Human

The term “human” occupies a central place in disability studies because people living with physical, sensory, intellectual, or psychosocial impairments have so often been deemed to be not fully human or even animals with human faces. However, people with disabilities are hardly alone in this, for members of various groups and populations have been (and, indeed, continue to be) marginalized as the Other at different historical moments. In addition to those who have been labeled deaf, dumb, blind, idiot, mad, and leprous, a list of groups whose humanity has been discounted or denied includes slaves, women, colonized populations, and people of color/nonwhite people.