferiority while associating other groups of persons with superiority. Consequently, paper critically exposes the impacts and implications of the presumptions underlying the overly generalized dehumanisation persons with disabilities due to the likely bias to their capabilities. Those impact and implications are contextualised under the purview of the superior and inferiority dichotomy.
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